How to get cats to jump the baby safety gate?!

DD is starting to crawl - well she looks more like a caterpillar at the moment but I am sure full-on crawling is not far away! DH is going away for 3 weeks so I wanted him to install a safety gate before he went.

We have 2 indoor cats, the food, water and litter box are all in the laundry, which is accessed via the kitchen. Conveniently we can block off the kitchen with one gate :p

So DH put it up on the weekend, and so far the cats have refused to jump it. It is 75cm high and I know they can jump that high - their scratching pole is about 1m tall and they can also jump on the kitchen bench which is about 1m tall too. I think maybe they are freaked out by the fact they can see through the bars, and that there is nothing substantial to 'land on' while jumping over it.

I've put a dining chair next to the gate to see if that would help - get them used to jumping it with assistance, then I would eventually take the chair away before DD could start climbing! So far one of the cats did use the chair but then he wouldn't jump back out of the kitchen. Sigh.

I don't want to be a cat doorwoman!! They will walk through the open gate no problem.

Can anyone help? Do I just need to wait for them to get used to it?

Our cat does it.. we take her food in the room then call her in and she jst jumps over..sorry not much help. But ours is tall as well..I'm sure they will get used to it in timetime

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i inherited a baby gate from friends who had a cat. They had cut one of the bars down low and then put an extra bit going horizontal so the cats had a hole they could fit through but the baby couldn't.

they would do it if you were not there to help them Im sure, our cat can open the flyscreen door himself but if he can see me he will sit there meowing until I open it.
Is there a special treat you could use? Im sure my cat would jump thru fire to get to a tin of sardines :lol:

Yep, Party-of-Five has hit the nail on the head - your cats are probably playing you for a sap :rofl:

I'd say wait a little while to see if they'll jump it when you're not watching, or if the cats are good mates maybe try putting just one on the other side of the gate while you feed the one that's in the laundry with you - chances are the one left out will jump the gate pronto to make sure the other cat isn't getting his food. Then alternate cats, of course.

Just feed them on the other side of the gate, something nice and smelly, they'll soon start jumping it!!!!

I'm having the opposite problem I don't want my cats jumping the baby gate lol its even up on a step and all which makes it about 1m tall and they still jump it :doh: but I agree a few treats and some time to get used to it and I'm sure they will learn to jump it :)

My cats did the same thing. I had their food & kitty litter in the bathroom & they refused to jump the gate until I just left them in there. If they wanted to go into the rest of the house they had to jump & jump they did. Its a power play.

We cut one post out of the baby gate so she could still get through but kepts the girls out.

lol yep I reckon if you weren't there, they'd soon just do it ;) Cats can be incredibly cranky creatures sometimes when we change or upset their apple carts! They'll get over it, I think they're just "voicing" their dislike of what you've done.

put them on the laundry side and leave them... the will learn to jump if they want to get out!!!

Or do the thing with one cat in getting fed and the other one outside the gate, pretty sure they will jump over that fence soo fast! LOL..

I have a 15yo lazy cat who will stand at the front door meowing even though he knows the back door is open!!! I had to ignore him for a couple of hours every day for him to get the picture, now he walks around.. btu I did have to listen to 3-4 hours of meowing. Silly cats

I agree they r just being lazy & not wanting to jump. One of our cats fits thru the bars of our baby gate she's a lil runt. The other is fat and will only jump it if she REALLY has too... like when we rnt there. To get them to go thru I agree just leave them on the wrong side of the gate.

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My cat took about a week to realise it was better for him to jump the gate then wait for me to open it.

Our cat is too lazy to jump the gates, he will sit on one sit trying to scratch at them to get us to open it up.

We now leave him gated in the kitchen/laundry/sunroom side of the house (his food & kitty litter is in the laundry) and he has plenty of space seeing all he does is sleep all day. I find this much easier now that DD is running around the house and I don't have to worry about her chasing the cat and once she is in bed at night we then open the gates up and he has free reign of the house again.

hehe Kelly, you just reminded me how we got one of my cats to jump the gate - the toddler chasing it gave them real incentive. Of course, a toddler pulling a cat tail through the gate is very noisy.

Lots of great replies and I thought we were doing well, as both cats had jumped the gate. Then I woke up to find one had peed on the couch. So not impressed. So for now the gate is open and as DH is away at the moment, when he gets back I think I'll get him to remove a bar so they can go through the closed gate.
For those who've done this, did your little ones get their head stuck - that's my fear...

Oh cr@p! That's not good, signs of a cranky putty!!! My last cat (pure bred ragdoll), we had to rehome cos he just started peeing on everything, every bed in the house, the change table twice... had to buy new mat things for it... new doonas. It all started toward the end of being pg with Oskar. Since we found him a new home he was on his best behaviour and a "model citizen" lol. Hope it doesn't come to that for you, cos it was hard but unfortunately necessary for our home to remain sane and also sanitary!

Yeah unfortunately this is not the first pee incident. Sigh. I've treated the couch with an enzyme spray and my ILs are drycleaners so they'll clean the covers for me. I think it was the female but not sure. She is super sensitive so maybe the gate freaked her out. I've ordered more Feliway too, we got it last time she peed on the couch (turns out she had a uti from stress when we went away at Xmas and she apparently missed 'her' baby!!) and it seemed to help. It's just super frustrating not knowing which one did it and why, or what I can do to make them happy again! And as a busy mummy thinking about my cat's mental health is not always at the top of my list :(

I havent read the other posts to see if someone had already written this, but we have 2 cats and we bought safety gates with bars in them and I got DH to saw out the middle bar. It had made a gap big enough for a cat to slide through but not big enough for a baby to get more than an arm through. It has worked brilliantly for us :)

I haven't read the other replies. Put the cats food on the other side of the gate, that'll make the at jump it.

Soph28 - how big is the gap you made? I think I want to do this but am worried about DD getting her head stuck...
Tinks - I tried the food idea but my cats are stubborn!!

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Soph28 - how big is the gap you made? I think I want to do this but am worried about DD getting her head stuck...

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If you only cut out one pole it should be fine. Our DD never got her head stuck, the gap isnt big enough. We have 'Baby Club' brand gates and just sawed the middle pole out. We did this option because one of our cats is getting old and I didnt want her to jump every time she needed to go to the litter/ food.