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Cats and Kids Andrea Carne explains how to teach children how to safely interact with cats to ensure cats remain under threshold and enhance the feline-human bond
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And in breaking news … a child was left scratched and in tears after a play session with his pet cat went horribly wrong…” Ever heard that on the nightly news bulletin? No, of course not. We may hear about dog bites from time to time and much has been written over the years about children and dogs. Indeed, many pages of books, articles and blogs have been dedicated to the topic and some fabulous commu nity education and classroom programs have been developed to edu cate children – and their parents – on how to ensure interactions between children and dogs are safe for all parties concerned. The same cannot be said for children and cats. Why? Well, as I illus trated in my opening jest, bad cat interactions rarely result in serious in jury – or worse – that make the evening news. A few scratches, the occasional bite and some tears are usually recovered from quickly and life moves on. But (and this is a big but from me as a cat behavior consultant) this does not mean we shouldn’t take the subject seriously. Far from it, in fact, and my reasoning is this: regardless of the species, interactions be tween a child and an animal that are unhealthy and unwelcome can cause a great deal of stress to that animal. This, in turn, can lead to any number of health and behavioral issues which may not only shorten the animal’s life, but can also result in them being surrendered to a shelter and/or euthanized for something that could have been avoided in the first place. I recently visited a client’s home for a consultation involving inap propriate toileting of two young cats adopted from a shelter a few months earlier. What I was confronted with was a very busy household that included three young boys aged under eight, the youngest just a toddler. There was no doubt these young boys LOVED their new feline friends but, unfortunately, they loved them a little too much – from the cats’ perspective at least. While looking around the home and gathering the background infor mation, I quickly realized the cats had nowhere to escape the obvious noise and chaos of this young family and, most importantly, the parents had no idea how to manage their children’s interactions with the cats which were frequently forced and overly exuberant. Even a lovely out door catio setup had a door and a seat inside so the children could get in with the cats. Suffice to say the cats were stressed, the inappropriate toileting was a cry for help, and I am thankful the client called me sooner rather than later. If you think this sounds all too familiar, you are right, and it’s no
…regardless of the species, interactions between a child and an animal that are unhealthy and unwelcome can cause a great deal of stress to that animal. This, in turn, can lead to any number of health and behavioral issues which may not only shorten the animal’s life but can also result in them being surrendered to a shelter and/or euthanized for something that could have been avoided in the first place.
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BARKS from the Guild/November 2019
© Can Stock Photo/Ulianna19970
Interactions between children and pet cats should be carefully managed to ensure they are not stressful for the animal
body’s “fault.” This client was an awesome mom who desperately wanted her children to have a beautiful, healthy, loving relationship with their pet cats, just as she had had as a child. She just didn’t realize that relationships between children and cats sometimes take time, extra special care, and cannot be forced. Every cat is different, and each will have a different tolerance level for human interaction depending on age, background and life experience – which is all a little hard for a young child to understand when they just want a pet they can play with and cuddle.
Animal Magic We know that, in general, children love animals. Several studies have found that children will choose living creatures over toys. They love spending time with another living, breathing creature they can interact with and which will interact with them in return. However, while this all sounds warm and fuzzy (and it is to a point), it is also this innate need for a child to have reciprocal interaction with an animal that can create problems, especially with cats. Hart et al. (2018) examined a study by A.H. Kidd and R.M. Kidd (1987) and surmised the following: “The 1230monthold children [in the study] preferred dogs to cats, presumably because the dogs were in teractive and more likely to approach the children, whereas the cats often walked away, thus limiting reciprocal interaction.” Now in an ideal world of stressfree companion animal ownership, the child would recognize the cat walking away as a sign he doesn’t want to engage and leave it at that. Unfortunately, in my experience, the opposite scenario tends to be more common, wherein the child tries to force the interaction by chasing the cat and attempting to grab him by the tail or fur. Parents will know this rarely has a happy ending, with scratches, tears and an angry, stressed cat left in the aftermath. But it doesn’t have to be this way. If cat owners were to dedicate the same amount of energy to teaching children how to safely interact with cats as they do with other children and adults (and even dogs), there would most likely be far fewer scratches and much happier cats all round.