New puppy, meet the cat.

[Leslie du Mont]

We get our new puppy at the end of this week and we're feeling pretty prepared for the new arrival. The one thing I'm a little worried about is our other furry kid- a declawed grey house cat. Our cat has never lived long term with a dog although she has had other people's dogs visit us. She generally hides and mostly ignores the visitors in her "superior" cat way.

Does anyone have any suggestions on the best way to introduce the two pets to each other when neither is a visitor? :-)

I feel pretty certain at some point they will do more than just tolerate each other, but I'd like to see them get to that point. :-)

[Lindsey, Lee, Whopper and Simba]

I have no personal experience but have seen this done on Dogtown. Hopefully I remember correctly and it may have to be done slightly differently unless your cat does not mind being temporarily in a crate. On the show, they begin with the cat in a crate basically for the safety of the cat. They bring the dog in and see if it even notices the cat or pays it any attention. Depending on the reaction, the next step if the dog is calm is they bring the cat out of the crate and hold it on their lap. The dog is on a leash held by another person in case they need to pull the dog away. With this controlled environment, they let the dog approach and sniff the cat and basically observe how the two interact. If either gets too agitated or nervous they back away. Sometimes this is all they do in the initial visit or if they feel confident, the person holding the cat may let it up to see if it's willing to move and interact and how the dog responds to that. I'm pretty sure that's how they do it...I just wonder if you could do it in reverse where you hold onto the puppy and let the cat approach it so that the puppy doesn't really have the opportunity to experience dominance over the cat. Anyway, there may be those with more experience dealing with this but that's the general idea of how I saw it done but it was with an older dog they were making sure was okay with cats before adopting it to a family with cats.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

It's a tough one because the cat is declawed; that's usually how a cat shows a rambunctious puppy (or 80 lb goofball) that she's the boss...one good swipe, and the 6 lb cat rules at our house. Puppies can be relentless in their pursuits, they're just playing, but the cat doesn't have her natural defense mechanisms. Does the cat have places she can go where a puppy wouldn't be able to get at her? Under a bed or up high somewhere?

[Michele Barton]

Leslie, we're about to go through the same thing. Our cat is 8 years old, and while she lived with dogs when she was young with no problem, I don't know how long it's going to take her to get used to 2 puppies moving in! We had our daughter's dog (welsh corgi) over the Christmas holidays, and we just left it up to KitKat as to whether or not she wanted to meet him. It helps that our house is fairly large with a finished basement, which is where her food is. We kept Rufus from going to the basement so that KitKat would have her own space. She eventually came upstairs to check him out, and promptly greeted him with a hiss. From my experience, cats really hate change but eventually they do accept it, and I would let your cat come around in her own good time. I would advise you to train Atticus not to chase the cat, especially since she is declawed and cannot "teach" him herself with a swat (KitKat has claws). Please let us know if you try Lindsey's suggestion above; if it works for you, I just may try it! Your fur-babies may end up being the best of friends! Best of luck!!!!

[Linda,Yankee & Finn]

I don't have a cat but my neighbor's cat practically lives here and he comes over every day. He owned the place before we got Yankee. I was worried as well but I just wouldn't have the let the cat in anymore if there was a problem. There was no problem at all. They sniffed each other and that was it. Their relationship is strange but it works. The dog never knows if the cat is going to rub on him or swat him (with claws). The cat eats his food and sleeps in his bed and he doesn't seem to care. This is a pic of their first meeting.

[The Berry Oaks Doodle Ranch]

This you will find very true.....Guinness was just 4 1/2 months old when saw his 1st cat....same sniffed & walked around each other,Guinness would lay down and watch this and wanting him to play...it will work out or the cat will go hide for awhile.

[Debbie and Thomas]

I don't have a cat but I heard this at our training class recently. One of the mom's said to the trainer that her shi-poo treats her poor cat like a chew toy. Someone else in the group had been thru this before and offered this suggestion. They placed their cat in a small cardboard box to protect it, and placed it in front of their dog and then gave the command "leave it". This command "leave it" is one of the first commands you will learn at puppy level obedience classes. You would place a treat on the floor in front of your puppy, then hold his collar and repeat the command"leave it". The puppy is not allowed to touch the treat until you say "take it" and give it to him. After doing this repeatively for several minutes, you try it again WITHOUT holding their collar. Our dog did well at this and would lie there and stare at the treat until we said he could have it. So, this couple used this command with their cat, but of course they rewarded him with a treat instead of the CAT! They ssaid it worked perfectly and evertime the dog was really bothering the cat, they just had to say "leave it" and the dog would sit for a treat. Eventually-they did not have to treat him at all. Hope this is of some help to you.

[Sessa]

We introduced our doodle pup to our elderly hell cat (no joke) several years ago....
The most important thing for us was that we did not want to displace the cat's position in the house...therefore, we decided that the dog would have to be shown and trained that the cat was higher up on the ranking....

