babyproofing cat litterbox/food/water

Hey ladies, we are starting to babyproof and are planning on gating off certain areas. The problem is that my 2 cats will have to jump over the gates to get to their food/water and their litter box. Does anyone have experience with this? Do the cats learn pretty quickly to do this? I am so worried that my girl cat who is 10 years old won't feel like jumping! I know some people will place the gate high enough for the cat to go under the gate but i don't feel comfortable with that as i feel like if my two big cats can fit under then the babies could possible get stuck. Does anyone have any words of reassurance for me? They are exclusively indoor cats by the way. thanks!!

 

With older DS we had cats and they do learn to jump the gates very quickly. Cats are, for the most part, pretty smart animals and pretty agile, too. We kept our cat food and water in the kitchen and the litter box in the garage which was off of the kitchen. We put in a small doggie door in the door that led to the garage so the kitties could get to it and then put up a gate in the entrance to the kitchen. The kitties would hop it when they wanted food or water and would do the same and then go through the doggie door when they needed to potty.

 

My cats learned how to get around the gate, most of the time they would go through the railing to get to the living room (to avoid the gate). We have a family room and a laundry room downstairs, so the litter is in the laundry room and their food and water is behind the door to go downstairs to the family room/laundry room. My cats will either stand by the door quietly or meow to go downstairs when they need to. Cats will adjust quickly. Good luck!

 

We have the cats litter boxes in a half bathroom off our hallway. That bathroom is never used as their is a full bath just across the hall from it. So we put the litter boxes in there when I found out I was pregnant, and when the boys were nearly crawling I bought a "door gripper" from Amazon (also sold at One Step Ahead) which keeps the door ajar just a few inches to let the cats in, but not wide enough for a baby to crawl through the door. I do like the door gripper and think it works pretty well and keeping the door in that position.

That being said we don't want our babies crawling around the loose litter that the cats leave behind at the door opening, so we do plan to put up a baby gate at that hallway opening. And we are going to mount it just high enough that the cats can slither under but the babies can not (since we have an older cat and I worry about him not wanting to jump and going to the bathroom elsewhere in the house). We already have another metal walk-thru gate up in another location of the house and have mounted it just 4 inches or so off the ground, and I really don't think our boys could fit under it, and they haven't tried to do so either.

As for our cats food and water bowls, we have a Summer Infant Secure playard set up between our living room and kitchen area (which is an open layout). And we have those bowls between the playard and the living room wall. So to keep the boys from getting back behind the playard to those bowls we have just been sliding a kitchen chair w/ booster seat in the way. So far that stops them and they no longer have an interest in that area, but that may very well change and we have to come up w/ another location to place those things.

I love my kitties but they sure do pose some baby proofing challenges!

 

we have two indoor cats, one of whom is 10 years old and very very tubby (as well as cranky). i think you'll be surprised how well your 10 year old can get her furry butt over a gate. cats like to eat, they'll figure it out. and i definitely agree with deciding not to leave a gap at the bottom for the cats to crawl under.

 

Yeah i am hoping she will be ok...our bed sits up high and she has no problem jumping onto that...i guess 10 is really not that old for a cat...my MIL has a 22 year old cat!!

 

We never gated off the cat stuff -- it lives in our home office and we didn't let the babies in there anyway. I guess it helped that the babies were in daycare during the week, so when we were home, there were usually two adults and they were nearly always in someone's line of sight. But we just kept the office door closed some of the time (the cat would meow loudly if she needed to get in there) or else just redirected the babies if they got close. They always wanted to be in the main living areas with us, anyway. It wasn't like they were roaming the house on their own.

We actually wound up not doing all that much "total babyproofing" (as in, you could leave your children totally unattended for an hour with no damage to either babies or house) at all. Instead, we did it sort of reactively -- see what the babies seem to want to mess with, and babyproof that. It turned out they had zero interest in lamp cords, cat litter, climbing the bookshelves, or many other things. I guess we were lucky to have very cautious babies!

ETA: When we did need to leave them unattended (to go to the bathroom, open the oven door, get something from the garage...) we put them in the double superyard. It basically consumed our dining room (we squeezed the table into a corner of the living room) for 9 months or so.

 

i should mention that we don't gate off the food/water area anymore. as a consequence we've twice found the boys quietly squatting near the bowls, cheeks stuffed with kibble. <_< :blink: i didn't know whether to laugh or barf.

 

We gated the laundry room, but our cat couldn't jump the gate so we only closed the gate when we were downstairs (kitty would go to the gate and cry if it was closed). Luckily my DH is very resposible - I probably would have left the gate shut all day by accident. I also worked with DS a lot on "no kitty room" and he seemed to get it (but he was over a year then).