Great analogy and great post. You said it all.
I don’t think anyone has said animals are more important than people. My question is why does it have to be an either-or proposition?
I think it’s becoming more and more common to “overprotect” children. With the smoking thing cleared up, at least it’s not an example of overprotecting by level of convenience. As in, the cat goes because it’s just a car trip, but the smoking stays because it would require me to quit, and that’s just too hard.
I’m only 35, but there are hundreds of toys from my childhood that would be unsellable today because they’re “too dangerous”. There are also plenty of parental actions taken back then that would be horrifying today, just driving without seatbelts would be unthinkable, we did it every day.
You could take sponge baths, and use the restroom at the gas station down the street, or at work. But if the safety of your child is less important than your own convenience, I guess you can justify anything, even cats.
It wasn’t a dingo Lib, it was a 6 week old pit bull.
There is no evidence that the parents smoked.
The overprotectiveness is bothering me. You know what we’re planning to do when my son gets older and becomes more mobile? When he can chase the cats around? When they might get kind of pissed at him for chasing them or pulling his fur?
We’re going to do the unthinkable and TEACH him how to treat the cats gently. We’ve already started as best as we can - we help him ‘pet’ the cats (when they’ll stay still for him). It will take time and it will take patience, but we owe it to BOTH the baby and our cats.
We had cats my entire life growing up. My parents had full-time jobs, two children, all kinds of activities, and yet we still grew up learning to love our cats. Amazing. Now my brother and I both have children, and we both have animals - he has two large dogs and two cats, and I have two cats. My one year old nephew’s best buddy is my brother’s golden/husky mix, who is the most patient dog in the history of the world. My girl cat adores my son - when we first brought him home, she would sleep right next to his bouncer and when he cried, she would cry at me until I did something to fix it. My boy cat is a bit more indifferent, but as he’s realized that sharing me isn’t so bad, he’s starting to warm up to the baby. Neither of them have ever jumped in the crib, or tried to scratch the baby. The worst my boy cat has ever done was jump in my lap while I was holding the baby and lay down against him because he didn’t realize that lump was the baby (as soon as he realized what he was laying on, he jumped right down, though).
This thread is blowing my mind as well, but not for the same reasons as StuffLikeThatThere.
E.
I’m probably (I hope) the only person on the Dope who has had a cat claw in my eye. Still have cats.
My mother had 6 children and still had pets.
I don’t think the claws of older cats are any sharper. Cats continually “sharpen” their claws, but they are really peeling off the old, extremely sharp claws and revealing less sharp claws underneath. Stepping on one of those sheaths is most uncomfortable.
Huh. My parents got a cat because they had just had a baby; they discovered that they had mice, which they also did not care to have skittering across baby’s face.
My brother and I remained unmutilated, ungouged, uncompeted-with-for-affection, unsmothered, and otherwise undamaged by the cat. Actually, the cat probably had more to worry about than we did.
People have had cats in the same household as babies since the Dawn of Time. I’m not condemning your sister, as she knows her life situation better than I do. But cats and babies are not forever incompatible, in my experience.
Exactly. FWIW, I kept my cats, but then I didn’t already lose a child. That’s the bit of information that keeps me from jumping in wholly on the animals’ side.
Thank you! I, like you, grew up with cats and suffered no ill effects.
If actually supervising the baby is out of the question, then yes, I suppose getting rid of the cats makes sense. But why not teach the child love for – and a healthy respect for – animals from the get go?
Our entire society has gotten so risk adverse it isn’t even funny.
If people were this risk adverse in the 17th century, this country (USA) would not exist as nobody would take the risk of crossing the ocean.
Pets and kids are a good combo. Our cat Puss helped raise two kids. never a scratch, never a bite. She taught both of our kids good life lessons including when she had to be put down, that things die.
It would never have occurred to me to dump the cat before the kids arrived.
Oh yeah, a cat scratch is not a death sentence.
I feel sad for the kid who is going to grow up without animals. Or, apparently, a bike. No cheapass football, baseball or basketball trophies. No tree forts, no tire swings, no fistfights, no parachuting off the roof with a bedsheet. Okay the last one is no great loss.
