To be thinking of rehoming our cat?

[Mozfan]

My DS is 10 and a half months old.
He’s obsessed with our cat and when she’s in the room he gets so excited. He is always grabbing at her and patting her head really hard. He’s occasionally grabbed her and pulled out lots of fur.
We keep telling him no and separating them, but now he’s crawling and cruising the furniture he’s off again as soon as our backs are turned.
This evening he was crawling around crashing her in the living room giggling as she ran away from his advances each time.
She got herself behind the baby gate and hissed at him and showed her claws.

I’m really worried that he’s going to push it too far and she’ll bite or scratch him. I’m especially concerned in case she scratches his face and particularly eyes of course. She’s also an outdoor cat who hunts so she’ll have bacteria in her claws.

Does anyone have any ideas apart from rehoming her?

Apart from saying no and removing him from her, DS obviously doesn’t understand properly yet.

*chasing, not crashing

You need to keep them separate unless completely supervised. Put all the things the cat needs, bed, food, water and litter tray somewhere that your son doesn't get to. When supervising, encourage your son to be gentle.

It will get easier.

Yup he will probably get scratched eventually and if he's old enough to associate that with what he's done wrong he will stop tormenting the cat.
I think we had a brief phase of this, I'm lucky my cat is very tolerant on the whole and my kids learned to be gentle quickly. You have to be really on it in terms of preventing the baby getting the cat.
As for rehoming and bacteria in claws they're both huge overreactions.

Cats are quick of they want to be. DS is 9 months but crawling fast, climbing and cruising. He is obsessed with our cat who is nearly ten and a bit grumpy. Initially I had the same concerns and he hissed at DS a couple of times, he now alternates between letting himself be essentially wrestled by a baby and keeping to high surfaces. We got him a large cat tower thing with platforms which is his safe space. Cat seems to have worked out baby is essentially a harmless hairless kitten who tries to steal his toys, cat now responds by trying to steal baby toys. You do need to keep an eye on your DC and move them away from the cat of they are being rough. Also give the cat lots of strokes, praise and treats when they have tolerated the heavy handedness of a nearly toddler. This seems to be especially effective with ours.

We have stair gates separating our toddler and cat nearly all of the time. It will get easier as your dc gets older and understands better.

Keep them apart until the understanding is there, or re-home the cat if you believe someone else can give it a happier life.

It'll pass eventually. In the meantime just supervise closely, separate them when you can't supervise and keep reinforcing that he should be gentle (which he will come to understand). Chances are it won't always work and there may be a scratch or two but it's not worth rehoming over. Most toddlers I know who live with cats have been scratched and the only consequence is they start to be more careful around the cat.

Your cat will learn to stay away from your baby. The cat (he/she) will learn to stay up high when baby is about. Also your baby wont be a baby long and very quickly will learn to be gentle with cat (if taught and told off for being rpugh). A year from now the situation will be very different. Dont sress/rehome.

He is always grabbing at her and patting her head really hard. He’s occasionally grabbed her and pulled out lots of fur.
Your poor little cat Please make him stop tormenting her and causing her pain by having her fur pulled out. It’s never too early to teach children to be kind to animals. If you can’t manage that then please separate them, or rehome her to a nicer place.

It will get better, too many cats get rejected and put in to shelters once a baby comes along. We adopted one who got given away at the age of nine . Your cat will be much happier with you, even whilst avoiding the baby.
It’s also lovely for a child to grow up and respect animals and understand the commitment it takes to have a pet.

As for bacteria, you don’t want to know what toddlers ingest and survive

You need to keep them separate. It’s that simple.

Please make him stop tormenting her and causing her pain by having her fur pulled out. It’s never too early to teach children to be kind to animals.

He's 10 months old. OP can stop him hurting the cat by intervening/keeping them separate, but he doesn't understand 'be kind to animals' or even that the cat isn't just a kind of mobile cuddly toy and it's not developmentally appropriate to expect him to.

Children change lots and quickly, it’d be a shame to get rid of your cat for a short baby phase. You need to keep them separate though, we have 3 cats and 2 kids and they never touched cats unless I was holding them as babies. Now age 2 and 4 the kids and cats mostly ignore each other apart from the odd stroke and everyone is happy.

Your cat needs a high place like a cat run on the wall or tall cat tree to retreat too. You also need to supervise them more closely. Don't rehome the cat, that would be massively unfair.

Would it be better to give him
Zero reaction to chasing the cat and just do the remove him and distract ease he may do in part just because you react strongly to it?

Yes to giving the cat lots of out of reach spaces to be able to move around rooms where your son can't get him. DCat will get better at avoiding your son.

Sounds like a patient cat and you have stair gates so options for withdrawal. I would give it 6 months and regularly show DC how to stroke gently. Things should get easier.

YY to separating them for now and giving the cat somewhere high like a cat tree to get away. Zooplus has some very reasonable tall cat trees.

Don't leave them together unsupervised at all.

Keep it proactive and use positive language where possible - obviously if he is hurting her then you say "no" but otherwise, try to get in first every time, modelling gentle stroking and say "gently" or "kind hands".

To be fair, if you were rehoming anyone it would be your ds, who is not fitting in with your house rules!
Cat will learn to chill or run. Dd was a cat grabber: my cat learned quickly to get out of her way. By the time dd was about 14 months ish, they had clearly declared a truce and cat then got stroked, grabbed, pushed about in buggies etc quite willingly.
Don't rehome the cat, unless you don't want it anyway.

Your cat has done all the right things and has not hurt him, yet you are considering rehoming him?

Keep them separate, it's not hard.

People who rehome pets because they have kids are top of my shitlist. Just why.

Before you had the child, you should have thought of this. You could have made the home safe, got advice, got the cat used to kids and so on.

But no. The cat is inconvenient now so off it fucks to a shelter to be put down or to live its life in a cage.

You're blaming the cat because you're not properly monitoring your baby? Really? And your solution is to dump your cat and tear her away from her home due to NO fault of her own.

Shame on you.

It's your responsibility to separate cat and child until they can coexist safely.

My mums cats are quite nervy cats anyway. When the grandkids were around the babies used to tug on their tails. We used to guide the children's hand over the cat when they were touching them to encourage them to be nicer. When they grabbed the tail we just said no and moved the hand back up to the cats head. Obviously it wasn't an over night thing but they learnt to stroke the cat nicely and not to scare the cat.

Agree you need to separate them. A cat trees in the living room so the cat can make a quick dart away from your DS if necessary, baby gates with a cat flap if your cat isn’t the best at navigating over them and ensure their bed, litter tray and food (obviously food and litter can’t be near each other) are somewhere that your DS can’t access. Give your cat lots of attention once your DS is asleep. Persist with telling him to be gentle and whilst he’s too young now it will sink in eventually. Distract with a toy or activity whenever he tries to chase her. It took until DD was about 2 for the cat to fully accept her but now they’re the best of friends! It’s a complete overreaction to think about rehoming the poor cat for totally normal feline behaviour.

10 months isn't too young to learn by example. You need to consistently and repeatedly show how to stroke the cat gently and not leave them unsupervised. Cat will quickly learn to scarper when DS comes around if they need to.

Just make sure there are places where she can get up out of his way. Cat trees are the best if they are safely anchored to the floor. Or upstairs with a baby gate to stop him following her.