The Vine: June 24, 2011
I have a question for the cat-happy readers of Tomato Nation. I’m six months pregnant with my first child. We have three cats, and I would like some advice on how to introduce the baby to the cats and vice versa. Most of the info that I’ve found online has been about dogs.
Our cats (unsurprisingly) have very different personalities. Ginge is lover and will sit in any lap available and purr. He was a stray that adopted us and I think he had a rough time before us since he freaks out if you walk towards him (he hates feet) or startle him. Grindle is a bit of a freak. He doesn’t like change or sudden movements. He’s very loving with my husband and me, but he hides from strangers, unless they are in the kitchen and may possibly feed him. Moondie is a little princess. Though she’s half the size, she bosses the other two around. I am HER person and she follows me around and if I’m sitting down — and Ginge hasn’t beaten her to it — she’s in my lap. She can be a territorial pee-er; we’re working on that, but suggestions welcome. Thanks!
Mom to three furry babies and soon a human one
Tags: Ask The Readers cats kids
Congratulations!
My husband and I also had three cats when we brought our little ones home (and still do — now up to three cats and two kids). I don’t recall a lot of hard-core prep that we did. However:
If you don’t have one already, you’ll want to invest in a crib tent: http://www.amazon.com/Tots-Mind-Cozy-Crib-White/dp/B00014PLAY
This will keep the kitties out of the crib when the baby’s asleep (and, later, can help keep the baby in the crib, if you’re so fortunate as to have a climber, like we did).
If you’re buying gear up front (and I know that not everyone does) — car seat, stroller, etc. — let the kitties sniff it, sleep on it, etc. Let them get used to it now.
When you bring baby home, let the kitties sniff him or her if they want to. They may not; they may choose to ignore the whole thing. (When I brought baby #1 home, our oldest cat gave me the most hilarious “Oh, Christ. ANOTHER one?” look. I swear she rolled her eyes at me.) Chances are they’ll be a little bit freaked out but they’ll get over it in a day or so. This would be a good time to break out the celebratory tuna (or whatever they like) for them, so they associate babies with YUM GOOD STUFF.
If they’re not declawed, you’ll want to keep their claws trimmed.
You’ll have a lot on your plate in the first weeks and months, but a little love toward the kitties will go a long way. Unless one of the cats becomes extremely hostile (which I think is EXTREMELY unlikely), let them interact with the baby — as the baby gets older s/he’ll love it, and the kitties will like it, too.
Can’t help with the peeing because that was never our particular issue. (Ours was chewing, believe it or not.)
Good luck!
I’ll chime in on this one! I’ve got two great cats and our baby (also great) will be 11 months old next week. We didn’t really do any advance preparation to introduce the baby to the cats (a slightly early arrival on baby’s part meant some prep items were dropped from the list).
My advice is to treat it as you would adding a new cat to the family – have a safe room for the new family member and do introductions gradually. The transition is eased by the fact that the baby cannot move around much when you first bring it home. The cats can then sniff around and get used to it before you enter the part of baby development where the grippy hands of a speedy baby come into play. We kept the kitties shut out of our room for maybe the first month or so that our baby was home – long enough for us to have trained them to stay out of the crib or bassinet. It’s a pretty great feeling having a baby napping on your chest and one or more kitties napping on your lap.
Your whole family will be adjusting to new routines soon. Good luck, and congratulations in advance!
I would generally recommend to do the intros early, as the new sounds and odours from the baby will be disconcerting to the cats.
If you can, wait until baby and cats are well-fed and rested, so as to minimize the stress on everyone. I also suggest keeping the first meeting short and sweet.
In the meantime, keep your cats to their regular routine (if you have one) and give them lots of affection.
You don’t mention if your cats are outdoors. Mine were and they preferred spending more time outdoors for the first few months. If your cats are indoor, I would suggest setting up a “quiet room” for them, if you can, where they can just let down their guard and relax. Most likely, your home will quickly become full-on baby zone.
You have cats of various temperaments, so I think you should expect some resistance and behaviour issues. If you just keep your cool, keep things natural and make sure you give your cats lots of loving, you’ll be fine.
Best of luck!
We had three cats when our first child was born as well, one lovable fuzzbutt, and two active young balls of energy. We watched carefully the first few times we put the baby down on the floor on the mat, but there was never an issue for us.
