CAPE ELIZABETH (NEWS CENTER Maine) - Could your cat kill your baby?
It sounds like a crazy question - but it's one that has a lot of people on Facebook confused.
Check out the comment from Kim - she writes, "Just be careful. Cats will sniff baby bottle and formula at baby's mouth. Watch out for suffocation."
WHAT? Is this seriously true, that cats will sniff milk on a baby's breath and in turn suffocate the baby?
The answer: NO.
"It's a great question and I'm glad you're asking it, but it's not something I'd be concerned with," said Dr. Ginger Brown Johnson of the Veterinary and Rehabilitation Center of Cape Elizabeth.
The notion that your cat will smell the milk on your baby's breath and suffocate it is an old wive's tale -- one that was even published in medical journals in the early 1900s. "There is a real danger of a fatal termination by suffocation," a 1905 pediatric journal reads.
While the claim that a cat will purposefully suffocate your baby is false, the VERIFY team did find one incident in the United Kingdom in 2000 where a six week old baby died after the family cat fell asleep on his face.
Still - Dr. Johnson says that situation is incredibly rare.
She recommends making sure your cat has its own space. "You can be concerned about cats and babies in the same space, as you would with any pet and children," she said. "Think about where your cat's gonna be sleeping. Think about where their litter box is going to be. Think about where they're going to be fed. Make sure that they have all the resources and that they're separate from where your child is going to be."