Homecoming Dossier for the New Toyger

The goal for week one is a low-stimulation base camp she controls completely, stocked with exactly what she's already used to.

Before she arrives

• Pick her base room — a spare bathroom, bedroom, or office with a door (or a door + baby gate). This is her entire world for the first several days: litter box, food/water, bed or hide, a scratching post, a couple of toys.
• Ask the ranch for her exact current diet before pickup — the specific Nulo recipe (flavor/formula) or raw recipe she's on, so you go home with the same food already in the house. See Food & Coat Health for why matching it matters.
• Start her on pine pellet litter — what she already knows at the ranch. See Litter for low-tracking upgrades once she's settled.
• Get her exact birthdate once the ranch shares it — it'll sharpen the vaccine/vet-visit timing below.
• Book her first local vet visit for the week she arrives. Casa Cruz alters kittens at 12–13 weeks, so spay/neuter is very likely already done — the visit is mainly to get her records transferred and confirm everything looks good after travel.
• Activate the Trupanion 30-day free trial within 24 hours of pickup — it's a hard window, so put a reminder on the calendar for 8/31.

First 24–48 hours

• Let her decompress alone in the base room before any dog contact — not even a look through a gate yet. Travel plus a new home is enough novelty for day one.
• Keep her food identical to what she was just eating. No new food this week, no matter how tempting an upgrade looks.
• Skip bathing unless she's genuinely dirty from travel — if needed, CHI cat shampoo is the ranch's own choice.
• Begin the scent-swap step from the dog introduction plan below — it's the one thing that can start on day one.

Winston mostly ignores other animals, so his track is light-touch throughout. Max is 5, has puppy-level energy, and barks and gets wound up around cats — his track is the one that sets the pace. Every phase below is gated on his behavior, not the calendar: move on only when he's calm, and go back a step without hesitation if he isn't.

Tracking is mostly solved by the box-and-mat combination, not the litter itself — though the substrate you start her on happens to already be a good low-track choice.

Start with what she knows

Casa Cruz raises kittens on pine pellets (the Tractor Supply bags, changed twice a week) — and that's a genuinely good low-tracking substrate on its own merits, not just a breeder default. Pellets don't crumble into fine dust the way clumping clay does, so there's less loose material to stick to paws in the first place. If you'd rather move to a paper or tofu-based litter later, mix it in gradually over 1–2 weeks so she doesn't start avoiding the box over a sudden switch.

Boxes and mats

• Petmate Top Entry Litter Pan Box
  A grated lid filters litter off her paws on the way out — the single biggest lever for cutting tracking at the source.
• Booda Dome Cleanstep Box
  Dome-and-ramp combo; works especially well paired with a textured mat underneath.
• Whisker Litter-Robot 4 Box · premium
  Self-cleaning, ships with its own trap mat. The hands-off option if you'd rather not scoop.
• Smarty Pear Leo's Loo Mat Mat
  Dual-layer rubber with a honeycomb top layer that pulls litter out of paw crevices; the top overall pick across most reviews.
• PetFusion ToughGrip Mat Mat
  Hygienic silicone with a raised outer lip so scattered litter doesn't just slide onto the floor.

With a yard, a tunnel-connected catio is the cleanest way to give her real outdoor access. Sequence this in after the dog introduction has settled — one new stimulus at a time is enough for the first few weeks.

The "raccoon-proof" door, honestly assessed

Claims here vary more than you'd expect. A standard microchip-reading flap (SureFlap Microchip, PetSafe Microchip) reads her chip and is supposed to unlock only for her — but raccoons have been documented pressing their bodies against the sensor or muscling weak latches open on base models. The step up is worth it:

• SureFlap DualScan Recommended
  Pairs independent entry and exit sensors, which is meaningfully harder for a raccoon to accidentally or deliberately trigger than the single-sensor base model.
• Cat Mate Elite RFID
  Marketed specifically as "super selective" for walls and doors — a solid alternative to the SureFlap line.

Building the connection

1. Mount the microchip door in an exterior wall or door.
2. Confirm the flap swings completely freely before attaching anything to it — a stuck or stiff flap is enough to make a cat abandon the door entirely, sometimes for good.
3. Attach a wood-framed tunnel flush against the flap, running to the enclosure.
4. Use hardware cloth for the tunnel and catio walls, not chicken wire — chicken wire flexes enough for small claws and determined wildlife to bend it open.

Catio Spaces' Oasis Tunnel plans (8×8 or 8×10) are a solid DIY starting template. Budget roughly $200–500 for a basic DIY tunnel run in lumber, wire mesh, and hardware; a full custom-built catio enclosure runs higher.

A stable scratching surface she actually prefers over furniture, plus a small rotation of toy types rather than one big pile.

Scratching

Look for a vertical sisal post at least 30" tall with a genuinely heavy base — she needs to get a full-body stretch and lean her weight into it without it tipping. A wobbly post trains cats to look elsewhere (i.e. your furniture). The SmartCat Pioneer Pet Ultimate Scratching Post is a good benchmark for height and stability. Place one right next to whatever piece of furniture you're most protective of — proximity beats a perfect post in the wrong room.

Cat tree

A cat tree does triple duty: scratch surface, vertical territory, and — during the dog-introduction sessions above — her safe elevated retreat the instant Max gets too enthusiastic. That last job is why stability isn't optional here the way it might be in a single-cat home; a tree that wobbles when she leaps up defeats the entire point of it being a safe retreat.

