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Most cats
retreat to a safe place rather than scratch or
bite their owner's boisterous 'kitten'. Teach
junior how to interpret cat-talk (this can be
great fun); hissing or tail swishing means 'leave
me alone', but purring and head butting means
"carry on, I like this". As long as
junior learns to respect Puss and not to pester
him, they should get along just fine. Make sure
junior learns to wash hands before mealtimes.
Introduced
carefully and taught to respect each other, should
result in a happy cat and well-adjusted youngster
who will remain companions for many years. Claire
and Emily both grew up with cats; they all
survived intact and Claire recently moved into her
own home and adopted her own cat.
Cases
of Abandoned Baby Attacks by Stray Cats
In May 2001, a
new-born baby abandoned in a rubbish skip was
apparently attacked by stray cats before a man
saved her in Malaysia. The baby girl was still
attached to the umbilical cord when she was
discovered wrapped in a cloth and placed in a
plastic bag in a dumpster in Kuala Lumpur. Police
saw stray cats near to the skip and found
scratches all over the baby's body when they
arrived at the scene. The baby has been taken to
hospital and found to be healthy and the parents
were being sought. The baby was new-born and
therefore would smell of blood. The cats would
have been attracted to the smell of blood and
being unused to humans, would not have viewed the
infant as a family member.
This is not
comparable to the interaction of domestic house
cats with babies in their family. The cats were
feral and not accustomed to people as
"family" so they would have viewed a
helpless discarded infant as prey rather than a
family member, especially as it had been placed in
a rubbish skip where they normally found household
scraps. Also, the report referred to scratches
rather than bite wounds so it is possible that the
cats were investigating the find. The case is not
unusual, a few days earlier Malaysian police in
Selangor found the partly eaten remains of a
newborn baby; it had been buried in a shallow
grave and dug up and eaten by stray dogs.
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