Cat, baby, sleep. Safety?

March 20, 2006 4:43 PM

My wife and I will have our first kid in June. Our cat is a sweet, lovable, completely insane little pain-in-the-butt. He loves snuggling up to both of us, especially when my wife naps, but he's not allowed to sleep with us. But now we have to think about Baby Kickstart.

I know the cat will want to sleep with the baby, and we're not too comfortable with that. We're concerned about him sleeping on top of him/her or scratching. At night the baby's bedroom door will be closed to keep him out, but inevitably he's going to sneak in there during a late night feeding or crawl into the bassinet in the living room when we're not looking.

What are the dangers here, and what can we do to safeguard one little family member from the other?

posted by Kickstart70 to pets & animals (28 comments total)

Suffocation is a serious danger as the little one is not coordinated / strong enough to push the cat out of the way (especially if your cat is as fat as ours is).

Not sure about the solution, but you might try running something along the lines of mosquito netting along the top of the bassinet and securing it in place with strong hook/grommets or something similar (given adequate headspace, of course.

Regardless, I'd recommend having everything in place before June, because you'll be useless after that (I certainly was, and I'm not the one that had the baby...)
posted by gage at 4:51 PM on March 20, 2006

Kickstart, how did everything go with the thyroid tests? [/derail]
posted by scody at 4:55 PM on March 20, 2006

Scody: Annoyingly, they've the tests off until April 13th. The doc thought that it was not something requiring immediate rush, so that's good, but it still makes me nervous waiting. No change in the lump though...for good or bad. Thanks for asking!
posted by Kickstart70 at 4:59 PM on March 20, 2006

My cat (who is very friendly) was really not that interested when my brother was born. She sniffed around and then mostly stayed away.
Maybe try leaving the bassinet out for a few weeks before the baby is born and seeing if the cat tries to get in it and throwing him out when he does.
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 5:03 PM on March 20, 2006

You might wait and see how things go. I know people who have put screen doors on the nursery, but that wouldn't solve your bassinette/living room problem.

Our cats were the same as yours - very lovey, napped and slept with us - and I haven't seen them in three months. They are FREAKED out by the baby.
posted by peep at 5:06 PM on March 20, 2006

My partner's family keeps their cats down in the basement at night - it's where their litter is and it's probably 'half-finished' as far as furnishing goes. If there's some way to restrict the cats to a separate set of rooms, at least at night, that's one plan.

You may have to start acclimatizing them to that, though. The two cats go downstairs with a water bowl and a little kibble every night - they shake the box and say 'it's kitty bedtime' and they both go down. But they've been trained since about 8 weeks or so, and this might be harder for an older cat.
posted by cobaltnine at 5:07 PM on March 20, 2006

My sister has a cat like that, and he wasn't all that interested in either of her newborns. Would sniff their heads then walk away. Now that my niece is 3, the cat sleeps on her toddler bed with her a lot. At her feet. No problem.

I can see how suffocation would be a danger, but...
how comfy can it be to sleep on a baby's head? When a cat sleeps "on" an adult's head, that's not really what it's doing. It's on your chest maybe, leaning on your face, not perched on your nose. A baby doesn't have enough body to get comfy on.

Not that I'd let a cat sleep in a bassinet with a baby. I'm just sayin'.
posted by clh at 5:31 PM on March 20, 2006

They sell crib tents; seems there ought to be bassinet tents somewhere out there.
posted by moira at 5:53 PM on March 20, 2006

While I wouldn't recommend letting a cat sleep with a baby, most, if not all, claims of children suffocating from a cat are actually instances of SIDS, and the cat had nothing to do with it. But this myth started long before we understood what SIDS was.

A much more practical reason for not allowing your cat to sleep with or near your baby is a lot of evidence points to early and over exposer to allergens as a likely cause of allergies in children.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 6:25 PM on March 20, 2006

I thought that our cats would want to snuggle up next to our baby when she was born, but they actually stayed far, far away from her. We had no problems whatsoever. They were actually more fearful than curious once we brought her home.

