I love babies, but I've also loved cats from a very young age. I remember my Mom having a coffee date, and me playing on the floor nearby, listening to her say "Kay knows every cat between school and home.". That was my first inkling that everybody doesn't know all the cats on their walking route somewhere.
So
where babies and cats co-exist, I tend to treat them as equals. This
probably horrifies people who like to keep their pets firmly in the
non-human category. I don't mean that I would have to stop and think
about which of them to save in a fire, but in the day-to-day I talk to
them, play with them, and enjoy them in fairly equal measure.Now here's where the odd part of fostering comes in. Our worker claims to like cats, but given the way she looks at ours, I think she just says that to be polite. She says we need to keep the cats away from the baby at all times, but how do we separate out what is the Society's official stance, and what is her personal opinion? Also, she's our worker, not the baby's, so should we ask the baby's worker as well? We have a 4" binder that's our Foster Care Manual, but the only mention it makes of pets is the policy on banned breed dogs.
Realistically, of course, what they say goes in the big slushpile of what has been said, and we try to make sense of it all in a bigger framework. As you can see from the picture, though, on at least one occasion I let the baby and our young cat nap together.
I could fill up another two paragraphs with an apologia on why this was okay on this one occasion, and defending my breaking of the safe sleep guidelines with a comforter. But I'm going to resist the temptation. I trust that you all know that even though sometimes in the little things I'm a Bad Mommy, in the grand scheme of things we're all doing the best we can, and it's generally a pretty decent job.
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