Safety gates and cats

[growltigersontheloose]

Hi,

Some advice, please, on safety gates. I have an exuberant 9 month old and a cat with three legs. Does anyone know of any safety gates which would allow said cat to fit through the bars (bearing in mind that she is a little rotund). I want her to be able to escape the baby easily and be able to reach her food/water/cat flap which I plan on fencing off in the dining room.

Thanks :-)

Does your cat jump normally despite her missing leg? Mine just jumps onto and over the stairgate so it's never been a problem having it closed. I imagine most will have bars too close together even for a cat, because they need to be secure enough for small children not to get heads or limbs stuck through them.

We have a tripod cat too (who knew there were so many about!)

Unfortunately, any he could get through, DD could too, at least enough to hurt herself. And he isn't much of a jumper.

Our solution is to leave gates open in the areas where DD isn't, IYSWIM, so only close them when we're in an area, so he can wander upstairs when we're down, and basically be prepared to open the gate for him if he is in with us, because he needs to escape crawling clutches.

We had this issue with our cat. She couldn't jump it either and I didn't want to leave something for her to jump off as DS was and is a mega climber!
What I did was to use a pressure gate but site it a few inches above the ground. Too low for DS to climb under but enough that our cat could get through. Real PITA to have to step over it each time but it worked well and we got used to it. Would have been easier with a standard gate as nothing to step over but I didn't want holes in the doorway.

I'm glad it's not just me! She is missing a back leg, and is a bit rubbish so I don't think she would be able to get over one.

I like the idea of using a pressure gate on the dining room. That way she would always have access to food/water/litter tray/cat flap. I think stepping over it would be less of a faff than constantly having to remember to open/close it (or failing to remember, and either the cat not making the tray or the baby eating cat litter!)

Any ideas for the stairs? If she gets trapped on the wrong side, she wouldn't be able to get to the litter tray, and I don't want to have one upstairs (or be bothered having to find her every time I want to go out).

Can't help with the stairs I'm afraid. We put the raised pressure gate across a doorway so DS couldn't get to the stairs at all. Some people never bother with a stair gate at all, really depends if you have an adventurous baby!

We have a wee hop-a-long 3 legger too (and another very old non-jumper). What we did was buy wooden gates, but removed one of the upright bars - wide enough for cats to get through, but not so wide as to allow baby/toddler heads to get stuck.

I took one of dd wooden bricks and put it between the wall and the screw bracket to 'widen the space a little at the wall and first bar so our cat could get through but not dd.

Brilliant idea secret! Will try that one this time when DD gets to crawling.

You can leave the top gate open when you're downstairs so all you need do before going out is open the bottom gate on your way past.

We have Lindam gates, and the cats can squeeze through the side gap. Mine are all fairly svelte though!

Some great ideas there, thank you :-) The bank holiday weekend is going to involve a trip to Kiddicare and lots of amateur diy.

www.amazon.co.uk/Bettacare-Child-and-Pet-Gate/dp/B002DU8QBA/ref=pd_cp_by_1
Gate with cat flap. You can also get pet gates which are not safe to use as stair gates so watch out for the difference if you want it to be multipurpose