Small puppy, large older cats... baby gates?

September 12, 2021 12:28 PM

I'm getting a puppy! Yay! I have 2 older cats! Hmm. I need baby/pet gates that keep the pup contained... but lets the cats pass. For the first few months, the cats will be larger than the puppy. My elder cats are still good jumpers on to things... but not so much over things. I am perplexed.

I'm sure this will be the first of many askmes on managing my mixed species furrkids!

I pick up my puppy in 3 weeks; she'll be about 5 lbs then and about 15lbs fully grown. The cats are about 10lbs each. I had this realization that as I started looking at puppy gates with cat pass throughs that anything the cats can pass though so can puppy. My cats are totally ok with jumping onto things... but I cant expect them to jump over something 24-30" high. I think I probably need a ledge of some sort on top of the gate, but that doesn't seem to be a thing one can buy on amazon.

I'm not really the best person for a DIY project... Surely I cannot be the first person with this problem?

How can i give the cats full access to the house but keep a smaller pupper contained room-to-room and out of mischief?

I will have a puppy enclosure she can be contained in, but she'll need to have access to more and more of the house as she grows up.

Any ideas, mefites?


Please do not try and tell me now is not the right time for the puppy. It's a done deal, and although the cats mental and physical health is my top priority and what keeps me up at night, I'm not about to wait another 5-10 years for them to no longer be in the picture. Believe me, I have thought about this decision long and hard and this is the right one for me at this point in my life, and I will be doing everything in my power to make this work. None of us get to chose our siblings in life!

posted by cgg to Pets & Animals (8 answers total)

There are metal gates that fold/unfold so that you can make them different sizes and layouts ("configurable" and "adjustable" seem to be useful search terms).

Perhaps you could size and shape these so that your puppy has the space she needs, and your cats can still get around the gates.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:41 PM on September 12, 2021

I got a medium-sized adult dog and had a senior cranky cat. I cut holes in baby gates, just big enough for her so she could hang out in various rooms without the dog but could get to her food and litter. She had a shelf for cat food and her cat litter in an area where she could get to it, the dog could not, in the kitchen where the dog initially spent days when I was at work; one can do only so much. There was an odd area in the kitchen, I added a shelf and a cupboard door, raised enough for her to easily get in. She always had access to the whole apt. She still spent the better part of a couple of months under the bed, and hissed and growled if the dog walked through the room. The puppy may be able to get through initially, holes should be just large enough for cat heads, puppy heads grow fast. A puppy can be in a large sturdy cardboard box, which it will chew, but should restrain it for a month or so.

You are bringing home a new member of the family; cats will adapt. I brought home a baby, my cat coped, and the dog was later. She got love and attention (also food and nice shelter) her whole life, and that seems a good deal.
posted by theora55 at 12:44 PM on September 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

Is there a little end table or chair or something you could just put in front of the gate temporarily so the cats have something to jump up on, but which will be too high for the puppy to get up on? If you get one of the gates with a cat door then you could put the table in front of that and just move it away once the puppy is too big to get through it. (You would probably have to put another end table or something on the other side as well so they could get back.)

Not the most aesthetic option but probably the cheapest and it'd only be for a few months.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:44 PM on September 12, 2021 [8 favorites]

In my experience, cats land *on* the gate, and then jump down. I wouldn't expend a lot of effort on solving a problem you don't know you have.
posted by DarlingBri at 12:47 PM on September 12, 2021 [2 favorites]

For the first few months until the size equalizes, focus on keeping the dog limited to an area that the cats don't need to be in, at least not unattended.

My cats could jump over a regular baby gate (and yes, they sort of touch off the top, not jump to sail all the way over and land on the floor on the other side, but you can also put a cheap footstool on each side if they need an assist) until they were pretty old, but you could also get one of these low freestanding gates - I use them to keep my big dogs from rushing the front door, they don't trust they could jump it and land safety, and a puppy might eventually learn how to jump or maybe knock it over but it could be reinforced.

(Please note that yes this gate is low enough for you to "step over" and that seems like a great idea...until you catch a toe on it going over and hit the floor in a giant tangle of face, floor, feet, and gate.)

If you cannot keep the litter box fully sequestered, I highly recommend keeping it on a table until you can, or puppy will...snack. And eating enough clumping litter can kill a dog.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:57 PM on September 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

With apologies for ignoring your non-DYI request, a small piece of wood cut to size at the store and two C-clamps seems like an easy and cheap solution if the gate is strong enough for a cat to jump on it.

There are also lots of clamp-on trays that might fasten to the vertical bar. The ones I know about are for musicians and machinists. But, they won't be terribly cheap.
posted by eotvos at 1:29 PM on September 12, 2021

If you’re not averse to cutting holes in doors (and to some expense), you could invest in a SureFlap microchip pet door. These pet doors read pets’ microchip implants or tags that can be affixed to collars, and can be programmed to open just for your cats. They are a bit loud though (they make a ker-CHUNK noise when they un/lock) and some cats don’t like that.
posted by disentir at 8:28 PM on September 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

Install baby gate, then add sturdy dining chairs back-to-back on both sides of the gate. Move chairs and gate for human traffic as necessary.
Congratulations on your new addition to the family. Make sure the cats have their own space for food, water, litterbox and general canine-free time.
posted by TrishaU at 6:52 PM on September 13, 2021