I did have the crib set up a couple months before she was born and squirted the cats with a water bottle if they tried to jump up in it. They do make mesh tents that fit over cribs to keep cats out, too. I'd see how it goes first.
posted by Ostara at 6:26 PM on March 20, 2006

You may want to keep the baby in the room with you anyway, cat or no cat. Babies tend to want things at night, and it's ever so much easier for mom to roll over and nurse or pluck the baby from one of these than to go traipsing off down the hall and wrestle with getting a tent off a bassinet while the baby howls and the poor negleted cat winds around her feet tripping both mom and the baby.

(Why yes, I am rather a co-sleeping advocate...We slept with our youngest for a year and neither smothered him nor psychologically ruined him. As I type, he is snuggled down to bed all by his lonesome without any trouble.)

Good luck coming up with a solution that works for all of you!
posted by Biblio at 6:36 PM on March 20, 2006

My older cat had some pretty serious Affection Defecit Disorder and especially loved cleaning people. We were worried about how he would interact with my daughter, but it turned out that he was a fine companion and didn't react badly when she yanked fur out of him.
posted by plinth at 7:06 PM on March 20, 2006

We didn't have this issue, but worried about it slightly. I agree that the most practical solution is (a) while in the basinet, the baby sleeps in with you (with door closed and cat on other side), or in spaces where the cat is kept out or where you're close at hand anyway (ie napping in a room while you're there).

Then, when BK moves to the crib, you can either use a mesh crib tent or keep the bedroom/nursery door closed with kitty on the other side, as before. We do the latter, but if our cat had seemed strongly interested in getting in the crib, we'd have bought the mesh tent on a belt-and-suspenders rationale.

And I agree with everyone that most (not all) cats will be disinclined to sleep near anything as strange as a baby! This is certainly the case with ours. But, of course, that doesn't mean you want to leave it up to the cat...
posted by BT at 7:19 PM on March 20, 2006

I'd keep kitty away, but I wouldn't worry. Cats are freaked out by movements. I can't see a cat smoothering a baby. But it could easily wake or annoy the little one, and that's no small thing. I know. That's easy for me to say not to worry; it's not my kickstart.

My folks actually let a cat sleep with us to keep us warm after we had learned to roll over and were clearly bigger than the cat. He slept near me as long as he lived.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 8:06 PM on March 20, 2006

Friends of ours have a literally 25 pound cat. Drix is all up in the adults' faces, but he's never lifted a claw against the baby, or tried to smother her with his great, fat, drooly girth. As this thread is showing, most people with well-socialized cats don't have problems.

Introduce any all-baby-no-cat furniture prior to the baby's arrival, establish it as not-cat and maintain it as such. For the room, the screen door thing is great. The cat won't be able to work the latch (unlike every door handle in my particular house), and you will be able to hear the baby through the convenient door. Tents, whatever works for you and your cat. Hopefully he will just accept the baby as part of his kitty-centric world.
posted by Medieval Maven at 8:15 PM on March 20, 2006

Re: Moira's suggestion, this says it would do fine covering a bassinet for only $15 if you decide to go that route.
posted by viachicago at 8:40 PM on March 20, 2006

Before our first was born, we had similar concerns about our cat being jealous. But it turns out she was passively curious at best, and most of the time, pretty much aloof (sounds like a cat, no?)

AFAIK, the only real concern with cats and babies is the germs that cats can have in their paws & nails after rummaging around the litter box. Otherwise, I think it's great for small children to have exposure to pets.
posted by bicyclingfool at 9:10 PM on March 20, 2006

A much more practical reason for not allowing your cat to sleep with or near your baby is a lot of evidence points to early and over exposer to allergens as a likely cause of allergies in children.

