Syracuse Parent and CNY Family

Jennifer Wing, editor of "Syracuse Parent" and "Mother Knows Best," lives in Manlius with her husband, Eric, and children, Cassidy, 7, and Jacob, 5. She has worked at Eagle Newspapers since 2005. You can leave comments below. She may also be reached at editor@syracuseparent.net

Mixing kids and cats: It can be done
Posted on Mon, February 22nd, 2010
Written by: Sarah Hall,
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Mixing kids and cats: It can be done
The experts will tell you to try to keep your infants away from your pets.
Clearly, the experts have never had either infants or pets.
My son Andrew LOVES our three cats. His first word, spoken at the tender age of seven months, was “kkkkeeeee,” which we assumed meant “kitty,” since he points to one of the three every time he says it. He giggles every time one of them comes into the room, especially Sally, affectionately referred to as “Fat Kitty” since she weighs a good 23 to 25 pounds. (Seriously. She’s a fat cat.) He likes them so much, he tries to eat their food (gross) and play with their toys (not as gross, but frustrating, since we’ve spent the equivalent of the gross national product of a third-world country on toys for him). Sometimes I think he thinks he’s a kitty.
So keeping Andrew from chasing the cats around the living room – and grabbing their tails, faces and ears, trying to cram fistfuls of their fur (still attached to their bellies, of course) into his mouth, crawling over them like they’re furniture – is pretty much impossible. Any attempt results in a screaming tantrum.
Fortunately, we have about the world’s best cats. Sometimes they’re not so keen on being grabbed, and sometimes they get a little annoyed when Andrew flattens them on his way to a toy he wants. But they’re more likely to run away than to scratch him.
The only exception happened a couple of weeks ago. Andrew was, as usual, chasing the cats around the house – now that he’s crawling, he’s pretty hard to contain. I should clarify who he was chasing. He doesn’t ever chase Squeak around; our first cat, she’s kind of the princess, and she avoids Andrew as much as possible, though she does like to sleep in his old bassinet and she likes him to pet her when we hold him. He chases Lewis, our giant orange mancat, all over the place, and Lewis loves it – he rubs on Andrew’s face, licks him, sleeps in his room every night, just ADORES the kid. And he chases Sally, the aforementioned fat cat, a rescue I found on the side of the road one night while running. Sally’s had the hardest time adjusting to Andrew, as she and I used to sit together all the time, and she used to sleep with me every night. She struggled a little with adjusting to sharing her mommy with a little hairless beast.
That said, she’s still pretty good with the small boy.
Until he went for her food dish.
I was right behind him – we might have good cats, but we still never leave him alone with them – and I didn’t even see it happen. All of a sudden, Andrew was screaming. A moment later, two scratches became visible on his face.
Not to worry. He was fine – as is the case with babies, the scratches healed completely within a day or two, and he forgot all about it. I was pretty peeved at Sally for the next few days. She didn’t get to sit or sleep with me at night, and she was warned that she’d be living in the basement forever if it happened again. But we all got over it.
Since that time, we’re much more vigilant – Andrew’s not allowed near the cat food bowls, and we watch very carefully whenever he’s with the cats. We haven’t had any further incidents; everybody’s pretty happy. Andrew loves the cats, and the cats are pretty enamored of Andrew.
So you see? You can have both kids and cats.
Just keep the kid away from the fat kitty’s food.

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