Cats and Babies?

Has anyone had a problem with their cat and their new baby?

DH and I have a cat with a baby on the way. The cat will be over a year old. The cat is so friendly, sleeps with us, never hides is always out with people around , and no matter who sleeps over he will sleep and snuggle with them, but he does bite and will just decide to randomly bite you. he NEVER scraches.

Our concern is that he may bite the baby and/or love the baby and want to sleep in the babies crib.

What are your expereinces with this?
We do plan on at the very least leaving the cat in the basement at night while we all sleep, but we are so nervous

TIA

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We had 4 cats when DD was born. Our cats always sleep in the basement at night because one of our cats scratches incessantly at our door at night if she is left upstairs.

One of the cats we got as a 4 week old kitten a few weeks before I got my BFP. She was always feisty and would randomly scratch and bite us. Well at first she was fine with DD. Then when DD was about 8 months old she started getting annoyed with her. She started peeing in her room if we left the door open. She would swat at DD when she would crawl/cruise by her. We ended up having to rehome her about 5 months ago. She had scratched and bitten DD a few times. The last straw was when our cat was sitting on top of the couch, DD was standing on the couch (not doing anything to the cat at all) and our cat reached out and dug her claws into DD's head and tried to bite her. We found someone that night to take her.

Our other three cats have been perfectly fine with our daughter. One of the LOVES her and the other two don't really bother with her at all but are never bad with her.

Sorry this is sooo long but I just wanted to show you both sides. We now leave DD's door open during the day and we still put the cats downstairs at night. None of them have ever tried to jump in her crib/playpen when she is in there.

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I was worried about this as well. WE have 2 cats. One is a sweetheart but usually more skittish. I had no worries about her hurting him and she has been fine. Art first she would sometimes come and check it out when she heard him crying, but now she mostly just rolls her eyes.

The other cat does bite sometimes. One second he seems super sweet and next he's turning around and biting you (he also doesn't scratch.) So I was worried. But he usually just leaves the room now if the boy starts crying. He has also been grabbed and cornered by a friends 2 yo (yes, I tried to keep it from happening) and he never even made a motion likie he would retaliate. I thought the kid was gonna be hurt, but it's almost like he knew it was a baby so he just tried to get away.

He accidently gave DS a small scratch one day when I had DS on my lap and the cat wanted to jump into my lap too. I thought seeing the baby there he wouldn't, but he started to and when I tried to stop him, he grazed me and the baby a little. I felt so bad that my boy started wailing.

We have found him sleeping on the changing table and in the crib - with no baby there. But now that DS is in the crib at night, we keep the door closed so the cat doesn't accidently jump in not knowing he's there.

i think you just can't know how the cat will react until the baby is here - and I just try to make sure to watch that they don't have an opportunity to hurt him but mostly now I feel pretty safe with them around.

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I had terrible fears of how my cats would react to our son.

Turns out the cats wanted nothing to do with him. As lovable as they were they weren't interested in him. And my cats loved to get into everything. But they never attempted to go near any of his stuff.

Both our cats sleep in bed with us and I was extremely concerned about the possibility of them suffocating the baby. So I never left them alone. Ever. The baby slept in his crib from day 1 in his nursery with the door closed. Mainly because we had no room for a bassinet in our room. But also because I knew I couldn't reasonably keep the cats out and didn't want to completely shut them out. It worked for us. 2 and a half years later they're buds. But the cats still keep their distance and occasionally will rub up against him.

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We had two cats when Lily was born, Scout was terrified of her and stayed the heck away...and still does. Gunnar had no patience for anything in life, so he tolerated her, but was never aggressive (he was also really old). He was fine with her...we have several pictures of them together.
Generally, cats are pretty quick, so if a toddler comes after them, they can get away easily enough.

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We have had a cat for 5 years, and I was concerned with how he was going to react when we came home with our DD. I was paranoid that he was going to jump in the bassinet or crib, but truthfully he kept a good amount of distance. He was curious about her when we brought he home, but he looked from a distance. My DD is One now, and they get along fine. She likes to point at him and say cat...and he likes to run away from her very quickly!

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my Cat is 10 years old... he has always been the nastiest cat EVER.. he bites me, just mean mean mean... i was never afraid of him though nor was i fearful that he would be mean to the baby.

when DS was born in 2007, he would snuggle with him... then as AJ got older he woiuld let AJ beat him with his toys, pull at his fur, and just be a boy. but yet if i went near my cat to even pet him he would bite my hand off.

now that we have DD he is just as affectionate with her, but if i go near him he bites me.

cats are funny animals.

i love my cat he loves my kids, but HATES HATES adults.

Re: Cats and Babies?

We had 3 cats when DS was born. I was also really worries about how they would be with him. One of the cats was old and kept to himself, another was very loveable and always wanted to be on your lap and the third was a slightly aggressive female. She was the one I was really worried about because she we pick on the two male cats to exert her dominance (she was a rescue and came into the house full grown)

In the end there was a little bit of adjustment, but we figured things out quickly. The older cat wanted to sleep in the crib, so we learned to keep the nursery door closed at all times. The affectionate male became very jealous, he never went after the baby but when you were holding him the cat would come and try to sit wherever there was room for him (your shoulders, feet, arms, etc.) This didn't last long, he learned pretty quickly that we still loved him and the new addition wasn't going anywhere. DS is now 1 and this cat still makes a wide arc around the baby, we do have them interact and the cat is very good with him, but he gets up and leaves as soon as we let him.

The big surprise was the aggressive female, she LOVES DS she follows him around, sits next to him whenever he is on the floor, he "pets" her which is more like him slapping her back and she is fine with it. Once she nipped at him because he was slapping her face, but we let her know that isn't OK and it hasn't happened again. Of course, we are also teaching DS how to treat the cats.

I think you can make it work, just always be there until you know you can trust the animals and the baby together. There will be some adjustment for all of you, but I bet your DC and the animals will become very attached to each other