Recently I was asked to make post surgery clothes for (female) kittens from the shelter I often volunteer at. These kittens are being spayed and they need to wear something that prevent them from removing the stitches after the procedure. I don’t have many experiences with kittens so at first I thought that the shelter was asking me to make cone collar. Then I learned that wearing cones is very uncomfortable for kittens, so what they want is special clothing.
After making some research (googling of course) to find out what these clothes look like, I began to draft a pattern. I asked for Fuwawa’s help in the muslin stage since there is no kittens on hand.
The muslin fits Fuwawa well! On the first one (grey), I was considering using velcro for the closure, the white one is using snap on buttons tape for closure. The next step is to draft a smaller ones for the kittens. I decided to use zipper since it is cheaper than snap on buttons tape. Here’s the first versions:
Unfortunately the tail hole is too small! But look at the cute kitten’s butt!
For my second version I made the clothes longer and eliminated some part around the back legs/tail.
Now they fit well!
I’m very happy seeing that the clothes fit the kittens quite well. The fabric is cotton jersey in animal stripes pattern that I think fit them well since they are tiny tigers!
If you’re in Japan and would like to adopt these kittens (or cats and dogs), please contact Animal Refuge Kansai (ARK) here.
*cat photos by Animal Refuge Kansai