Cat Related Problem

[charley101]

Hi There

This is a bit of a weird one, I teach pet dog puppy classes and last night had 2 people ask me the same question - This is so weird as of all the years i have been doing it nobody has asked me this and then 2 people asked me one after the other.

Anyway the owners of the pups i am teaching have cats that have been happily living with the family but since the pups arrived the cats have turned a little feral.

One lady was telling me her cat has actually started attacking her and the other ladys cat is attacking the puppy. The puppy in this case is running off which i guess is reinforcing the cats behaviour.

They are trying to keep the cats and pups apart but with the case of the cat attacking the pup aparting from locking one outside they are at a loss of what to do as the cat jumps over any barriers they pup up to get to the pup.

Has anyone got any suggestions ?

Thanks

[espinay2]

I was going to suggest making sure the cat had space of its own away from the pup and say that the cat is likely stressed by the 'intruder' in its house.

Time and giving them their own space to go to and hide if they want usually helps and they generally get used to the new household member with time.

But you say in one case the cat is actively seeking out the pup and attacking it?

In this case I would also recommend a crate for the pup as a 'safe place' and also a water squirt bottle to spray the cat when it actively goes for the pup.

Though if the pup is approaching the cat a bit too roughly I might be inclined to let the cat discipline it so the pup learns to respect the cat (within reason as long as the pup will not get hurt badly).

[Bluefairy]

My youngest cat, 12 months old, will have a go at Archie if he walks too close, or if she decided he gave her the wrong look....she's a weird cat.

We have had Archie about 5 months, the oldest cat and Archie clean each other, they are fine, but the youngest doesn't trust Archie I guess. So far the cat has only hissed and swatted him on the head with her paw, no claws out. But she will do it for no apparent reason so I will say her name in a angry voice and say NO!. she will then move off to another place.

When we first got Archie, we made sure the cats had an escape route, they have a cat flap in the laundry door, which Archie doesn't fit into, that their comfort place. But most places above Archie is safe for them, as Archie can't jump up to reach them at any height.

I think its more, time and patience, letting the cat know their behaviour is not appropriate with water sprays (I add a little vinegar to mine, as my older cat likes water), using an angry voice and I also use time out.....if the cats do anything wrong they are placed in the laundry for 5-10 minutes...this actually works :D

Good Luck

Lynn

[Meea]

I was wondering if these pups are particularly small? If so the cats cld be confused. Yummy breakfast?

Meea

[SpotTheDog]

I have six cats and my dog. When I brought him home as a pup, five of the cats were horrified and kept a healthy distance. Sasquatch, however, took one look at the pup and full on launched himself at him.

I had forgotten that my rescue cat had come from a home where his previous owner set his dogs upon his cats for entertainment. Sas was rescued from that home aged four to five weeks of age (which is why I'd forgotten it) and had lived with me as a foster carer, then owner, since that age, so I just hadn't given any thought to it whatsoever.

Initially, segregate the animals. Give the pup a crate, or keep the cat out of the room. The cat will take a number of weeks to adjust to the pup. You can buy Feliway diffusers (synthetic feline happy hormones in a plug-in air freshener) and plug them in around the house. (They last a month.) You can still do things like create a positive association with good behaviour with a cat, it just doesn't work as quickly as with a dog.

A good way to introduce the pup first is to put the cat up somewhere high like a table and bring the pup into the room on a leash. At ground level, a cat is far more likely to go all out for a new pup than if it's up high (but even then a territorial cat may launch itself at the pup so yes, you need to be on guard.) Let the pup approach the table, but not jump at it (and definitely not get his front paws onto the table if he's a larger dog, because that's a sure fire way to get a cat in the face). It's good if there are two people - one the cats knows and likes to reassure and stroke the cat, praising it and distracting with a treat, and one to control the pup. When the cat hisses or swipes (and it'll be pretty much when and not if), just remove the pup and distract the cat. You can do these introductions in short bursts over a period of up to two weeks, segregating the animals otherwise. Don't crate the pup in or near a room the cat considers as 'his', and definitely don't let the pup near the cat's food bowls, water bowl or litter trays. It's not uncommon for the cat to totally avoid the room where it first met the pup, or approach that room with extreme caution, fur half inflated, for the next few times it goes in there.

I'd advise crating the pup in the room with something nice to keep him occupied, then letting the cat in. Utterly ignore the pup, and spoil the cat. Reassure the cat, stroke it, make soothing noises. If he hisses or launches at the dog crate, distract him, move between him and the crate or carry him away from the crate. As soon as he relaxes even a fraction, give him a treat. Cats respond well to kitty treat bags - they'll often respond to the rustle of the bag the way a dog would to a whistle. Try feeding the cat treats in the pup's presence. When he's had his treats, remove the cat from the room, praising all the while.

