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Feline Follies - Cat Behavior
Cat and Baby Safety
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You Have a Cat, Now You're Expecting A Baby
If you already have a cat and you are expecting a baby, there are several things you want to prepare and carry out to make the acceptance of the baby a positive and likely event for your cat. These include:
- BEFORE you bring the baby home, (weeks before), begin to engage in the same care-taking behaviors, with their accompanying smells, you will be doing once the baby has arrived. For example:
- Using a doll, feed, dress, diaper and rock the doll.
- Get the cat used to the smell of baby powder, diapers and ointment.
- Provide the cat copious amounts of catnip, pounce treats, cat nip-filled toys and ping-pong balls as you do this.
- When you bring your baby home, maintain, as best you can, your cat's daily routine.
- Do not banish the cat outside or to the bathroom and set about lavishing praise and attention on the newborn. Your cat will make a negative association with the baby and could set up your child to be disliked by your cat.
- Lavish attention, petting and special food treats for the cat whenever your baby is receiving attention.
- Provide your cat with twice a day “one-on-one anti-anxiety focus sessions,” where you and the cat are alone without any distractions, and you talk and pet the cat in a soothing manner, again with having the cat's favorite toys and providing copious amounts of catnip. These supplemental stress management sessions are an attempt to offset any possible increases in the cat's anxiety as a result of the baby being brought into the home. Other than these special treatment sessions, try to ignore your cat when your baby is being ignored: it is down for a nap or is temporarily out of the home. This helps the cat quickly learn that it will get attention from its people when this new squirmy baby is around getting attention too. The child becomes a cue for what is positive in the cat's life. The cat makes a positive association with the child and wants the child to be around as much as possible.
- Allow the cat to sniff the child but…
- Do not allow the cat to lick or handle the baby. The skin of infants and young children is particularly sensitive to animal saliva, and rashes can develop. This drives pediatricians nuts.
- Never leave the cat and child alone until the child is at least seven (remember our discussion on child development, impulse control and egocentrism, from above?)
- Do not allow the child to play with or handle the cat's toys. Do not let the cat handle the child's toys.
Within sixteen to twenty-four weeks, the owners will be able to assess whether the cat is making sufficient progress in accepting the new baby in the home.
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