Childminder's cats

[bitzermaloney]

My childminder has a couple of cats, which has not bothered me till today, when a friend seemed really surprised that I was not worried about it. She said she would never let her ds (same age as mine - 9 months) - go to a childminder with a cat, as it is impossible to supervise 100 per cent and she knew of children being scratched in the eye etc.
What do you think? I have 2 dogs and though I never leave them alone with ds I am wondering if perhaps this has clouded my judgement when leaving him with someone else who has animals. Her cats seem very friendly and used to the children. But I know they are still unpredictable animals...
My childminder is fab and loves ds, and he loves her. I think she is very capable. But what level of supervision re the cats should I be expecting if I discuss this with her?

Personally I think you are worrying about nothing, especially if you have pets yourself. There's no reason to think that her standards with regard to pets is any different from yours really.

Hi

I have a cat and have only ever had one parent who showed concern. This is for her baby who was only born in Feb and I started about a month ago so you can understand, first baby, very young, of course I understand mum worrying. Luckily she seemed reassured when I told her what our cat is like - basically he likes to be out of the way and spends the days in our bedroom or outside, only rushing through to eat/go out to toilet etc. I told mum that when baby naps in travel cot upstairs, the bedroom door will be shut and that I'm always around and would never leave baby on her own. The only problem I've had with my cat is that when kids see him for a split second, sometimes they ask if they can see him to cuddle him as they hardly ever see him,

I can understand why you'd be concerned but I think it all depends on the set up and what the cats are like around children. Speak to the CM if you're concerned. I always welcome parents coming to chat about concerns!

i'm really not very into cats and dogs and this is the sort of thing that might bother me if I used a childminder...

I started a thread very similar about 3 months ago. My cm had a cat, and whilst it was lovely, I was nervous that a crawling dd could push even the best behaved cat too far. I wondered whether she would be happy to agree that she would always be in room with dd if cat was there. Views on here were mixed - cat lovers felt I was unreasonable, cat haters thought I was quite fair!

What I did was to talk to my cm - just said look, I'm probably being mad, know cat is lovely etc etc, but it makes me twitchy - what can we do? I just felt I should tell her how I felt, and we could go from there on what was/wasn't possible for her.
She immeadiately said she never had the cat in with dd unless she (c/m)was in the room - rest of the time cat was locked in her room - poor old cat! Think she reinstated the rule more firmly after I'd said something.

Anyway, roll on a month or two, and cm (now heavily pregnant) got twitchy about cat being round HER newly arriving baby (plus other than my two who both LOVED her cat) her other mindees didn't like cat. So cat was to be rehomed. Day before rehoming, cat scratched cm's daughter's face. Not badly, but enough to shake cm & daughter up.

Point of that rather long & tedious post?!
Talk to your cm - does she leave cats alone with your ds? What does she do to prevent accidents (even the nicest cat resents having it's tail pulled 1000 times by a baby!)

I have cats, and I'm acutely aware that cats have the potential to scratch a child. Mine never have, but it doesn't mean that I would trust them implicitly. One of ours does like to be around when the children are here, but is never allowed in the room if children are sleeping.

I supervise small children when they want to pet them, and would hope that it helps them to learn how to care for animals appropriately.

Does your childminder have any written policies? Many of us do, and would include something about pets we own.

If you feel nervous about broaching the subject with your CM, could you engineer a discussion with her regarding how you would supervise your own dogs with the baby, and she might then discuss how she deals with her cats?

thanks for all the responses - they've helped me think it through. I will have a chat with her about it