Mostly the cats just looked at the baby and sniffed the air as if to comment on this _horrible thing we had DONE to them_ bringing this CREATURE into their home, and avoided them by a wide berth.
Amusingly enough, that is also what the next set of cats did when we brought a Roomba into the home.
I don’t think there is a generic answer other than don’t let them interact without supervision until you know how things are going to go. Mostly the only problem we had was that one cat really wanted to sleep in the bassinet (but only when the baby was somewhere else).
For my first child, our cat was older and unphased by baby. For our second child, we had two young cats who freaked out and started using the laundry basket as a litterbox. They calmed down in about two weeks and really enjoyed all the dangly baby toys thereafter.
If you don’t already have two litterboxes, get one, at least temporarily. You may need to put it wherever they choose to express their confusion.
Cover your laundry baskets.
Before baby comes home from hospital, have your husband bring home a blanket that baby has slept with, and put it in their bed/preferred area of sleeping.
Offer many treats and kind words.
If none of these work, I’ve heard about mellow-out-pheremone air fresheners for cats.
Good luck and congrats!
Baby gets a hat in the hospital(or birthing center, I assume.) Usually you can get more than one, specifically to bring home and let pets smell it. We did this with baby #1. Our two cats were skittish on their own, as soon as baby cried or moved, they ran. Biggest problem for us – keeping the cats off the baby blankets, burp clothes, out of the cradle (when the baby was not in it), etc. Not sure why they like it so much but they do. I will say once they became mobile it was harder for the cats – and the one cat seriously dislikes toddlers. As in, lies in wait to attack them. Hopefully they just co-exist peacefully on their own but don’t be surprised if the cats disappear more frequently than before. I will say for baby #2, the cat that used to sleep in our bed before babies, now does again. So they get used to it. Hope all goes well and congratulations!
I think that the reason most of the online information concerns dogs is because depending on their size, a dog can outweigh a child for years, and thus poses a greater physical hazard, whereas a child outweighs a cat pretty quickly, and as such is in less danger. “Less,” but not “none.” In our case, we’d had our cat for several years when our son was born, but there really wasn’t any problem. The very first day we had the baby at home, we were concerned, and the cat was alarmed when he cried for the first time, but rather than running away, she seemed to try to attract our attention…as if she somehow knew that this was a baby, and therefore our problem to deal with. I could just be imagining or misinterpreting that, though…it was kind of a high-stress, low-sleep period. After that, though, the cat and our son pretty much ignored each other completely for the next several years. The cat seemed to understand that if a human is holding the baby, now is not a good time for lap-sitting, and that was that. She almost never went in the baby’s room, and certainly never jumped in the crib, like you hear stories about.
With all that said, our cat is pretty laid-back and easygoing, and her standard response to something that bothers her is to just leave and come back later. Of course, not all cats, or all kids, are alike, but it may turn out to be no big deal.
We have two cats and two small children. Before our first was born, we went through the same thing. Our cats were adopted from a rescue organization; one (Big Boy) was a stray and the other we have no history on, but, like your Gringe, he’s jumpy and seems like he may have been hurt in the past, and, like Grindle, he hates both change and sudden movements. We also have a prince
esscat, Mr. Crazypants, who claimed my husband as his own but was otherwise very friendly to everyone.Our biggest concerns were that Big Boy (who does bite/scratch when scared/unhappy) would hurt the baby if it startled him and Mr. Crazypants would love the baby and want to sleep on it. Also that he would not handle the division of my husband’s attentions well.
We set up the baby stuff in the house and let them get used it it. We did not allow them in the crib because they weren’t going to be allowed in it when Junior showed up. (We got a cat tent to go over the crib, and they did climb it a few times.) After our son was born, when my husband came home to feed them, he did bring a blanket or something that had been near the baby so they’d get used to his smell before we brought him home. When we brought the baby home, we set his bucket seat on the floor and let the cats sniff him. We made a concerted effort to pet them and talk to them, even while we were doing baby stuff (though the attention they got did decrease). We have also trained our kids very early to pet the cats gently, leave them alone if the they walk away, and not to chase them.
As it turns out, my big, cranky cat LOVES my son. We called him Nanny Cat for a while because, if we didn’t go get the baby fast enough when he cried, the big cat would start meowing and poking us with his paw. He’d sit next to the baby’s chair like he was guarding him. (We also found out the cat likes baby cereal.) Even now, he’ll sit with the kids while they’re playing, and my son was complaining just yesterday that the cat was “playing with” (scooting with his paw) his toy trains.
