Parents with cats

[bananapancake0]

Anyone else's cat hate their baby/child?
She usually runs off but on the off occasion my daughter touches her she always swipes for her 🤦🏻‍♀️. Any advice greatly received as she's a naughty tortie 🙈

Get rid of the cat.
Your baby is more important.

@PeopleBakwas obviously not.

We had one cat that would scratch when DD1 was small and DD soon learn’t to leave her alone.
Does the cat have places to escape to?

Train your DD to leave the cat alone. It's only fair on both of them. If cat doesn't want to be touched the only thing she can do is leg it or swipe.

@MrsPnut yeah she does have other places to run off to, she's just always been feisty. My daughter is only 13 months so unfortunately hasn't learnt yet

What useless advice! I don’t understand why people bother even commenting.

Obviously don’t leave the baby and cat alone together. Teach the baby to look and not touch.
Buy a high cat seat so the cat has places to go and escape the baby.

Just saw a great book in Waterstones for babies - it’s a board book with pictures about understanding cats - with lovely big pictures and short sentences like wants his own discs or wants a cuddle etc for situations like this.

Get a felaway to keep the cat calm and ensure the cat doesn’t feel threatened by the baby by having its own space.

As my children have got older the cats adore them - they now sleep on my sons bed. Initially were petrified of the noisy babies!

Space not discs!

@TeddyTonks @Flackattack thankyou! X

No problem- with my DC I just started by modelling gentle interactions if the cat is able to tolerate that, and then as they get older encourage them to recognise the cats behaviour and react accordingly.

Though if your cat is really not a fan, it's just about giving her escape routes and teaching DD to leave alone.

When my first daughter was very young we still had two cats, one gentle one and one mean one. She soon learnt to only touch the gentle one! She got minor scratches a couple of times and we washed it out well with soap and water. We still modeled stroking not grabbing and pulling with the gentle cat and told her not to approach when they're eating.

My cat was always cautious of our dd but wanted to be close, so very different personality to yours. Went dd was a baby and toddler (and now she is 3) he would just enforce his boundaries with a gentle swipe or bite. She learned very quickly not to bug him. We would point out his swishing tail and wild eyes as she got older so she understood the signs of him getting grumpy so she is now really good at backing off.

My cat has never scratched my kids, she shows no interest in them and vice versa