Cats, while they can form a very strong social bond with other cats (and I would never have a single-cat household again), take a long time to accept a newcomer. They're not naturally social to new animals, and there's a normal period of hissing and swatting that takes place during this time. Cats are strongly territorial. You need to be careful, in this period, not to admonish the cat for being unfriendly to the new pup. If you give out to the cat, ostracise it, push it away and shout at or squirt it for being 'mean' to the new pup, you can end up with worse problems - an unhappy cat that's unsure of its position and starts to pee all over the house, or if it has outdoor access, a cat that simply moves in with the neighbours. The lady whose cat is attacking her has a big issue - that's a very agitated cat, whose territory has been invaded, and the aggression could soon be coupled with inappropriate peeing in the house and so on. I'd say she needs to go back to the beginning and start over.

After initial introductions of a week or two, you'll have a status quo of a growing pup and a disgruntled and uncomfortable cat who's a bit jumpy and reactive. Using treats and space, create a truce between the pets. Ignore growls from the cat - and even swats. Try not to let the pup get close enough to get smacked in the first place. A full on attack is obviously a different matter, but there's really a balance to be achieved between not alienating the cat, and protecting the pup. You can also work on scent transferring by rubbing the cat with the pup's blanket (and vice versa). Another problem is the pup will quickly grow into bouncing boisterous older pup before the cat's adjusted to it as a newcomer, and then you're dealing with bad behaviour in both directions - the pup bouncing at the cat and the cat smacking up the pup. During this period, when the pup isn't crated in the house I'd keep him on-leash inside the house. Try to never have your pup indoors, out of his crate, off leash with the cat - because he'll bounce at or chase the cat and the smacking he'll get often won't teach a lesson at all because it's just part of the game and he's too excited to learn from it. You don't want the cat to have to give the pup the sort of serve that WOULD teach him a lesson.

Cats also cannot read dog body language. They understand some of it, but not other parts - they find wagging confusing (because a cat wags when it's pissed off). They don't recognise bared teeth (cats don't snarl, they hiss). A bark is just offensive. They do understand submissive postures of blinking, head turning, lying down and yawning (but not particularly lip licking). They think the puppy play bounce (jump in and out again) is an all out attack and will often give chase to the pup (which the pup thinks is great, but it doesn't do much for canine-feline relations in the longer run). The good thing is your pup will probably learn how to speak cat pretty quickly. (Cats appear to never learn how to speak dog.) The cat's inability to learn dog becomes a problem if the dog is resource guarding as it gets older - a big potential issue if you have a large dog. Every last one of my cats would fail to recognise my dog standing over his food bowl with bared teeth and head low, making whale eye at them, and would stick their head in his bowl anyway. It would only take one snap from my 30kg dog to do damage, so as their owner I never feed meals together - he doesn't get to their food and they don't get to his. I also regularly do a 'circle of treats' - everyone sits around me in a circle and I hand-feed something like liver treats out of a packet. The dog learns not to compete with the cats for food because he is ALWAYS included in treats, and the cats learn to adjust to the dog because he can get up really close to them when there's food on the go because they're just focused on the food.

Sasquatch spent a full year smacking Gus up. I made some mistakes - didn't heed my own advice, left the growing pup off-leash inside the house (and sure enough he chased the cats, who knew eh). I had to go away for a while when the pup was young and DH took the approach that they'd 'sort it out themselves' and left the cats and the pup out in the yard together - the one permanent scar Gus has on his body is where Sas split the tip of his ear with flailing ninja kitty paws during one of these disastrous excursions.

I did learn that the key to introductions is control, and time. Control the situation, and give it time. You can't rush it.

A note on continuing relationships - my dog is big enough to do the cats serious damage, so to a degree I allowed the cats to lord it over him while he was a pup. If he shoved his nose in their backsides and got a slap for it, I didn't intervene. If he crowded them and got a slap for it, I didn't intervene. As he matured (he's nearly two years old now) he learned through his own training that positive behaviour gets a reward and negative behaviour doesn't (and particularly negative behaviour may get a negative consequence like a time out). Cats don't have the same sense of justice as we do though, so occasionally the dog would get a slap from one of the cats for having done nothing wrong. (Dog dozing on his bed. Cat walks past. Dog senses cat and lifts his head up to see who's passing. Cat slaps dog for moving.) In those cases I DID intervene and chastised the cat and it quickly became evident that the dog would look to me for redress when the cat had slapped him for nothing. I may sound insane, but I can guarantee you the dog understood the cat was getting its comeuppance for bad behaviour and I believe I can see benefit in having created that association, because the dog seems to have learned that he doesn't need to take matters into his own hands (or teeth) if the cats have a go at him for no reason.

[charley101]

Thanks for the great suggestions i will pass them on