cats and new baby

I hope to have a household of several cats and several babies over the next few years and I'm just wondering how cats react to a new baby's arrival.

Do cats ever get jealous and lash out at the baby?
Do they try and play rough with the baby? (my cat loves to grab my hand with her teeth and bunny kick, but it would be bad if she did this to a baby).
Is there any risk of a cat climbing into a baby's crib and smothering it?

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but these are the scenarios I've come up with.

I think it depends on the cat. Mine loves to play with toddlers, and seems to think of children as "Yay! Someone who has the energy to play as long as I do!"
As for very small newborns, I would recommend against letting the cats in the baby's room while it's sleeping. Your cats won't get jealous if you make sure to give them their loving too!

Oh, and usually cats sense how young the baby is and either ignore it until it's old enough to play or else won't play rough with it, just like they won't play rough with a newborn kitten.

Congratulations on all your additions!

You will have to worry more as the human babies grow up and start wanting to pull on tails, not understanding how to pet nicely right at first. This is when more problems happen, as the child doesn't understand what it's doing wrong, and hurts the cat, the cat thinks it's been attacked, and sometimes defends itself. This is easily avoided by supervising interaction between children and cats and teaching them how to properly care for and show affection towards the cats.

Originally Posted by abnihon

Is there any risk of a cat climbing into a baby's crib and smothering it?

Click to expand...

That's an urban legend. Here's a link that my clarify some of that for you.

http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/catsuck.htm

In my experience cats and babies get along just fine. You may want to take some extra time with the cat when the baby comes home, and make sure you watch the toddlers around them (for tail pulling ect..).