Hi r/catcare !

I’m a new cat parent, and had a few questions I was hoping you could all help me with.

We adopted a 1yo short haired cat about 1 week ago. She has had 1 litter of kittens and is now desexed.

We did some reading about how to introduce her to our home and were prepared for a week or two of getting familiar (safe quiet place to hide, toys, scratching post, educating our 3yo human daughter about what is ok and what is not, etc...). Turns out she only needed about 2 hours to adjust :). She’s a very loving animal and we’ve all been getting along very well.

There are 3 things that i am not sure about though:

1. She seems to prefer our couch instead of her scratching post. How do we encourage her to use the scratching post?
2. Our house gets down to 10 celcius at night. how do we make sure she is warm and comfortable overnight. should i run the heater for her in the lounge room (her preferred sleeping space)?
3. she wants to go outside. i am going to organise an extension off one of our windows into an outside enclosure for her, but how do i give her what she wants in the interim? can you walk a cat on a collar/harness?

feel free to give me any general pieces of advice too, im always happy to know more :)

thanks.