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Life time cat owner here.
I highly suggest you get one more cat for him to play with. 2 cats is the magic number and any more than that is just asking for trouble (they tend to form hierarchies among each other). Don't rush affection too much. A way to get a cat to trust you is by slowly closing and opening your eyes at them, it's essentially "I trust you" in cat language by showing vulnerability towards them. Another way is to make yourself appear as small as possible (like crouching) and only extending one finger towards them to let them smell it as opposed to your entire hand. I suggest keeping any wires off the floor if possible, same with the curtains to a certain extent but it's a shot in the dark for me as my family never found/bothered to find a way to circumvent curtain damage. As for the pee, he might have a hard time trying to find the litter box and resorts to peeing in some secluded corner so I suggest you check to see if you smell something odd in weird places. Their bowl type and placement does matter, you can either get one like picrel or an automatic cat feeder which has a similar design and prevents overeating. For the food and water bowl placements, keep them away from each other, having them at opposite ends of the same room might work if your rooms are big enough but to play it safe keep them in different rooms if you can, definitely get a cat fountain for their water as they hate drinking stagnant water since it breeds bacteria, trust me they would rather drink from some random rain puddle than a simple bowl of water. I suggest getting a roofed litter box similar to picrel 2 (I actually used to have this exact one years ago), keep in mind you have to be gentle with the detachable top part as the latches on those things break easily if you're not careful (I've gone through like 5 litter boxes similar to picrel 2 from the time spam of mid 2020 up until now). Something my family doesn't do that I would suggest doing is putting an air filter next to the litter box to keep the smell down, they obviously cover their poop and pee but sometimes they take their sweet time doing it and it can easily overwhelm a room, a non-neutered male cat's pee is ESPECIALLY pungent. The cat litter dirt also does matter but it's not super impactful, avoid getting any type of scented cat litter (it bothers their noses) and light weight cat litter (it leaves dust EVERYWHERE, picrel 3).
<reddit. Anything beyond this point is something I am not 100% familiar with as I only do the chores of feeding them, keeping their bowls clean, and cleaning their litter. This is the harder part, thoroughly research everything I say after this arrow.
There are certain plants that are dangerous to cats (I don't remember which ones but any of them will likely either completely paralyze them or kill them outright) so get rid of them if you have any of them in your house, as well as certain people foods that are poisonous to cats as well so be sure to avoid dropping any of your food on the floor to prevent them eating something dangerous or developing an appetite for people food over cat food. There are certain brands that are healthier than others when it comes to kibble, soft food, treats, dental treats, etc. I myself am not familiar with any of those brands at all. Note that a primarily soft food diet is much healthier than a kibble diet because of the soft food's moisture preventing dehydration, it gets expensive VERY fast so you may have to mix it in with kibble. I myself am very conflicted on this matter since I have no idea what would be more cost effective and healthy between soft food only and a soft food/kibble mix diet, this stuff gets very expensive very fast so don't lose track of how much money you're spending ever.
>reddit.
That's about all I've got to say, prepare your wallet and you better hope you're not struggling financially because taking care of an animal is hard.
