You keep finding your cat curled up on a folded stack of the baby’s blankets, or nested in an empty bassinet before it’s even been used.
Your cat isn’t fixated on the baby.
They’re fixated on warm, soft, enclosed spaces — the same pull that sends them into laundry baskets and open drawers, just wearing a baby blanket this time.
Why this is different from the crib-safety concern
An empty bassinet with no baby in it carries none of the smothering risk that a cat near a sleeping infant’s face does — the actual concern there is about a baby being present, not about the bassinet itself as an object. A cat investigating or napping in an empty one before it’s in use isn’t the same situation at all.
What to actually do about it
Once the bassinet is in active use, the same crib-tent-and-closed-door approach used for crib safety generally applies here too — the goal is keeping the cat out of the space specifically when the baby’s in it, not treating the cat’s general interest in the object as alarming beforehand.
A Little Support for Every Stage
Helpful checklists, guides, and resources to make each stage a little easier.
Redirecting the underlying instinct
A separate soft, enclosed spot — a covered bed, a blanket-lined basket that’s clearly the cat’s own — gives your cat a legitimate version of the same appeal without competing with the baby’s actual sleep space at all.
What this doesn’t mean
This isn’t a sign your cat is fixated on the baby in a way that predicts future safety issues. It’s an entirely ordinary response to warm, soft, contained spaces, coincidentally showing up in objects that happen to belong to the baby right now.
Where this lands: your cat’s drawn to the object, not the baby specifically — give them their own version of the same appeal, and keep the actual crib-safety precautions in place once it’s genuinely in use.
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