Cats and new babies

[Wendalicious]

I am 5 months pregnant and am worried about our cat - I baby him so much and he even sleeps in our bed. Everyone has given me really unhelpful advice and I'm a bit worried that he will get really jealous.

Does anyone have a cat and a baby?

I have 3 cats, all boys, and an 18 month old daughter. They paid her very little attention when she was a newborn. All you really have to do is keep the nursery room door closed and it should be fine. Soon enough, you'll have to worry about what the baby is doing to the poor cats...it happens sooner than you realize. We created a "safe room" out of our laundry room by installing a cat door. That way they can run in there when my daughter wants to "hug" the kitties and she can't get to them. They also spend a lot more time outside now. I swear they know when her bedtime is because they all mysteriously show up to come inside.

I have a cat and a little boy. Our cat has always been quite spoiled and fussed over, so I was worried how she would react when our son was born.

She has been great with him. I had a cat net for my son's cot when he was a baby but I needn't have bothered as our cat never went anywhere near it.
I think she felt left out when he was smaller as I had nowhere near as much time to fuss over her, but now my son is older I have more time to play with her and give her more attention.
The most wonderful thing is that my son really loves her and I know that she loves him.
I would also recommend Feliway. It is very good for de-stressing cats.
My advice is not to worry too much about your cat. They do adjust to a new baby eventually and they are great pets for little ones.

I second Feliway, and MAQ have recently had very similar issues with our cat who became very withdrawn and seemed to start self-harming - pulling out clumps of fur and scratching away skin to leave bleeding sores, becoming very clingy and noisy and refusing to leave the kitchen. All this seemed to coincide with the first few months of my pregnancy. I'm now 23 weeks, she seems to have become happy with having me around again.

She's a bit of a scratcher, not good with new people, we took her to a vets who was finally able to treat her under sedation and clip and clean the wounds. Once she forgave us for taking her to the vets she has gone back to her normal self, hiding in different places around the house and making nests when clothes etc are left where she can get to them. We're treating her for fleas with a spot on and will keep that up.

We're now having the nursery refurbished & decorated and she's very curious about what's going in there as it was a room she used: we've let her mark (as if we clean it up, she'll just do it again) and once it's finished and the plugs are in we'll put a feliway diffuser on. We're also ordering some spare for when we get the baby furniture etc and bring it home. Fingers crossed: lots of these posts are encouraging!

I have 2 cats and 2 DC. One cat loved sleeping in the moses basket pre birth, as soon as the baby arrived he was not interested and never tried to sleep in there again.

The other cat (a mummy's boy) tends to bite my DH a lot so I was a bit worried, however he has also been fine. He used to try and curl up on my bump so I think he bonded with the baby in some odd way. Infact he tried (almost quite successfully) to enter the field of action during my HB, and when I mean the field of action, I literally mean it!! Gross!

When I was co sleeping the cats never tried to come in the bedroom or on the bed, when DS moved into his own room, the cats resumed their not so rightful place on the bed, occasionally biting my DH.

They do scratch more than they used to, occasionally wee on the door mat and spend more time outside, but they get barely any attention and when they do it's usually the DC trying to 'cuddle' them. I may look into the feliway, creating a safe place for them is a great idea too, especially if you have a lot of visitors. I saw something that said a little cat bed high up is a good idea.

Good luck!

My first cat was very spoiled, and would throw himself at me if i didn't pick him up, so I did have concerns tbh

However he adored the bump and would drape himself over me, although did not take the bump kicks kindly!

When I bf he would wheedle onto my lap and often in between me and ds1

He ignored ds1 and subsequently dd and ds2, and it was not until ds2 was about four that the cat acknowledged any of the children really, although he would sit behind them on their chairs at meal times.

Our other cat was not a lap cat at all, but loved to get into the moses basket/cot and would sleep on their feet, ime cats know better than to approach the grabby end of a baby.

Our cats have an 'open door' policy in the house. We tried shutting them out of the bedroom when DS arrived, but they scratched the landing carpet up, plus we didn't think it fair to keep them out. So we bought a cat net for the Moses basket and everyone was happy.

Two toilet incidents in two days, and both in front of me when I was sitting on the sofa bfing DS.

This despite deliberate cuddles and fussing from me. She seems to just object to me holding him, full stop.