Mr. Crazypants hated the baby, but his hate manifested in his pretending like the baby didn’t exist at all (and glaring at us when any evidence of the kid’s existence was unavoidable). He spent most of my son’s first two years completely ignoring him. The biggest change in his behavior was that he wakes my husband up every single night between 2 and 5 a.m. wanting to be fed, and my husband decided it was easier to feed him than go through an hour of water spraying, pushing him off the bed, and risking waking the kids up with the loud, part-Siamese meowing machine.
By the time our daughter came along, the cats were just used to small people. She barely generated interest.
In the past four years, we’ve only had two cat-on-kid injuries. My son cornered Big Boy once, and the cat smacked him on the leg hard. He also made a sudden move towards the cat when the cat had nowhere to go once, and Big Boy did scratch him pretty nicely. We try to interfere and divert before these things happen, but we missed twice.
It can be tough for the cats that are needy – as ours is. He wasn’t used to not being able to occupy a lap at his leisure. Luckily, there are 2 laps and with one baby and one cat, there’s enough to go around. My son had to spend extra time in the hospital at birth, so we brought home lots of things that smelled like him. We also gave him a lot of time to get used to all the stuff in the nursery and attach consequences to trying to sleep in the crib/bassinet before the baby came.
That’s really all our vet advised us to do, but she’d heard of people doing some crazy things, like installing a screen door at the nursery entrance!
We have one very snuggly rescue cat who loves people but absolutely hates other cats or small animals, so we weren’t sure what she would make of a baby. When we brought our son home 3 months ago she sniffed him a bit but didn’t seem too interested otherwise and definitely was not the least bit aggressive. We had a little bit of acting up at first but things settled down considerably around 6 weeks. So be prepared for an adjustment period and try to keep to the cats’ normal routine (feeding/grooming/etc) as much as possible and everything should work out fine. As other commenters have mentioned, extra treats, praise and affection (especially from you) can help to ease the transition.
One funny story – our kitty slept in a bouncy chair every night for the last 2 months of my pregnancy but once the baby sat in it once, she never touched it again.
I have one cat and a 4 month old baby, and my husband and I didn’t do anything special. Our cat is kind-of stand-offish and not much of a lapsitter, so we didn’t really have any problems. We had the crib set up for a few months before the baby ame, but our cat has never even tried to get into it. (He doesn’t jump on kitchen counters either!) We were extra watchful when our daughter came home from teh hospital, but now I don’t have a problem leaving the baby alone of the floor or in her bouncy chair while I go to the bathroom. The cat really ignores her most of the time. He sniffs at every now and then, but that’s it
I have 2 cats – my girl is the typical cat, scared of her own shadow and wants to be touched only when *she* wants while my boy is very affectionate, more like a dog and loves to be in the middle of everything. My son is 18 months old now and the cats are both about 12 years old. I didn’t do much in preparation. We had the stroller and crib set up and my girl loved sleeping in both. I had planned on getting a net to go over the top of the crib, but never got around to it and…the cats never really tried to get in the crib with my son, only when he wasn’t there. They mostly just ignored him (to the point of trying to sit on him when he was on my lap and they wanted in, too) until he became mobile. Then my girl went into permanent hiding during the day. My boy will lie in the middle of it and lets my son crawl over him.
It depends, though, on your cats. It can’t hurt to introduce baby’s smell and make sure there is a room that can be designated cat free if needed. Remember, it will be a while before your child can really do anything and will spend a lot of the first six weeks sleeping (hopefully =) ), so keeping them seperated won’t be hard in the beginning and will give you time to work through any problems.
I guess I’ve got the flipside of all the happy stories upthread. We have two cats and before our son was born/came home we did the whole sniff-the-hat, leave-the-baby-stuff-out-for-inspection, give-them-a-safe-place stuff. However, they still flipped out when we brought him home (the first time he cried, they tried to climb me like a tree, claws out and all) and were hissing-hostile, and it’s only gotten marginally better from there.
