Introducing a new baby to pets at home

October 8, 2014 by MARC MORRONE / petxperts2@aol.com

My wife and I are having our first baby and the due date is next month. We have a Chihuahua, a Pomeranian and two cats, and we admit that we have spoiled them. We are wondering what we should do when we bring the baby home from the hospital. We have read that we should show the dogs a doll and make believe that it is a baby, but that seemed a bit weird, and wondered what suggestions you would have. -- Gregory James, Lindenhurst

Humans have been introducing their pets to new babies for thousands of years and, realistically speaking, it has always worked out. You are correct about the doll, as dogs know this is not a person. There is nothing they can learn about human babies from watching you and your wife playing with a doll no matter how much it looks like a human baby.

My son was born into a house with eight dogs and eight cats plus all sorts of other pets, and my family and my wife's family visualized all sorts of horrors. I had a grand game plan worked out to have a meet-and-greet for the pets and the baby, but actually common sense was the key here.

We just supervised all encounters between the animals and the baby and gradually they all grew used to him and took him for granted. I did put a screen door at the entrance to the baby's room that was closed all the time. This way we had an animal-free area to care for the baby at first, and the pets could still look at the baby and smell him through the screen door and satisfy their curiosity.

Another thing I did that proved helpful was to work on "get down," "sit" and "stay" commands with the dogs over and over again before we took the baby home from the hospital. Then, when my son was toddling about, I put Plexiglas panels on the sides of my parrots' cages so he could not put his little fingers into the cages and get bitten by them.

So it is this sort of mindset that you need to have rather than one of just following some rules and tricks. We did take the screen door off my son's room when he was a year old and now, 16 years later, he sleeps with cats all over him at night. So whatever we did worked out just as it did for countless other parents for thousands of years.

I read on the Internet that dry cat food is bad for cats and that they should be fed only canned food. My three cats have been fed dry food all their lives. We leave it out in a platter and they nosh through the day. This is the way things have been for the past eight years. Plus I thought that eating the dry food keeps their teeth clean. I want to do only what is best for my cats and wondered what you suggest. -- Laurie Gorden, Smithtown

This is one of the few animal husbandry tips on the Internet that I agree with -- but not for the reasons you may think.

First of all, there is nothing bad about dry cat food: It is nutritious, convenient and affordable, and millions of cats all over the world have eaten it from kittenhood. However, not every cat does well on dry food.

Cats have not been as domesticated as long as dogs have been, and they are still obligate carnivores rather then omnivores as dogs are. So a cat cannot live and function without an all-meat diet. The processing required to turn meat into a dry kibble creates a very unnatural product that the digestive system of some -- but not all -- cats cannot handle very well, and the result is a litter box full of very voluminous stools and hair balls all over the floor.

The teeth of an obligate carnivore are not designed well to crunch and chew dry kibble, and if you take apart one of those hairballs you will see it is actually composed of a whole lot of dry cat food that the cat either swallowed whole or just cracked in two parts.

Some cats that have oral fetishes and like chewing on paper and plastic and the like also develop such fetishes for dry kibble and tend to overeat it just because they like the way that it feels in their mouths. For such cats, giving them as much canned food as they want twice a day to eat with nothing in-between will reduce stool volume, stop any vomiting and help them lose weight.

Try it and see. If you like the results, then just feed the canned food and forget the dry. If all is OK with the dry, then keep the cats on it.

One issue with dry food that is certainly false is the idea that it keeps a pet's teeth clean. There is no way that rubbing a piece of greasy kibble against a tooth will clean it. The only way to clean the teeth of any pet is to brush the mouth with a toothpaste made just for that species of animal, or have a professional cleaning at the vet.

< back to article