Baby gate wide enough to let cats through?

We purchased 2 metal pressure mounted gates on Sunday to help quarantine the boys in our living room/kitchen area where we can keep a better eye on them as we make dinner, prep bottles, etc. There are 2 entrances into this open area and one gate worked perfectly on one entrance. But after DH worked for 20 minutes setting the other gate up at the hallway entrance we realized that the cats wouldn't be able to get passed it to get to their little boxes which are down the hallway. Doh!! I've looked at several gates online hoping to find one that would have slats that are just wide enough to let a cat through, but narrow enough to prevent a baby getting through. However all of the gates I've seen have very narrow slats. I came across this gate with a cat door, but I realized it is to keep dogs from passing through not babies, and a baby may try to get through the little cat door and get stuck.

OMG, while writing this post and looking at some previous gates I came across this baby gate made specifically to allow a small pet through! By golly this may just do the trick! And best of all it is very affordable.

I almost decided to abandon this post, but thought I would go ahead and post it in case anybody else has the baby gate vs. cat dilemma

 

My cats always jumped over the gates with no problem.

 

One of our cats could jump over some shorter gates (not the tall ones though), and the other cat is older and can't jump over even short ones. However, I just realized the baby/cat gate above is not a walk through gate, so it would have to be taken down and put up every time we passed through it. Hmmm. I'm torn. I actually don't like the idea of a semi-permanent gate being kept up 24/7 for this entrance, but the thoughts of having to pop it up anytime we wanted to let them roam free in the living room isn't great either. So I still have a dilemma, just a different one, LOL.

 

Several people here recommend mounting the gate just high enough for the cats to slither under, but low enough to keep the babies from getting under. DH is going to try that out tomorrow and see how it works.

 

Our cats always have just jumped over the gate that was at the top of our stairs. I didn't know they made special gates, but that's cool. You learn something new everyday.

 

For the tall gate, we mounted it about 5 inches above the ground to let my fat-cat under it. The other gates, both cats could jump over.

 

We also mounted the gate up off the ground enough for the cats to go under it. Even though the cats were quite old they managed with no problem. Our gate was one of the ones with the foot-operated release (LOVED it) and we put a wooden block under each end of the gate to keep it from creeping downward every time we opened it.