I love cats with babies. It is innocence with innocence. It is instinctive behavior with instinctive behavior. It is raw. It is not controlled, messed up adult human stuff. But there are pitfalls. It shows up the differences between the two species: felis silvestris catus and homo sapiens.
This is a page of selected cats and babies videos in a gallery. Although, there is one video with two kids.
You just have to click on the images below to go to a page to see the full sized screenshot, the video below it together with a comment on it. Of course you can add to the comment!
Babies like the feel of a cat. Of course, cats feel great. The cats and babies videos are interesting to me for several reasons. Firstly, as I said, I like to see babies and cats together. All being well, the baby will grow up to love cats. This means one more cat lover and less abused cats. Cats need good people!
It is also said that close contact with a cat at an early age helps build up a baby’s immune system….(continued below gallery)
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- Cat Takes Chicken From Baby
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- Cat Wants To Snuggle Up To Baby
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- Baby Checks Out Cat
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- Cat Play Fights With Baby
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- Baby Pulls Cat Into Bath
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- Toddler Loves His Cat
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- Girl and Boy Admire Cat and Kittens
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- Baby Girl On Top Of Cat
….There is, though, quite a lot of negative comment on allowing cats to be in the same bed as babies. This might hark back to days gone by when superstitious people believed cats killed babies. We are at the time of witchcraft and people still believed in that until about 350 years ago. A lot of people still do.
Another important aspect of cats and babies together is how the baby interacts with the cat. In all the videos the parent is making the video so the situation is being monitored and supervised. Great, but if there is one certainty it is that a baby will mishandle the cat. The cats in the videos are very tolerant so nothing much happens. Are all cats tolerant with babies? Maybe. But something could happen that spoils what could and should be a nice relationship. Parents really have to make sure that their kids learn how to handle cats. That is for the sake of both the cat and child or baby.
Lastly, there is that knotty and difficult subject to bring up – declawing. I know most Americans will shrug their shoulders and say that I am just another pain in the butt Brit who has no right to get involved with American affairs and to butt-off.
I disagree because this is not just about American affairs it is about teaching kids to understand nature and what is good about nature. Above all it is about respecting cats and nature generally. That is good for the kid, the cat and the planet.
So, to my point…are some of these cats in the videos declawed? It would not surprise me if they were because I wouldn’t let a child of mine interact with a cat as some of these kids have for fear of the the cat inadvertently scratching my child. The dividing line between gentle play and getting scratched is fine. Play for a cat means hunting – grabbing, biting etc. It is great to see babies play with cats but it must be done with caution and supervision. That is common sense. Is one reason for declawing cats to avoid a cat scratching a child?
Associated page: Cat and Baby Precautions.
Cute photographs.
Hi Rudolph. If you click on the photos you’ll be taken to a video.
I’ve often wondered the same thing about these cat/baby pics. Are they declawed? Good question. Well I can say I have seen a number of these types of videos from other countries, especially Japan and China – so I guess those cats are not declawed. It’s an pbvious question if the video is from north america. Asides from that though, the ones I have seen from other countries are very sweet and beautiful and I have seen quite alot of the. The cats are very tolerant in some cases but in others I have seen the cat to be very curious of the baby, yet gentle with it, and in others still I have seen the cat being almost protective of the baby. These are genuine and beautiful videos. The western/US ones are hard to enjoy if you dont really know if the cat is declawed to I’d rather just watch the other ones. Perhaps they are not in which case I would be missing out in some sense. I particularly love the curous cat and baby playing with eachother. I’ve seen some very sweet videos like that. I have seen an older cat play with tiny kittens and be very careful and gentle with them. I know these cats very well and they live together grown up now. But when 2 of them were being bottle fed (they were found outside alone) – I remember Nushka, the 1 year old, still very young but larger girl cat was so curious about the little ones and would sort of want to play with them and she would roll next to them and reach her paws out gently to them being ever so careful not to hurt or scare them. I swear its one of the sweetest things I ever saw. I have a photo somewhere – terrible quality but still. Now I think that similarly a cat, even though curious and playful, knows full well a baby is very fragile and can also see how important the baby is to the humans. I think this same gentleness I witnessed between cats and few week old kittens applies. The result being that the kitty will be very careful and sensitive to the situation. That is just one situation where the cat is excited and curious – probably the more questionably risky one – whereas if they are sleeping together or the cat is being protective then its different and less worrisome on the surface anyway.
Nice point Marc. Cats do seem to recognise that they are dealing with a baby. That makes sense because you often see interspecies mothering. You see dogs mothering kittens and so on. It comes naturally. This is probably why the cats in the videos are so tolerant. They are treating the baby as a giant kitten. When you see mother cats with their kittens they are very tolerant of their antics.