MIO = Meow It Out. I’m sure there’s lots of controversy on the subject, and damn if we didn’t try it anyway.
See, our cat, the beloved FatKitty, has been cosleeping with Dave for all of her almost 12 years. She prefers the center position, stretched out lengthwise, head on Dave’s pillow, and will actually (I know, you can get ready to close your browswer on cuteness overload) spoon us. She loooooves her humans. Damn.
While we don’t plan on cosleeping in the first weeks (cosleeping here meaning, in the bed cosleeping, we will have a bassinet in our room, right next to me) because of Dave’s nervousness (despite, as I mentioned, never once rolling over on to the cat in 12 years) I anticipate it happening anyway, fairly soon. I would never do something that made Dave nervous, but I think that once the baby is here, he’ll realize that it would be damn hard to roll over on your own baby if you weren’t drunk or high or morbidly obese (the usual causes of such tragedies). In preparation, i thought maybe we should work on training the cat to sleep outside of our bedroom. Yeah, that’ll work.
In fairness, though, the few nights before her time in our bed had suddenly dropped off, by her choice — one night she didn’t come in at all! I wondered if it was because she senses some change afoot, and was trying to cut herself off. So we closed the door when we went to bed on Friday night, and hoped for the best. Instead, we got one pissed off kitty pawing at the door with BOTH PAWS (so, she had to get off her fat ass and stand on her HIND legs, which is way mor effort than she usually expends) for about 10 minutes straight before we relented and let her in. She immediately got into her spot and purred loudly for a looonnnggg time, probably thinking "Oh my god, you’re ALIVE! I thought you’d been murdered in your sleep!" Last night, she was there for almost the whole night, longer than she’d been last week, no doubt traumatized by the thought of a hollow-core door separating her from her humans.
So, fellow cat-owners, etc, how was the transition for your pets to having a baby in the house? I’m not worried about her ‘getting in the crib’ or even the bassinet, because she is simply too FAT to jump that high. We could put a side of salmon in the crib, and she’d die trying to get in, but she’d never make it. But, we also don’t plan on using the crib right away, either. I imagine that once the baby is here, it will be a whole lot easier to throw the cat out into the hall at night, if necessary, even though right now it feels a little like putting Granny in a home and driving off without looking back.
One of my cats was WAY too freaked out by the commotion to come near us for a few weeks. The other was okay snuggling with whatever visitor was sleeping on the couch.
A word of warning, though, because sleep is hard to come by in those first few weeks, the last thing you want is to finally get the bean to sleep only to be woken up by a cat meowing or scratching. Will FK snuggle with your visitors? If she normally hides, that could work to your advantage too. Maybe you could leave Dave’s usual pillow somewhere else for her to sleep on? I do think its a good idea to try to get her out before the baby comes, but its not worth losing any sleep in these last few nights. My guess is she’ll come in your bed, and as soon as she hears the baby she will run like the wind. The fattest, slowest wind you can imagine.
Now that V is almost 2, we let her nap with Milo. He also sneaks in at night and sleeps in her unused crib, which is attached to our bed. I am hoping that the cat cat will help her transition to her own bed some day because he is VERY attached to her.
Yeah, my idea is basically Dave’s pillow in her own room.
Kitty treats, too. Bribery.
By her I mean Fat Kitty.
We didn’t stress it. The cat slept in the bed with us all, and we’d push her down off the lentil when we had to. For the most part, she was not at all interested in being within 5 feet of the lentil, so it wasn’t an issue. On occasion she wanted the plum spot in between the two of us, and when that happened we’d just push her off and redirect her to the foot of the bed. Now she prefers sleeping at the foot of the bed- more room for everyone.
I don’t have advice, but (if you think of it in the new mama haze) update us on what happens. My cat doesn’t sleep with us, but I am wondering whether I will *ever* see her again once we bring a stranger into the home. She loves us, and only us – she may spend the first year under the spare bed!