If you’re blessed, your dog or cat will protect your baby. This is not to be taken lightly. In this video you’ll see some dunderheads provoking their pets just to get a laugh on Youtube. It’d serve these jidrools right if they got bitten. But you’ll also see a heroic cat chasing a dog away from a toddler.
Anyway, this is a gift–and if you’ve got it, don’t waste it. And be thankful for it! Babies need protection.
I saw a sign in my doctor’s office that said that babies who interact with dogs and cats develop stronger immune systems than babies who don’t. So the cat licking the baby’s face, or the dog sniffing the baby’s ear–those are not bad things.
When I was still only three years old or so, I tried to change my baby brother’s diaper. I’d seen my mother do it; how hard could it be? All you’ve got to do is dump half a bottle of baby oil on him and then liberally coat him with baby powder. That’s when my mother came in and put a stop to it.
No cat or dog would ever do that to a human baby.
What cover-up? Aw, heck, “cover-up” always looks good in a headline…
This is really something, though: you can actually see the babies learning as they play with cats: sometimes, even, by trying to do what the cat’s doing.
Warning: there is one bad cat in this video, and I can’t imagine what got into him. But on the whole, I think we’re safe in saying cats are good for babies.
How do these cats know they have to be gentle with human babies, and make allowances for them? What is it about a cat that so delights a baby? Too bad we can’t ask either one of them. Well, we could, but what’s the point?
I’m always surprised by how patient cats are with human babies. All right, nobody’s going to stand there like a gonk, filming away while the cat gives baby what-for. But what we see is pretty good evidence that a cat understands what a baby is, and makes allowances for that.
And if only we could get a peek into a baby’s mind…
I wish we could know what a little baby is thinking when he first discovers a cat’s tail. And yes, my mother would definitely have plotzed, when she saw what use one baby made of the cat’s tail.
What cats have to put up with, from babies and puppies–!
Cats excel at comforting crying babies–who knew? Some of the kids in this video are a little old to be sitting around crying, but cats comfort them, too. A few of these cats can even turn crying into laughing.
Better than Play-Doh!
Maybe if I write enough headlines like that, I’ll become a legend.
Here we find cats highly motivated to love and protect human babies. And we also find evidence that the human urge to put stuff on cats is probably basic to our nature. It’s always intriguing to see how many things you can put on a cat before he runs out of patience with it.
How do cats know they must be careful with human babies? Cats who have no experience with babies seem unsure of exactly what these creatures are. Like, they sort of look like the dumb doofuses who feed cats and change the litterbox–could they possibly be the human equivalent of kittens?
You’ll be impressed by how patient most of these cats are with babies obstreperating at their expense. Note I said “most.” But don’t worry: no humans were hurt during the filming of these videos.