Just to keep things confusing: there's mounting evidence that the allergy theory may be another old wives' tales. Two recent studies have found much lower incidence of pet allergy among children who had early exposure to pets.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 10:17 PM on March 20, 2006

My brother and sister-in-law lined the inside of the crib with tin foil about a month before the baby was born. The cat jumped in there once, decided he didn't like it, and never went back.
posted by nadise at 10:35 PM on March 20, 2006 [1 favorite]

Maybe Feliway to keep the cats mellow when the new baby arrives?
Make sure they get kitty time with mom and dad even though you're super busy.
The only issues I've seen are more about cat jealousy than anything to do with hurting the baby.
My friends cat recently started knocking a lot more things on the floor looking for attention since their new baby arrived.
I say just make sure they know they're still important to you as much as you can, and that will hopefully go along way.
posted by BillBishop at 10:36 PM on March 20, 2006

Toxoplasmosis sucks, and keeps on sucking. Various pet borne diseases are no fun, either. But my personal, anecdotal experience with cat owners who are expectant parents is that they are far less likely to give up their cats, than smokers are to give up cigarettes as a result of becoming a parent, or than social drinkers are likely to quit drinking for the same reason. As in, I know people who have quit smoking and/or drinking when they found out they were pregnant, but I've never known any cat owner to divest themselves of the kitty(s) in the same situation...
posted by paulsc at 4:19 AM on March 21, 2006

Suffocation is a serious danger as the little one is not coordinated / strong enough to push the cat out of the way (especially if your cat is as fat as ours is).

A great danger indeed; it is just below the well documented phenomena of space aliens abducting and eating babies. Who knew that babies were such a delicacy?

Where do you get this tripe Gage?

Toxoplasmosis, though, is something to be concerned about, not overly concerned, but dad gets the litter box job during the pregnancy and mom should wash hands after petting the cat.
posted by caddis at 4:50 AM on March 21, 2006

Caddis, one such example of tripe here.

Great danger, no. Serious enough to spend $15 on to have peace of mind, yes. [Very Low Probability] * [Awful result] = [Expected value of result big enough to spend $15 on until the cat's behaviour around the baby is observed]
posted by gage at 5:15 AM on March 21, 2006

Our friendly cat is curious enough to go smell our baby, but doesn't want to spend any time with him. Babies make scary noises, much like a vacuum cleaner.

But really, consider co-sleeping. So long as you don't meet the risk factors (smoking and obesity) then it's safer than non-co-sleeping. And so much easier.
posted by Aknaton at 6:57 AM on March 21, 2006

If you are concerned about Toxoplasmosis, get your vet to check your cat. The netting can provide piece of mind but chances are even if your cat likes sleeping in the crib/craddle/basinet before the baby comes that it won't want to be in it with the baby. Especially as you got the cat before having kids. (It is more likely to go hide for a while after you bring the baby home than to try to sleep with it.)

I have had three cats and three kids, and the cats liked sleeping in the crib before the babies, but once the baby came all I had to do was show the cat the baby and it stayed out of the crib. (Even though the cat was sure I had made that nice soft enclosed bed for it!)

Invest in blanket sleepers, keep the blankets out of the baby's bed (as they advise to prevent SIDS anyway) and chances are the cat will not find it that welcoming an area anyway. The layer of foil while the baby isn't in the bed might help too.

I have also heard that exposure to pets and animals during the first year of life helps to prevent allergies (excepting those children who have parents with allergies.) Good for you keeping your cat during and after pregnancy.

wife of 445supermag
posted by 445supermag at 8:28 AM on March 21, 2006

Thanks all for the excellent advice. The current plan is:

- At night, baby sleeps in the basinet beside our bed for a while, with the door closed. The basinet has an attachment to keep it tight against the bed.
- During the day, the basinet will be moved out to the living room when my wife will be home and can watch the cat's behaviour.
- Some amount of months down the road, the baby will be moved into the crib, at which point we'll have a crib tent but will also close the door to the baby's room when he/she is in there. We'll have a monitor and the room is right across the hall from ours, so I expect no problems hearing him/her.

Pico (the cat) is definitely part of the family, so we won't give him up unless it becomes an issue of him being violent against the baby. That's pretty unlikely though as he's just not really a violent cat.
posted by Kickstart70 at 8:51 AM on March 21, 2006

That childalert source doesn't look credible to me. The company makes its money frightening parents with stories about how dangerous everything is to their kids. Cats smothering babies is an old wives' tale. Better beware of fan death though.
posted by caddis at 9:11 AM on March 21, 2006

Kickstart70. Sounds very logical. I am very happy that my parents protected me and raised me with cats, dogs, a pony and horse.

BTW, congratulations on the baby.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 7:35 PM on March 21, 2006