Even though we've never had babies in our house, after we bought our place around 2004 and getting into local "rescue" work, we've had baby gates in our house.
Still have them, and they work well unless the cat get stupid...
We started looking for gates after we have to get one of our first cats out of the chimney. Fun times.
Ironically enough, the cat in the pic was found by my wife and I on a walk exactly where my wife found the small black dog below on the side of the road down from the house.
If I played tug of war with some of the bigger dogs, I'd loose my teeth LOL