1) There would places to hide, run to, and jump up on SOLELY for the cat....she must always have an escape route....and her food is high up so that she can eat without threat.

2) When it came to actually introductions---we began with the puppy in the crate/on leash and brought the cat into the same room...the puppy was restricted in moving about but the cat could walk around and sniff freely....we then brought the scent of the cat up to the puppy--via our hands or by holding the cat near to the dog....if our cat would have been agreeable to being in a crate, then I would have probably also used that technique of introduction AFTER the first introduction where the dog is restricted...

3) As the puppy was growing up, naturally she had a curiosity about the cat---one that I supervised very closely...I never allowed chasing, batting, or barking at the cat---all those reactions met with swift corrections--"leave it" "no kitty" and "off" are regulars....in fact, if the cat walked into the room where the puppy and I were, I would put the puppy in a sit/down/stay---everytime....again, for me, I wanted to establish that the puppy should defer to the cat every time...

....(this was more for survival of our puppy than for our cat---as our attack kitty, claws and all, wouldn't hesitate to take our dog down like a lion would take a zebra down in the wild).

-I never expected our cat to like the dog....I just wanted her to respect the fact that a dog was now living with us...and not attack the dog--on the flip-side, I always correct the cat when she taunts or messes with the dog....I don't find that fair and ultimately, I am the ONE who rules them ALL! LOL!

-I did expect our pup to respect the cat by leaving her alone...if our cat had even one iota of being amiable with our puppy, I would have certainly encouraged friendship and cuddling...but that was not a reality for us...although our doodle will never lose hope that someday she and the cat WILL be friends....gotta love a dog's enthusiasm coupled with short term memory loss (she never seems to remember that the cat swipes at the bat of an eyelash!)

GOOD LUCK---go slow, have confidence, and MOST of ALL---HAVE FUN!!!

[Karen & Lucy]

I don't know what to tell you because I had a beautiful gray and white long hair cat, named Mr. Kitty, and when I brought Lucy home at 10 weeks of age, Mr. Kitty decided after about a week of Lucy chasing her around to play that he had enough and just up and packed his fur balls and left. I never saw him again. BooHoo

[HANNAH 8/2/07 & HONEY 7/2/08]

I do not own a cat, but my friend does and we pet sit for her. When I got Hannah and now Honey, I really didn't know how they would react to a being around a cat, and it not even being their home. So now were at Barb's pet sitting and it's 3 dogs vs. 1 maine coon cat. Dunkin is use to hi co-existance with Darby, and Hannah just took to Darby as though he was her best buddy all her life. She loves Darby and never chases him or bites at him, she also kinda mothers him, which for a dog never seeing a cat before, or living with a cat suprised me. Honey on the other hand will try and play with Darby and sometimes can be rougher than what I like her to be. For the most part they all took to each other with no special introductions. I never had a dog that actually liked cats before, so I am totally in Awwwww!!!!

[Leslie du Mont]

Thank you all for your comments, stories and suggestions. You've given me a lot to "chew on." (pardon the pun)

The good news is that my cat has tons of places to escape our future pup in our house. We also plan on doing crate training and tethering, so I'm pretty sure I can keep a good eye on the two at first. I guess I'll just have to keep evaluating the situation until everything settles down. Well, let's hope it settles at some point.

Karen and Lucy, gosh I hope that my Sadie doesn't pull a Mr. Kitty. I'm sorry that he took off like that.

[Erin]

I'm interested in this thread too because we just got a five year old re-homed labradoodle and are trying (without much success) to introduce her to our eight year old cat. Although we had a labrador before and our cat got along at least civilly with her, our new labradoodle has quite the prey-drive or something and will relentlessly chase our cat. At this point our cat is spending most of his time either outside, under our bed or in our closet and we keep the dog out of our bedroom so she can't harass our cat to frustration. I'm hoping that as they both get used to eachother's sounds and smells we'll be able to begin bringing them together more safely. I'll be very sad if we have to keep them separate forever.

[Julie]

Congrats on your new puppy! We faced the same issue last summer when we brought our 7-week old Goldendoodle puppy home to our 2 adult cats. The best advice we got about this is to be patient and to not force the meeting, or for them to be buddies. It's important that the cat has its own place where the puppy cannot get to, and it's also important to spend time with the cat, so it doesn't feel "replaced" by the new puppy.

The cat will come around the dog when it is ready and feeling confident. Let the cat approach the dog on his / her own terms, don't bring the dog into the room where the cat is to force the situation. Cats are naturally curious, and he / she will approach the dog eventually to check things out. When it does, make sure that the dog is on a leash, so you can control him / her if it lunges or wants to play with the cat. Reward the dog when it is calm around the cat with praise, treats, etc. and make sure that the dog does not chase, attack, etc. the cat. The dog and the cat will work out the terms of their relationship on their own... typically, the cat will assert its dominance with a hiss or a quick swipe, and the dog will learn early on not to harrass kittie.