Our Cat is quite independent, however sleeps on our bed every night too. when we bought a Dog she was quite nasty and tried to assert her authority as being the oldest and the boss, so we were a bit worried...
This among other things was a reason to not co-sleep in the early months.
When we bought miss MJ home we were a bit worried, we had set the room up weeks before and after an initial explore that cat was NOT allowed in the baby room - kept door closed - prior to her coming home (same rule as the dog) and door is push to almost closed at night, and due to thinck carpet the cat cannot (but does not bother to) open it
Anyway, she was more aprehensive of Mj and kept out of her room when she arrived, occasionally when i would do a night feed she would come into MJ's room and sit near us, but leave if i got up.
As MJ has gotten older she has fallen in love with our cat, who really cat be bothered with this little thing that tries to follow her around
She will tolerate her pulling her fur and she seems to know that she is not allowed to hurt her.
In saying that i would not necessarily trust her and when she was small they were not left alone together.
Charlie (the cat) did retreat under the house for a week or two in the early weeks and i think bought us a bird and a mouse, we made sure that she was not forgotten and made sure she was always fed, patted and included in family time.
Now MJ will occasionally co-sleep with us, the cat is on the bed too, but keeps her distance and is not nasty at all.
I wonder about the reaction of pets to a new baby as well. We are going to start TTC#1 later this year and have 2 indoors only furbabies. We keep the spare room closed. Mainly because then we don't need to clean it again when someone comes over. The cats just LOVE sleeping on that bed. Grrr. But at the back of both our minds is...get them used to having a room that they are NOT allowed to go into.
I have one cat that isn't particularly clingy but got quite jealous when my family dog came to stay and we paid attention to him. The other cat is very much mine and cries for me if he can't find me (I know how pathetic ). They both sleep with us and it'll break my heart to stop them from sleeping with us but I think once we begin TTC we will have to distance ourselves just a bit. I'm worried if we employ the distancing strategies once I'm pg they'll put two and two together - you know how animals just KNOW stuff? I'm hoping once baby comes they'll be okay. I think they will always be mine and OH's cats but hopefully they can extend the affection to our kids as well.
I can already tell we'll have loads of people wondering "what we're going to do with the cats" when we get pg. Umm keep them.
we too were concerned about how our animals would cope. like some have mentioned we set up the nursery and let the animals check it out, and we also made sure that they knew the cot etc was off limits.
when i had DD i made DH bring home some of the labour clothes and DDs wraps and a nightie. this way the cats and the dog were able to sniff both me (b/c my hormones would have changed my smell) and the baby. that way when you get home, although the baby is rather a shock to their systems at least the smell has a bit of history ITMS.
i recommend just taking it nice and slow with the animals. let them approach in their own good time and make sure that someone is around to give them extra pats during high stress times (ie 'witching hours' etc). our pets got a little stressed when DD cried in those early weeks so we had to have a 'safe' place for them to retreat to that wasn't full of baby stuff and smells.
We don't have a cat...but I figure it's probably not too different from when we introduced our baby to our much loved and spoilt 'treated like a baby' dog.
We too let our dog come into the nursery when we were setting it up, but she was only allowed in there when we were (that's probably a little harder with a cat though). My DH also brought items home for our dog to smell before we brought Cameron home. Then when we got home, the first thing I did was go and give our dog lots of attention before we brought Cameron in. Then we sat on the lounge, let the dog sniff and tell her she was very good. Then when Cameron slept I would make sure I would give our dog lots of cuddles and attention. She has been really good with him and now Cameron's getting more mobile and eating lots of yummy foods, our dog I think has realised the benefits of having a baby around.
A couple of handy hints (what my cousin did with her cat anyway), might be to put a bunch of blown up balloons in the cot, that way the cat will get a fright when the nails pop them and hopefully will learn not to sleep there.
She also put up a fly screen door to help keep the cat out of the baby's room.
We have a Burmese, who sleeps between us in the bed, with her head on the pillow. She is, by her choice, an indoor precious cat, who is my furbaby. If she ever gets locked outside by accident, she cry's at the door ALL night until someone lets her in. If she see's me go and hop on the couch and cuddle dh, she will find us and snuggle in the middle.
Sorry, the reason I wrote the above is, I am unfortunatly not pregnant as yet, however I once watched a tv show, where the owners, put up a mesh security door on their baby's bedroom so they knew the cat/s could not get in the cradle/cot in the middle of the night.
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