Our son is 2.5 now. Oscar is the more easygoing cat and he’s reached a state of detente with the kid, but our other cat, Lucy, has not. She’s scratched our son a handful of times and she still hisses if he gets too close to her. Our solution has been to a) run interference, b) have a safe place for the cats away from the toddler, and c) train our son. We’ve explained that Lucy is afraid of him moving quickly or making loud noises (which, he’s a toddler, so that’s pretty much all he does) and so he stays away from her for the most part. If there is a run-in, the offending cat goes to the basement family room, where their food, water and litter is, and we shut the door. Before our son was able to understand that the cats were scared, we just didn’t leave him alone with the cats; when the baby was awake and mobile, they spent much of their time in the basement.
So I guess the moral is, if the intros don’t go well and/or there’s continued active hostility, you can still work around it. It just takes some work.
Good luck and congratulations!
Do NOT get a crib tent. They can pose a strangulation hazard.
That said, I have two children (4 years old and 5 weeks old) and two cats. I had the crib and room set up a couple months before the babies were born. And when I brought the babies home, I let the cats sniff them. One cat rolled her eyes; the other took a couple extra whiffs and will sometimes sniff the baby when she’s in her car seat or bouncy seat, but otherwise they leave her alone. Of course, the baby is also supervised heavily and usually in the same room with me, unless she’s sleeping. Then I close the door to her room so the cats can’t get it, because one of them probably would jump in her crib.
We have 2 cats, 2 dogs and a 6-month old. Our solution was to designate “off limits” areas for the pets. The guest room that became the nursery had always been off limits to them, so there was nothing new there. We also started keeping them out of our room at night since the baby was in there with us for the first two months.
We’ve been pretty fortunate; our cats are curious, but not overly interested or needy. Hobbes (7) always wants to go in rooms he’s not allowed in, but once there, he just sniffs around, so I let him in with me and make sure he’s out when I leave. Lulu (4) has no interest so far in the baby, but she did try to get in his swing with hilarious results – I guess she didn’t think it would move.
Since the baby swing lives in the living room, the cats were pretty interested in that. I read somewhere that they hate the feel of aluminum foil on their paws, so I put a sheet in the seat of the swing and they hated it, so stayed away. Now that the baby is getting grabby, I worry for Hobbes, as he likes to sit near us and be snuggly, but I actually think the shih tzu has a greater likelihood of snapping or scratching than the cats or the lab.
I’d say don’t overthink it too much, see how they (the cats) adjust and work from there. The number one rule for us is that baby is never left unsupervised with pets, period.
Good luck!
P.S. – We did put a baby gate on the room with the litterbox, so that once baby’s mobile, he won’t get into that mess.
We have two cats and an eight months old. We did the whole “sniff the hat” etc., but really it came down to personalities.
My ginger tabby boy is a loverboy, and I’m his person. He was very, very curious about baby until he tried to jump in the crib while grandma was admiring newly arrived baby. Grandma’s screams (not sanctioned by me, I got upset at my mother for yelling at him) dissuaded him from having any contact with baby for the next couple of months. Then baby decided she didn’t want to sleep alone in the crib anymore, so she went in our bed. Well, he used to be the one who slept next to me at night, so he was pretty heartbroken by the change. He kept trying to squeeze into my side, only to fall off the edge of the bed and meow up a storm. No fun for anyone. Eventually he learned that “mommy” can’t really sleep next to him at night, so nowadays he sleeps between my husband’s feet. Essentially I had to make time for him, and still do. I brush him/pet him etc. during the baby’s naps. Once he got used to the new schedule, he decided the baby was okay again, and has been getting friedly, to the point where he now lets her pull out his fur when she “pets” him, and tries to sleep next to her some mornings, after my husband vacates the bed. He also headbutts her, which in cat means “you’re alright”, but quickly enough so that he can escape her attempts to pull his whiskers. I make my mom laugh by saying “Well, he’s got no dignity, he’s basically almost a dog”.
My sweet skitty grey diva (“I love you, pet me! No wait, I need some space! I’m going to disappear for a few hours! But then I’ll want love, ok?”) was the baby before the human baby came (kitty came home with us at a mere 9 weeks of age and was the baby for over 2 years), so she took it a bit personally that we brought “the creature” home. In her case this meant that during the day she hid in the linen closet for the first week (really, we even had to put the feeding bowl at the foot of it, to make sure she wouldn’t go on a hunger strike), and eventually made her way to living room and perched herself on top of our couch, and glared at the baby for the next two months when not using the box or eating. The brief contact they’ve had since has been of the friendly at at distance variety. Funnily enough today when my daughter went down for a nap, she was sleeping on the bed already, and decided to check out the kid. This meant she nuzzled her, licked her, and then made biscuits before settling down next to her to take a nap. It was so cute. And then baby went and woke up fifteen minutes later, and started flailing like she usually does, which sent kitty scurrying.
