Cats and new baby...

[cara1]

I think a lot of it depends on the personality of your cats. We have two cats, and I was very nervous at first, too. They sleep with us every night. The night we brought DS home, he was in a bassinnet next to the bed. We lined it with tin foil. Buddy tried to jump in once when he saw the bassinnet move. I freaked out, we kicked the cats out of the room, and that was the beginning of the worse night of my life. We shut the door, and all night long, the two cats were crying to come back in. The crib tent wouldn't fit over the bassinnet, so the next night, we put laundry baskets over DS!!! After about a week of this, I realized that the cats didn't want much to do with him. When he cries, they leave the room. After time, Pumpkin does approach him and sniff him (if I'm around to protect her), but Buddy is too skittish.

They have since never tried to get in the crib, changing table, stroller, swing, or anything else. Now that DS is crawling and getting into their food bowls we have other things to deal with. The cats have been great though; they even let DS share their toys.

In sum, do what you think you have to do. But we've done pretty much nothing. Our cats are not declawed, and my mom thinks I'm nuts, but we're all doing just fine. :)

[jojo2324]

Yeah, how do you deal with food dishes? DS is only 4 months, so we have a few more months (we hope...he's enough of a handful now!) before he's crawling. We don't really have a separate room where we can put their dishes and we just have food in them all day long; they aren't fed at certain times. I guess we could try that, but I think there will be a whole lotta noise coming out of them.

[Zansu]

We have four cats, and they all sleep on the bed. DS slept in a co-sleeper for his first four months, and I never found a cat in it, with or without the baby after the most curious of the males jumped in and experienced the dreaded tape-and-paper trap.

I was downstairs, heard a yowl and a thump, and looked up to see the cat tearing down the stairs with several sheet of paper stuck to him. He hit the wall on the landing, shook loose of all but one sheet of paper, and then tore down the rest of the stairs, ridding himself of the final piece of paper by shooting through the cat door. It took a month for him to even sleep on my/DS's side of the bed, and he never went near the CS again.

[twins r fun]

Thanks for the laugh! I can just picture a frantic cat trying to get paper off him!

Nicole

[egoldber]

It depends on your style, but we put the cats food and water dishes on the counter. If you have a spare bathroom, could you put the cats dishes on the counter in the bathroom.

The real problem is the dog. To be honest, she (the dog, not Sarah) goes without water while Sarah is up. I put the water dish down (the dog and cats share a water dish) when Sarah is asleep. And the dog has free access to water at night while she sleeps in our bedroom (the dog, not Sarah, very confusing!).

[mama2be]

I have two rescue kitties (never thought I'd have a cat and now I wouldn't take a billion dollars for either:))...I say this just becasue you would assume I am educated about cats, and I know nothing about them...I have so many questions to ask a "cat person" one day...

But we did put a small cat door up on a door that leads to a little crawl space off of our bonus room (a room above the garage), this couls also work in a small closet (that didn't house clothes or something that woud absorb odor). In there we have their litter box2, food x2 and water, they also have two "bankies" if they want a break from all of us. This is the best thing. Cost hardly anything, dogs nor baby will beable to get into food or litter, and smells are not an issue.

I have not worried about them in the nursery, they both wander in it when we are decorating and stuff...they love it, but I have not feared any of that, or feared it with my dogs either (3 retrievers)...

[Zephyr1]

Your screen door sounds like a good idea. I've also heard of people installing "Dutch" doors, where the top and bottom can be opened and closed separately. When the baby's sleeping, you could close the bottom, and just crack the top slightly so you can see and hear what's going on in the room. Maybe you could even do a sort of screened "Dutch" door, where the top is a screen and not solid. That would keep your cat out, unless it knows how to open doors!

We have two Siamese cats, a brother and sister from the same litter. I was somewhat concerned about them jumping into the crib while DS slept, so we bought one of those tents and used it until he was a year old. We never had to worry, though. One look at the squalling little bundle we brought home from the hospital was enough to keep both of them away - for two and a half years and counting! They still stay at least a foot away from him, but do "hang out" in DS's room while he's playing. Once or twice our male jumped into the crib, more out of curiousity than anything else, but DS wasn't in it either time. Our sweet female became "babysitter" kitty, sitting next to the bassinet, the crib, and now the bed as DS sleeps - wonderfully maternal! The male, on the other hand, is still slightly jealous of DS. He finally extended diplomatic relations to DS only just a year ago or so!

Even though DH and I are slightly allergic to cats, we've seemed to develop immunity to ours. DS shows no signs yet. I didn't want to keep the cats out of the nursery just for that reason; I wanted DS to develop resistance. I suppose it would be an issue if the cats were sleeping on his bed or something, but that just hasn't happened. I guess the best thing to do is to just wait and see what happens. If we had had any problems, we were prepared to install the double door in DS's room, but it just hasn't been necessary. Good luck!

[joodyjr]

I have a screen door on our baby's room. I got the idea from my brother who did the same thing. We had 3 now 2 cats. We put the screen on when my DS was born 2 years ago. I didn't want to have to close the solid door and A. have the room get too warm, or cold, and B. I wanted to be able to check on him w/out opening and closing the door all the time. I was more concerned about the cat laying on him as well as getting hair all over the place. DD is now 5 weeks old, we hardly ever close the screen now, since they couldn't care less about this baby. It looks fine, its just a regular screen and my husband took a wooden alphabet block and screwed it on for the handle, which matches the bedrooms alphabet walpaper and border. The door has a wooden frame all the way around and a bar in the middle. If I'd had the energy, I could have stained it to match the woodwork. But I'm just not that concerned about the aesthetics of the door as it's functionality. It does come in handy keeping the cats out when they keep getting into the diaper packages. My cats will eat anything! I honestly recommend that if you're concerned about your cats, and being the curious creatures that they are, you probably should be concerned. Cats don't intend to hurt babies, but anything soft and warm invites them to curl up on/next to. My 2 year old has pretty much cured our cats of going near the kids.

[Ninadse1]

I just wanted to mention for those people who have the option, the mesh tent has been great for us. We have two nosey but adorable cats, and when we were setting up Alex's nursery, we bought two mesh tents - one for the Pack n Play, and one for the crib. Alex slept next to us on our bedroom in the PnP bassinett for the first two and 1/2 months, and has been sleeping in his crib since then.

The mesh tents attach to the crib with velcro closures, and we got one with plastic "c" clips for the PnP. The tent has a zipper front that can be put down when you place the baby in the crib, and zipped up afterwards.

Our cats naturally had to test the tent out, and both of them jumped on it when we first installed it. The tent didn't flinch, and we have two enormous Norwegian Forest Cats, the largest of which weighs over 20 lbs.

We got our tents at BRU. The nicest thing about them is that when the baby's ready to deal wtih the cats mano-a-mano, the tent takes about two minutes to remove from the crib and you can use it as a play tent at the park or beach!

Nina
and Alex, 4/07/02

[pshontz]

We installed a $19 wooden screen door -- but left the regular door on the nursery as well. So we leave the regular door open a crack at night so we can see it, but the screen door keeps the cats out. Not that they really want in ... they have not ever tried to get into the crib or shown that much interest in baby yet! In fact she kind of startles them. :-) I painted the screen door white and then added some decorative designs so it matches the nursery decor. It's worked very well. I imagine it might be helpful once baby starts crawling/walking to keep her inside her room (as a safety gate), too.

Oh, we had bought a crib tent but then discovered that it ties down onto the crib, so what a pain that would be when you change sheets! So we never used it.

But we haven't solved the food dishes & litter box problem yet, as she isn't moving around yet.

Priscilla
Mom to Laura 09/14/02