We’ve been “fostering” a stray cat that comes around our patio mainly by feeding it. The cat is comfortable enough to sit patiently at our patio door looking inside when she wants food. Unfortunately she’s still too scared to even venture close to me. When I go outside to put food in her bowl, she runs outside of the railing waiting. As soon as I go back inside the apartment, she trots over to eat the food. Since we can’t really get close to her, there’s not much we can do outside of feeding her. A few days ago, my husband suggested putting a towel on one of the patio chairs in case she wanted to sleep somewhere semi-warm. Tonight was the first evening she curled up on the chair and basically “stayed” with us. While it would be nice for her to become tame enough for us to keep her, we already have a cat of our own who is content to keep the place to herself. She’s seems accepting enough of the visiting cat and tolerates her on our patio but would probably be very unhappy to have a roommate.
Right now I am more worried that our own lovable but somewhat curmudgeon cat will not get along with the baby. Our cat is really lovable and loves to be around us but she can get testy and sometimes like to swat though not very hard. We also learned recently (though she hasn’t done it in awhile) that when the hubby likes to tickle me and I’m squealing or howlering, she’ll gently go up to his arm and give it a soft nip. She’s also done this to me too. I think she likes to warn us that we’re bothering her but I’m not sure. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her do this behavior in the eight or nine years I’ve had her. Of course the hubby doesn’t want her to do that to the baby so I don’t know how we are going to prepare our “furbaby” for our new baby.
For our first baby, we kicked the cats out of our bedroom entirely months before he arrived, got a tent for the playard (Tots in Mind makes very sturdy crib and playard tents, most of the ones that come with a playard aren’t sturdy enough to handle an 8-10lb cat) and generally did the whole ‘gradual introduction’ thing. It kind of helped that our son wouldn’t let us put him down much at all and lived his first few months in a baby sling attached to one of our chests, so the felines could peek in at him and get used to him without having him ‘in the face’ so to speak.
Later on, the less social cats had the good sense to run the heck away from grasping little hands as fast as their little feet could carry them. Only two of the cats decided they could put up with a lot of hugging and smearing with sticky substances and they’re really mellow about it. The rest, pretty much disappear or skirt the edges of a room when there’s a child in it.
When I was pregnant with our second child, we moved right before I was due and we completely spaced the whole ‘kick the cats out’ thing and the tent is still in a box somewhere. It hasn’t been a problem though - the cats completely avoid the crib and they never go in the playard when the baby’s in there.
I’d say, as long as you’re in the room with baby and can shoo kitty away or do the gentle intro thing, it’s probably going to be okay. Just consider a tent for the place baby is going to sleep in case you’re not going to be in the same room for nighttimes and naptimes. That way you have peace of mind about kitty exploring the area and dropping in on baby unexpectedly.
Comment by Beth — December 15, 2005 @ 6:31 pm