Don’t know how long them liking baby will last though. My daughter has her sights set on grabbing the big fat tabby’s tail sooner or later, and you can totally tell she’s been desperately trying to crawl so she can chase him. LOL. That might or might not change both of their minds about her.
I read so many warnings about behavioral peeing and elimination, but neither of ours has done that. In fact for a while they sort of went the other way, and became obsessive about covering their stuff, and would wake us up with all their scratching in the box. Only thing I noticed that really changed is that my previously reserved grey diva has gotten a little less reserved about begging for attention. It’s like she’s developed Jan Brady-syndrome, and has to remind me that she exists as soon as I’m not holding “the creature”. So she waits until the kid’s asleep and then she meows for pets for the next hour, almost as if she were a kitten again. It’s almost an “hey mom! Remember when I was the baby?”.
When our first child was born, we had (and still have) five cats. Their personalities are all over the map, from super-friendly-lap-cat to mildly-indifferent-cat to spazzy-nervous-hissy-swatty-cat. We didn’t do much to prepare them for the baby and just decided to see how it went. It ended up going better than expected; they sniffed and sniffed, but they didn’t really care. They weren’t fond of loud noises or sudden movements, but they were mostly just jazzed to have a person home all the time since I quit my job to stay home with the baby. We were a little nervous about how our spazzy cat would react, but he just stayed far, far away. Overall, it was mostly like the cats knew that the baby was…well, a baby. They were incredibly tolerant when she got to the grabby stage, and even when she had a death grip on somebody’s tail, there was never any biting or scratching. When the second kid came along, they barely sniffed her when she came home.
As soon as both girls started getting mobile, we encouraged gentle touching and enforced strict no-grabbing rules with the cats. We didn’t make the cats totally off-limits because we didn’t want them to turn into forbidden fruit. Now the girls are almost 2.5 and almost 4, and they are really, really good about the cats (and other people’s pets). What’s more, most of the cats actually like them now. I think it’s largely because we encouraged them to interact but were careful to demonstrate appropriate interaction. One of them sleeps on my four-year-old’s feet, and another one (the 16-pound heifer) likes to rub on the girls when they stand still, and nearly knocks the youngest one down (which, of course, she loves). And let me tell you, there are few things as sweet as kids and animals. My girls will sit down together and pet the two friendliest cats and say, “Look, Mama! We’re petting our friends!” Aww!
@andipandi makes a good point, too–if the cats do wig, you can try a Comfort Zone cat pheromone diffuser. We are getting ready to move from Austin to San Jose, and I got the pheromone spray to use in the car and hotels in the hopes of making the drive (*sob*) as painless as possible. Our spazzy cat is a completely different feline now. When he gets stressed–by things like rearranging the books on a shelf, for instance–he stress-eats plastic and barfs everywhere. I set up the cat carriers a week ago and have been spraying them periodically, and he sleeps in the carrier and hasn’t eaten much of anything since then. He even comes downstairs during the day and lets the kids pet him and plays with the other cats. It’s pricey stuff, but if things start to go south between the cats and kids, it could be worth it to invest in a diffuser to take the edge off the cats’ behavior.
@Brian, I don’t think you were imagining your cat’s behavior. One of our cats is the mother of two others, and during my entire pregnancy, she was glued to my side. She’s usually just content to be in the room with us, but she had to be on or beside me whenever I stopped moving. When the first baby was born, she would sit next to her whenever I put her down. If the baby cried when I was in another room, the cat would come and meow to me, and then she would sit next to the baby and purr and meow until I got in there. She didn’t want anything to do with the girls once they got mobile, but when they were babies, she definitely put on her Mama Cat Pants.
We did the crib tent too, at first because I was paranoid of one of our two cats suffocating the baby (what can I say, first-time mom) and later, just to keep them from sleeping in the crib. If we forgot to zip up the tent after taking my son out, one or both were right in there, snoozing. They also loved his bouncy seat and baby blankets. (The cats truly appreciate the manufacturers of soft, cuddly baby stuff!)