I'm buying the Feliway diffuser tomorrow. If that doesn't work she's definitely going to my mum and dad's on a permanent holiday.

Hi MAQ

I totally feel your pain! Try Bach's Remedy in liquid form. Take the beaker and put one good fill into her water bowl. My cat was so mellow after a couple of days that the world could have ended and she wouldn't have cared.

Very best of luck!

:( MadAbout

We have two spoilt, indoor cats, an 11wo baby and an open plan flat. We were pretty worried about how it would go.

Our vet recommended taking some baby smelling items home in advance of the baby to get them used to his smell. She also suggested that when we brought home DS we do it only as us (no big welcome committee) and to put baby (in his maxi cosi) on the floor for the cats to investigate, supervised obviously.

So far DS and the cats seem to be getting on ok. Our male has got into his Amby hammock a couple of times but only when empty, and our female was sleeping in DS's transat today. The male still sleeps on the bed on DHs legs as he always had (we don't regularly co-sleep).

They've found some new habits (sitting next to us instead of on us when we're holding/feeding DS) but they also climb their cat tree to get away from him when he's being shouty. We do try to find some time each day to play with and fuss each cat without DS.

All in all they seem to be rubbing along alright but I'm waiting to see how they react once DS becomes mobile

Ok will try Bach's and see if it has any effect.

Thanks, Darling!

A very interesting thread.

I have 2 spoilt girl cats and DC1 due in March. My 10 year old has lived with children before I got her so I'm not worried about her, when I got her 4 years ago I witnessed her ignore the 3 year old who was trying to pick her up by her tail. My 3 year old though was a very timid cat when I got her and was frightened of me for a long time (She loves the OH and thinks she owns him). She bites and scratches me and the other cat but never the OH so I'm worried about how she'll be when baby comes. They both pretty much stay out of all things baby with exception of the crib in the living room but I think that is mainly because I moved their scratching post to put it there.

Some very reassuring stories. I'm hoping all goes well here too :)

She has just peed all over a pile of new baby toys

Gaaaaahhhh

The rescue remedy had better work!

We have two cats: one stays as far away from Toddler as possible and has set up a nice little spot in the farthest corner of the attic for herself. The other (castrated tomcat) is very goodnatured about being petted and chased around the house. He will move when LO gets too excited, but there hasn't been any scratching, he just quietly walks away when he is not enjoying it anymore.

That said, a friend of ours had to move their cats to a different home because they were so jealous and couldn't be trusted around baby.

My advice is to keep a very close eye on things in the first few days and see how your cats behave. I think it will help to give you cats a 'safe area' where baby/toddler cannot reach and where they can retreat in peace.

Apparently it also helps to give the cats a blanket with baby's smell so they can get used to her before she arrives.

Other than that, I think you just need to keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best. :(

Not sure if this will help.
We had a kitten who regulaurly used our room as a toilet.
I spoke to the vet who said that once a cat has toileted it leaves a scent which it will use a marker. The cat will then toilet there whenever it feels a bit stressed etc. She recommended surgical spirit to clean any hard surfaces and BIOLOGICAL washing powder for soft/linens. It worked for us with the use of Feliway as well.
The other thing the vet said was to make sure all doors are kept closed to the rooms which the cat liked to toilet in. A couple of weeks and poo no more in my house.

My older cats all used to make sure when I was feeding any of the babies to get up on my lap and squash up as much as they could. Lucky I have wide thighs
I used to let my boy cat sleep at the bottom of the moses as he seemed to make himself as small as he could just to fit around my dds feet. Hard job as the cat was huge and DD was long.

We had two cats when we had DD. They were both fine, just used to peer in her moses basket. They used to try and sleep in her pram but not when she was in there! We have always, and still do, kept her bedroom door shut so that is one room in the house that they are not allowed-or not allowed unsupervised anyway or at night time.

We had many people assuming we would get rid of them because we were having a baby...erm, no, they are part of our family too!

The biggest problem we had is that another cat decided to move into our house when DD was about 6 months old and he loves her so much and vice versa that we have kept him (or rather not had any choice in the matter as he just bashes his way in if we try to lock the cat flap to keep him out). However, of all of them he is the most gentle cat we have and least likely to scratch anyone, especially not DD. I hasten to add the others never scratched her when she was a baby, its only since she been 3+ and they think of her as a person instead of a baby that they have started getting grumpy if she plays with them when they are not in the mood.