Who said the kid was going to grow up entirely without animals? I am 100% for giving the kid an animal of his/her own, when they’re old enough to understand it - say 7 or 8 - and teaching them to raise it. Start with ants. Move up the chain. Kids should have pets.
I just have serious problems with letting a hairy mangy animal anywhere near a newborn. Maybe it’s because my job is entirely focused around preemies and low birth weight babies, and I know how sensitive they can be. It’s moot for me, as I won’t have any kids, and won’t have any dogs or cats- my main pets are reptiles and eventually a parrot, which is far easier to keep away from a baby.
But I wouldn’t dream of lecturing anyone else on their choice, either way! My sister-in-law has a newborn and two dogs, one of which is very old and crotchety. Do I fear the dog might hurt the baby? Yes, absolutely - the dog is a very grumpy one and snaps if you approach it suddenly. Do I say anything? Not a word, except in confidence to my SO.
Just the same way, I don’t see how anyone has any right to judge people who go the other way. It’s not YOUR situation. It’s not YOUR newborn. Provided the cat/dog is not being dumped heartlessly, I see no problem with it. Why does everyone have to go butting into everyone else’s business?
Well, I was holding a cat once and she oh-so-casually streeeeetched up and hooked me in the throat. That was a fun moment, but I loved that cat and was very sad when she died.
I don’t care much for children. Getting rid of a beloved cat because some pushy newborn is moving in… nah, never happen.
While I don’t plan on having children and if I did have children I likely wouldn’t get rid of any cats I had, I have to admit that, in fact, a cat scratch can be a tragedy.
Many years ago, my step-father was scratched by my sister’s cat one evening. By midnight, he couldn’t breathe and the scratch on his arm had become swollen. My mother took him to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis, or “flesh-eating bacteria.” His arm became swollen to twice its size and turned black. The infection spread throughout his arm. We were talking amputation and preparing for his potential death, or at least some disability for the rest of his life. His body managed to fight off the infection with the aid of the antibiotics and he retains some function of his arm, but it could have been a lot worse.
Is this a common outcome to cat scratches? Obviously not, since I imagine the majority of people in this thread have been scratched by a cat at one time or another. Still, though, there are lots of infections that you can get from a cat scratch.
Again, I wouldn’t get rid of my cat if I had a child, but I can’t entirely blame someone else for doing so.
Oh puhleeze, YOU don’t know anything about HER particular cats. Some of them can handle kids, some cannot. Do you know how her house is laid out, whether the cats can easily escape a toddler or would wind up cornered and fight back? Do you know how much energy she has for caring for them, whether she’s suffering from PPD, how helpful her spouse is? Do you know how her day is scheduled, whether she’s able (and willing) to keep a constant, unending eye on her child or needs to let him play on his own? Is her child obedient, or is he one to push every single issue to the wall and create battles over the simplest limits?
As to bathtubs and toilets, yes, parents DO take precautions, it’s called putting a lock on the door. We have hook-and-eye locks on many of our doors.
As to overprotecting, I’ll agree it IS common in our culture these days.
One of the reasons, though, why parents ARE so risk-averse is the constant finger-pointing whenever anything DOES go wrong. “OMG, why didn’t they think to XXX?” “They should’ve known better, what are they, stupid?” You see it all the time, here and elsewhere - mothering boards are even worse with their judgements and criticisms. And it winds up preaching to the choir; conscientious people become even MORE conscientious and uptight, while the oblivious merely continue.
Shit happens, it’s true, shit just happens.
But if a parent decides that a cat represents an unacceptable risk, then so be it. Pets can be great - so can a million other options and choices that are out there.
You know what? If you know you want children and that you won’t want to have animals around said child, then you don’t get a freakin’ animal to begin with. Period. I don’t care if children are two, three, seven, ten years down the road. You don’t get an animal in the first place because pets are a life long committment in my book.
E.
Because it gives us an opportunity to feel superior?
Amen. Anyone who could discard a family cat or dog probably shouldn’t be a parent either.
What a ridiculous over the top statement. We’re talking about an infant not a kid. An infant has no appreciation for the fact that a cat/dog is a living, breathing animal. To them it’s no different than a stuffed animal they poke in the eye or put in their mouth. They can hurt, step on, sit on an animal and the animal reacts because a baby doesn’t know any better.
Try to reign in the drama.