Cats are not big on grand gestures. Buy the six-foot castle, and they’ll sit in the box it came in. Which is actually good news, because the things that genuinely improve a cat’s life are almost all small: a habit here, a tweak there, most of them free. You don’t need a resolution or a fresh calendar page to start any of them. You just need to start.
Here are 13 upgrades worth making, grouped by what they do and loosely ranked within each group by how much your cat actually registers the difference. Some are for their body, some for their territory, some purely for the hunt. Pick two or three and let the rest follow.
For their health
1. Book the annual exam, even if nothing seems wrong. A yearly checkup gives your vet a baseline to measure against later, which is how subtle problems get caught early instead of late. Cats are famously good at hiding illness, so “he seems fine” is not the same as “he is fine.” A day or two before the visit, jot down anything you’ve noticed, appetite, litter habits, a new lump, so you don’t blank in the room.
2. Rethink the water situation. Cats descend from desert animals and carry a stubbornly low thirst drive, which leaves many of them chronically under-hydrated and more prone to urinary and kidney trouble. A fountain helps, because moving water is simply more appealing to a lot of cats than a still bowl.
“The low thirst drive is baked into the species, so the goal is to make drinking easy and interesting rather than to nag the cat into it,” says Dr. Priya Nair, a veterinarian who writes for The Pet Times. “A fountain, a wider bowl away from the food, a little extra water stirred into wet food, all of it nudges intake up, and over a lifetime that’s real protection for the kidneys and bladder.”
3. Add dental care to the routine. Dental disease is one of the most common and most overlooked problems in cats, and it hurts long before you notice it. You don’t have to perform surgery at home; even short, gradual sessions with a cat-safe toothbrush and enzymatic paste, plus a mention to your vet at that annual exam, go a long way.
4. Start a two-minute brushing habit. Mats aren’t just unsightly; a tight one pulls at the skin and genuinely hurts. Sixty to ninety seconds of soft brushing daily prevents them and doubles as a bonding ritual. The trick to making it stick is habit-stacking: attach it to something you already do, like the first cup of coffee, so it stops feeling like a chore.
For their territory
5. Add a litter box (yes, really). One box is often one too few. The reliable formula is one box per cat, plus one extra, so a single cat should have two and two cats should have three. Cats appreciate options, and research on litter-box behavior has found that some cats prefer to use one box for urine and another for stool, which is exactly the kind of preference an extra box quietly solves.
6. Size the box up. Bigger is almost always better. A good box runs at least 1.5 times your cat’s body length, so they can turn around and dig without contorting. Cramped boxes are a leading, and easily fixable, cause of a cat deciding the bath mat is a better option.
7. Clean the box daily, painlessly. Daily scooping sounds like a lot until you stack it onto an existing habit. Scoop every time you use the bathroom yourself, before you flush, and within a week it becomes automatic instead of a task you dread.
8. Give them the high ground. Most cats crave a perch, a spot up high where they can survey the room and feel safe doing it, whether that’s a cat tree, a wall shelf, or a bed mounted at a sunny window. One rule makes these spots sacred: resist the urge to pluck your cat off them for your own convenience. A perch they trust to be left alone is a perch they’ll actually use.
For the hunter inside
9. Restock the toys, then teach them. An occupied cat is a content cat, so keep a rotating supply for the hours you’re busy. Just know that a new toy sometimes needs a formal introduction, especially for a shy cat: show them how it moves, or sweeten the deal with a little catnip or a treat, before writing it off.
10. Grow them some cat grass. If your cat keeps sampling your houseplants, give them a legal target. Cat grass (wheatgrass) is a fibrous, low-stakes snack that carries a decent dose of vitamins and offers a safer outlet than the pothos on the shelf or the chemically treated lawn outside. It isn’t a dietary essential, but many cats love it and it can be gentle on digestion.
11. Try clicker training. People underestimate how trainable cats are. Positive reinforcement, rewarding the behavior you want rather than scolding the behavior you don’t, is the most effective way to change what a cat does. Even a few minutes a day of clicker work can shift behavior, and as trainer Karen Pryor argues in her book Clicker Training for Cats, cats find the game genuinely satisfying, in part because they experience it as training you to click.
12. Protect real play time. Of everything on this list, unstructured play may be the single best thing you can do for a cat’s happiness. It scratches the hunting itch that domestic life leaves unfulfilled. Cats living wild spend a huge share of their day hunting, and the stalk-pounce-catch sequence of a good play session taps the exact same wiring, even for an indoor cat who has never met a mouse.
“Play isn’t a luxury, it’s how a house cat gets to be a predator without leaving the living room,” Dr. Nair says. “Regular play keeps weight in check, smooths relationships between pets in a multi-cat home, and cuts down on the classic ‘bored cat’ behaviors like over-vocalizing and knocking things off the counter. Ten minutes, twice a day, changes a cat.”
For peace of mind
13. Microchip and, more importantly, keep it current. A microchip is only as good as the phone number attached to it, and outdated registration is why plenty of chipped cats never make it home. If yours is chipped, confirm the details are up to date; if not, ask your vet at that annual exam. It’s a five-minute task that pays off only once, on the worst possible day, which is exactly when you’ll be grateful.
None of this requires a special occasion. Knock out the two-minute stuff this week, let the bigger habits build from there, and your cat, in the cat way of registering nothing while benefiting from everything, will be better for all of it.
