Cats and the Human Baby

The clue is in the name of the business really, but I am a lover of cats (in case that wasn’t obvious!).  We have three cats in the house, all of which were around and very much established before the arrival of our little boy, or as we refer to him with the cats, “the human baby”.  We have two female cats (who came from Cats Protection as kittens), and a male cat that we adopted as a stray (another story entirely of the shaggy dog variety – the cat is also quite dog-like).  The male cat is extremely docile (or as we call him, bomb-proof) and succumbs regularly to the daily pestering of our 1 year old (who is also quite cat-obsessed, like his mummy, and whose first word was “cat”).  At best this ranges from stroking to cuddling (where he lies his head on the cat to cuddle him) and at worst to the cat having “CAT” screamed in his face at point blank range to having his tail pulled – which we strongly discourage as parents, but haven’t yet managed to eradicate from our wayward toddler’s behaviour.  The female cats’ philosophy towards the child is more along the lines of “I’m outta here!”, with neither of them sticking around long enough at the first sign of baby crying, toddler footsteps or cries of “CAT” to find out whether the source of the noise is friendly or not.

One of our cats has a very strange behavioural trait.  She chews wires.  That’s not a misprint.  You did read that correctly.  Wires.  Over the nearly 10 years of owning her I shudder to think what the actual financial tally of replacement cables has mounted to.  Needless to say, the most regular casualties have been mobile phone chargers.  We have also lost over the years various laptop chargers, headphones (pre- wireless era!), a Nintendo Wii sensor bar (which literally ruined Christmas in 2008!), and most horrifyingly in recent times – baby monitor cables!  Our first monitor lost both the parent and baby ends, and received subsequent life-support in the form of some after-market universal adapters (that essential companion of choice when you have a wire-chewing cat.)  The second monitor had a close shave in the form of being attacked by the wire-chewing cat, but not to the point at which the wire was severed and no longer works.  I was alerted to this regretful occurrence because the monitor was on at the time, the cat was attacking the baby end, and I was roused from my ill-fated lie-in by the sound of the baby monitor being chewed by the cat through the monitor.  I don’t think that’s a claim that many people can make.  Lucky me!

I always take issue with being woken up by things in the night, when those things are not baby-related – such as alarms, both the unexpected burglar alarm-fuse-blown-at-3am type as well as the expected wake-up call variety (and believe me, 7am does so often feel like the middle of the night when you’re on call with a baby!).  In our house, however, we have an additional sort of night-time disturbance, in the form of the (male) cat yowling at the top of its lungs on the landing (which usually occurs the night after the return from a family holiday during which time the cats have been hosted by the local cattery).  The cat has clearly lost its bearings and can’t remember if it’s in the right house or not.  It’s not too bad, until said yowling gets to the point where it wakes up the human baby, whose excited exclamations of “CAT” signal that he is a) awake b) probably standing up in his cot and c) ready to get up and play with (terrorise) the cat.

We also get the cat-scratching-at-the-door variety of wake-up call (a different cat this time), signalling that the cat wants to come into the bedroom, jump on the bed and sleep on you where possible.  Unfortunately, the cat exhibiting this behaviour is also the wire-chewing cat, so for that reason she is banned from the parental bedroom due to her penchant for severing baby monitor wiring and mobile phone chargers.  It doesn’t stop me feeling bad though that the cat no longer gets any love of this kind (the sitting on you stopping you from sleeping kind of love).

I should say at this point that wire-chewing aside we’ve never had a problem with cats jumping in cribs or cots, not at least with a baby in at the time (although the push chair has on occasion been left covered in tell-tale cat hair, testament to the fact that it is in fact a comfortable and warm place in which to take a nap – babies are you listening?!). 

So I’m feeling sorry for the cats, as before the human baby came they did get more of our love, they slept on our bed, they were more consistently fed on time, and they weren’t ousted from their favourite cosy spots in fear of being attacked by this unfamiliar thing that looks like a human but is small enough to resemble another animal and therefore might be a threat.  I feel sorry for them when they are naturally more loving towards us when the human baby isn’t there – either asleep in bed (all eyes on baby monitor wires!) or at the child minder.  Interestingly the cats’ natural curiosity and need to ‘mother’ has them cuddling up to the child when asleep on your lap (and indeed cuddling up to bump before he was born!) which suggests some deep-down instinct to care for and show love towards this new addition to the family.

Of course this only applies to two out of three cats.  The bomb-proof male, as we already know, allows himself to be poked, prodded, screamed at and sat upon on a daily basis, and also obligingly provides a similar service to all visiting children that we have to the house… which has led us to wonder what the ethical implications are of hiring out our cat to provide a child/animal initiation and petting service for all those children out there who are scared of animals or scared to touch them.  After all, it’s hard to earn trust when the object of the fear scarpers suddenly at the first sight of a little person.  What we have here on the other hand is a sitting duck.  Or cat.  In any case, he’s happy for your child to pet him.  We’re based in Burton-upon-Trent.  All enquiries to cosycatuk@gmail.com.

Aimee Flower is the founder of Cosycat Baby Gifts, a part-time translator, a full-time mummy of one (and cat mummy of three), and regularly volunteers with her local NCT branch.  Diary of a Mumpreneur is guest featured by Bump, Baby & You.