Cat passable baby gates

[AllTheLaundry]

So we have 2 cats and a soon-to-be-crawler. One cat is a climber & can jump high. The other is large and can't jump well at all, so he won't be able to jump over a standard baby gate, especially on the stairs. The one who can't jump is also not smart and can't open doors himself, so we will need something super simple to work.

They will need access upstairs and downstairs for food & and their litter trays (may house configuration doesn't allow this to change) so I need to find baby gates to keep my child safe & my cats fed & toileted.

If anyone can recommend tried and tested gates, please share links with me! Many thanks & here's my cat tax

No idea about gates, but surely if you were a true cat slave you employ a member staff to open and close the gate as they require ensuring to inconvenience to their lives

Something like this maybe?

Honestly, I'd just try standard gates first. All my cats including the very elderly one and my late lamented 9kg bruiser have been totally able to jump onto the top of the gate and then over. Sometimes the current big boy just reaches up with his front paws and pops up

Could your cats manage if you put a dining chair either side of the safety gate as a step for them to use?

Your other option would be if you could remove a bar/bars from the gate to leave enough space for your cats to get through, which would still be too narrow for a child to go through, but you'd need to find a way of removing the bars that didn't leave any sharp edges that might hurt your baby.

Standard gate, just installed with enough room for it to go underneath.

My cats used to be able to squeeze themselves round the side of the stargates.

From experience, I don't recommend this if the gate has a bottom bar - we tried this (our gate was to keep the dog away from the cats' litter as he liked to eat it) and we kept tripping over the bottom bar when we wanted to go through ourselves.

We had one with a pet door. Bought it from Target in the US but I’m sure they exist here. The only thing is that a younger toddler can crawl through it, so it was pretty pointless 😂

I know I saw some on websites earlier this week (maybe zoo plus) that were marketed for dog owners with cat doors in them for the moggie to make an escape.

I should add that we lived in a flat and the gate was to try to give the cat a toddler free safe space, if it was actually for stairs then I imagine that the pet door ones would be really dangerous.

Gorgeous cats.
I think the easiest thing would just be to send them to live with me

It needs to be one without the bottom bar, I would say.

I had a retractable gate thinking I could just cut a hole in it for the cat if needed. In the event he just used to smoosh himself under it so I never did that, but I can't see why it wouldn't work.

www.argos.co.uk/product/7159703

All of our cats fit completely find to go through these bars
They don't have to jump over it

Is that a Somali and Maine Coon misses point of thread

With that one, there's no bottom bar so it could also be fixed with room for the cats to pass underneath. Only downside is that it's a screw in one.

Beautiful cats!
Are you saying food is downstairs and little upstairs? And there is no way to have both down stairs? Or that the cats are fed separately and none jumping cat could have everything downstairs?
My cat who couldn't jump just got confined to downstairs for a few years. There was no way he'd have got his slim 7kg through the bars, and I'd be reluctant to put a decent cats sized hole in a safety gate, because its approaching small human sized (and both mine were crawling by 5 months and under 7kg).

So you've all tapped into the debate we're having which is interesting in itself.

Do we go with normal gates & the non-jumping cat will surprise us (unlikely, he has bad knees), do we raise a normal one but risk tripping over the bottom bar ourselves (both clumsy so not sure about this for the stairs, might work for the kitchen), could the non-jumping, not-smart cat work a catflap (he uses his face if a normal door is ajar and it swings the right way for his journey, but if not, he closes the door with his face then complains LOUDLY till either we or the other cat open said door for him...).

Chairs sound good for the cats going to/from the kitchen, but also as a climbing frame for a more mobile child & doesn't help with the stairs.

Gah.

We bought wooden baby gates which DH then adjusted to create a little cat door/gap - he cut the last bar about 1/3 of the way up, then attached it horizontally so there's a little rectangle of space at the bottom corner, about the size of a cat flap (I hope I've described that OK!). It works a treat!

What’s wrong with the no bottom bar solution?

@WeCome1 because I've not come across any without bars. Do you happen to have a link to one please?

We put some padding (pipe lagging, I think) on the top of the gate at the bottom of the stairs to give more grip for our cat jumping up and over.

We installed the gate to the kitchen with a gap below it so the cat could get through - it had a bar at the bottom, but we (the humans) got used to it. The gate at the top of the stairs also had a gap below it, but with no bar - unfortunately I can’t remember the brand!

Baby Dan adjustable width don't have bars at the bottom