Once my son was bigger and sturdier, we removed the tent and just tried to remember to close the bedroom door, and I resigned myself to washing the bouncy seat cover and blankets more often. Since they were frequently lousy with spit-up anyways, this was not so hard. (For some reason, the idea of fur in the crib always bothered me more than fur on other stuff. I don’t know.)
We also let the cats do lots of supervised sniffing, and fortunately for us, they tended to head for the hills when he got rowdy, so that made it easier.
What I found most sweet then and now is how tolerant they are of him. He would do the newborn-kicking thing right into one of their sides and they would just sit there and patiently take it until there was a break in the action, then split. It was like they understood that he was just a baby. When we first started working on gentle touching, they’d put up with his ham-handed patting for a bit, then jet; whereas if my husband or I pat them the ‘wrong way’, they’re off in a huff in two seconds. Their patience with him is really very cute and has made me love and appreciate the cats even more.
My son is three now, so the relationship varies from them rubbing against him affectionately to running like hell if he’s acting his age. If one of them ends up scratching him at some point, it’ll definitely be his fault. ;)
@ JenK: Heh. I swear our grey diva knew I was pregnant before I did. One day I was commenting to the husband about how weirdly affectionate our normally reserved shy kitty girl had gotten all of a sudden, the next we find out we’re having a baby. About 2 weeks before we found out, she started making biscuits on my abdomen right before I went to sleep, and would willingly sit on my lap during the day, things that she hadn’t done before, or has done since I had the baby.
Funnily enough, she never had kittens of her own, but I know that her momma cat loved being a mom and tried to nurse her young even after being spayed. She also had no problem adopting an orphan kitty while nursing. If my girl kitty hadn’t been neutered in kittenhood, my guess is that she would also have made a great mother.
The other cat, i.e., the boy, was clueless about what was going on until about 7 months in, when the baby was big enough for her kicks to register when he’d try to lay next to me at night, and even then he would give me a look as if to say “Wait, what? Since when does your abdomen kick things?” :P
Chiming in, with a “yeah, I guess it depends on the cat and the level of attention they already get”.
Apart from keeping the cat out of the nursery, we didn’t do anything special and I have to say that both the cat and the dog understood they’d been bumped down a notch very quickly, took it with grace and spent more time outside.
The bigger concern with us was what would happen once the baby was able to grab and move. Our cat is large (about 7kgs) and can be quite aggressive. He was quite a biter and scratcher in his youth and while age and a period on clomicalm or whatever it was had already improved him somewhat, I was still wary of cat and child together. Even though he still has his moments with me, he has been very tolerant of my daughter and on the very rare occasions he’s had a swipe or a bite because she’s annoying him, they’ve been more warning scratches _ never breaking this skin.
There are also CDs market for dogs with babies crying, fireworks and other “scary” noises. The theory is to start it off almost inaudible and the gradually increase the volume until babies crying no longer phases them. I’m of the opinion that it will drive YOU insane, but I’ve heard really good things about their affects on Italian Greyhounds (SERIOUSLY twirly dogs) and can’t imagine they wouldn’t help with felines.
If you haven’t already taken care of this, you must IMMEDIATELY make all litter-related chores Husband’s job. Don’t take the risk of handling the litter box while you’re pregnant. Toxoplasmosis is serious.
While I have no children of my own, the family story of how my mom got to be deathly allergic to cats is: while she was pregnant with me, she allowed the family cat to sleep on/with her while she took her daily naps. Something about the deep breathing of all that dander during sleep, and all the hormonal changes of pregnancy, triggered a wicked respiratory response that got worse and worse over the years. So, if you have any risk of allergies, don’t sleep with the cats now while your body is going through so much.
Keep the cats out of the crib, pram, sleeper/carrier. After I arrived, word is that the cat decided my crib was the place to poo. He very quickly got relegated to being an outdoor cat, what with the mess and Mom’s new allergy and all. Not a happy fate for a loveable rascal who had been fine all through my older sister’s birth and toddlerhood.
Naturally, as soon as I grew up and moved out, I became the Daughter With Too Many Cats.
Hi! Mom here. Thanks for all of the advice. So far it’s going ok with little J and the cats. They mainly ignore him unless he’s making a fuss.