Toygers grow into a big, muscular, athletic cat, not a small one, so it's worth sizing up now rather than buying kitten-scale and replacing it in six months. Look for an assembled weight of 35+ lb, a base at least 24″×18″ (wider matters more than taller for tip resistance), and ideally an anti-tip wall-anchor strap — worth using given an excitable dog may be bumping into the base.

• Frisco 76″ XXL Heavy Duty Cat Tree Top pick
  Comes up best across Bengal-owner reviews specifically — two perches, a condo, and a hammock, with the weight distributed low for real stability under an active, athletic cat.
• Globlazer 70″ / 82″ Heavy Duty Cat Tree
  Engineered-wood posts on a wide, weighted base built for energetic breeds; the 82″ version adds two enclosed condos and 8 sisal-wrapped posts if you want to go bigger.
• FEANDREA Cat Tree
  A solid mid-price option — the hammock is rated to hold a full-grown adult cat's weight without sagging or destabilizing the frame.

Toy rotation

• Cat Amazing Snatch Wand Wand
  Interactive bonding play with you — the category that matters most for a kitten settling into a new home.
• PetSafe Slimcat Puzzle
  An easy starting puzzle feeder — she bats the ball to release kibble or treats.
• Nina Ottosson Buggin' Out Puzzle
  A step up once she's confident with puzzle feeding — 16 hidden treat cups for a slower, more mentally taxing session.
• ZiggyDoo Cat Wheel Ranch pick
  Casa Cruz's own recommendation for calorie burn once she's a bit more grown — code INVITATION-CASACRUZ for priority shipping.

The toyger's entire look rides on a bold, glossy striped coat — so the general "excellent kitten nutrition" playbook matters more visibly on her than on most cats. There's no unique toyger dietary requirement beyond that; she's a large, athletic, muscular shorthair.

What actually drives shine

Expect roughly 4–6 weeks before any nutrition change is visible in the coat — her current fur has to shed out before the new, better-fed coat grows in. Don't judge a food switch earlier than that.

The good news about her current food

If you compare options later

If you do switch, ever, transition over 7 days to avoid GI upset: 25% new / 75% old for two days, 50/50 for two days, 75% new / 25% old for two days, then 100%.

Raw feeding, explained

Casa Cruz's other supported option — recipes provided on request — is a raw diet, sometimes labeled BARF ("biologically appropriate raw food," or "bones and raw food"). The ranch currently sources through Darwin's Pet — the exact flavors/recipes Linda is actually fed are still TBD, to be confirmed once we hear back. Since you asked specifically what raw feeding means and what it takes to do well, here's the real picture, not just the marketing version.

What it actually is: uncooked meat, edible bone, and organ, meant to mirror what a cat would get from eating whole prey. Each part does a specific job — muscle meat provides protein and moisture, bone provides calcium and phosphorus in the right ratio, and organs (especially liver and heart) provide taurine, vitamin A, and other nutrients that are hard to get anywhere else. A raw diet fed this way, in the right proportions, can be nutritionally complete. Fed carelessly, it very often isn't.

What "doing it properly" requires

• A genuinely complete recipe. Commercial raw products are labeled either "complete" (fine as a sole diet) or "complementary" (a topper, not a full diet) — that word matters. A homemade recipe needs the same rigor: correct meat-to-bone-to-organ ratios, not eyeballed.
• Taurine, specifically. Cats can't synthesize taurine themselves and need it daily. Whole-prey-style raw with real organ content (heart, liver) generally covers it. Ground raw is the riskier case — grinding exposes more surface area to air, which oxidizes and degrades taurine, so ground homemade diets often need it supplemented directly.
• A calcium:phosphorus source. Either real edible bone content or a bone-meal/mineral supplement standing in for it — this ratio is especially unforgiving for a still-growing kitten.
• A vitamin/mineral premix, if it's a homemade (not commercially formulated) recipe — whole prey provides a wider nutrient spread than muscle meat and organs alone can replicate.
• Real kitchen discipline. Separate cutting boards and utensils from your own food prep, hand-washing after handling, dedicated fridge/freezer storage, and prompt bowl cleanup after each meal.

Comparing the raw brands

If a switch ever makes sense, worth knowing how the major raw brands actually compare — not just on price, but on documented safety history. This is what a bit of digging turned up, current as of this month:

Pricing is approximate and pulled from different sources in different units (per day vs. per pound), since actual cost depends on portion size and format — treat these as ballpark, not quotes.

If you want to explore it: ask Casa Cruz directly which Darwin's recipes/flavors Linda is actually on, whether they're aware of the current DOJ action, and whether their recipe is formulated to AAFCO standards for growth (kitten) specifically, not just maintenance — a growing kitten has much less margin for error on the calcium:phosphorus ratio than an adult cat. It's also worth a quick check-in with your vet before switching a kitten onto it, precisely because she's still growing. Given she's already doing well on a complete, coat-supportive kibble, there's no need to decide this in week one — it's worth knowing how to do properly, not worth rushing into.

One more option worth knowing about

Salmon oil add-in — a pump or capsule is the single highest-leverage addition if you want more shine than diet alone gives. Since Nulo already includes salmon oil, treat this as a nice-to-have rather than a gap to fill.

Everything above, condensed. Check things off as you go.

A running log of what's been ordered off this list, so it's easy to see what's covered and what's still needed.

• SiiPet LitterLens Ordered
  AI litter box camera for health monitoring — clips onto whatever box she's using and flags changes in urination or stool without needing a whole new box.