Introducing a cat to a dog!

[ShelleyGal]

Through no fault of his own my bro is having to get rid of his cat. I have said i will take him as I know my bro is sad to be losing him and would like to see him as often as poss.. Only difficulty, I have a large dog. He is very friendly and never shown any sign of aggression whatsoever. But he does love to bark at cats, and chase them if he gets the opportunity. Any advice would be appreciated, they will be meeting for the first time on Saturday. :-)

when I have done this in the past ( a long time ago), and our lab wasn't barky at cats, we brought cat in in carrier, dog on lead. let dog ad cat know each other through cat carrier, then let cat out while dog was on lead. cat always had somewhere to go away from dog - a safe space......now I would use a stair guard.

I would discourage any barking at the cat by distraction - distracting the dog with treats or a ball. but also have someone else on hand - your brother? to re-assure the cat, but also prevent the dog from the cat, in case the cat decides to take a free shot!! My old cat would have definitely taken that opportunity!!! I think esp in the early days you need to be careful that the cat (depending on both personalities) doesn't terrorise your dog. Caught my old cat doing that to my parents lab - would sit in the doorway blocking her way to the living room, and if dog approached he would lift his paw and clean it while looking at the dog with an evil glint in his eye!!

Hope it goes well!

Thank you for the valuable advice, I am quite worried about the cat possibly bullying/scratching the dog. Definitely need to invest in a stair gate. This is going to be hard work, I can feel it in my bones!

You know, it may be fine, even my boy after a few growling learnt to get along with my parents lab quite well.
They also adopted a mature, just neutered tom (they insisted he was neutered before they took him) anyway, he and said lab became best friends, used to sleep together etc, despite not knowing each other until they were old...though I suspect lab had little choice , gumby just kind of decided he was sleeping with her, he was perfectly nice about it though!

Lol I am keeping my fingers crossed that's the case.. But usually, I'm not that lucky.

I have introduced adult dogs to adult cats and what Mrs Laughan says is basically what I did too. Dog on lead, lots of discraction/treats.

If the dog seems overly focussed on the cat you can train him to look away by using treat he really, really likes and saying 'ah ah' or 'leave it' or something if he looks at the cat and the second he looks away, give him the treat.

It's actually good if the cat is a bit feisty because dog will think twice about messing with it.

It will be some work and you will have to be vigilant for a couple of weeks, but worth it to keep the cat. Well done to you for offering to do this

I fostered a dog that was rather fixated on the cat and even he was OK after a couple of weeks, with some work from me, and now he lives with a cat and they are best friends. And this was an ex racing greyhound. Most dogs will be fine with a bit of work but you have to be careful until you know they are OK and not leave them alone etc.

When we first got our dog (already had two cats) we got a pet gate for the kitchen so there could be time when the dog was in there and the cats could get used to her presence in the house. We also put her in there when we were out, at first, so there was no unsupervised access (it wasn't long at all before we felt it was safe to allow them all to mingle freely).
I also gave treats to dog and cats whenever they were near each other. Years later, my dog and one of the cats still used to fake demonstrations of affection towards each other, in the hope of treats!

Thank you, I'm feeling it's a really good idea to get the gate and put cat in the kitchen for now.. I don't want it to be stressful for either of them. And the dog has always had run of the house so I don't want him to start feeling the cat has invaded his territory. I have lots of treats in preparation! Really hoping it all goes well! Thank you all so much, I'm feeling a bit less nervous about it all now!

Besom I'd be grateful if you could give me some idea of the work you did to make this happen. I've a new dog and old cats. Hasn't gone that well really so far - new dog has even managed to piss off old man cat that ignored my old dog - by trying to pick him up by the neck which I stopped and I'm fairly sure it was friendly. New dog didn't learn from this and has since chased old man cat round the house. The cats have been mainly out since new dog moved in (we live in the middle of nowhere with barns etc. and they spend every summer out by choice) but with the weather turning they will be wanting to come back in soon and I've seemed to make no progress with distracting dog from cats so far. The girls won't mix with dogs at all, but I'd like to make it so new dog doesn't chase round the house after them. Previously we had cats upstairs and dogs downstairs, but new dog has (stupidly) been allowed upstairs as I had enough of sleeping on the sofa and he was too stressed to be left alone.

Actually, that's not strictly true, I didn't want to leave him alone. I'm sure he could perfectly well be trained to be left alone downstairs, but I've not done it.