My cat and dog never fought but mostly they just ignored each other. They would pass by each other barely acknowledging the other existed.
Oh once or twice a year the dog would look at the cat like it wanted to play but then looked as if to say “well she’s got them claws.” And the cat would look as if to say “well he might be fun to play with but if he fell on me I’d be crushed.”
It was a collie/shepard mix and a black tuxedo cat. Male dog female cat.
Most of my coworkers who have both cats and dogs say pretty much the same things. They just ignore one and other. They didn’t hate each other, never fought just indifferent to each other.
and the cat is ALWAYS in the same room as the dogs.
and the dogs always keep an eye out for the cat.
so yeah, they do love each other.
kinda like an old married couple.
I had an older cat then we went out and got a little pup.At first the cat would not let the pup no where near him. But the pup was so determined to get the cat to like him he would wait for the cat to fall asleep then he would sneak over and lay beside him. The cat would normaly wake up and chase him off untill finally one day the pup did his normal routine; snuck up on the cat and laid his little head on the cats hind quater; the cat immediately props his head up looks at the pup then squints his eyes as if he were totaly disgusted then laid his head back down. I think he finally grew to like the little tike. He would never let you know it though.
My sister has a dog named Harry and two cats: Moe and Lily. Lily doesn’t care for Harry too much, but he and Moe get along great. They’ll pounce on each other to start a playful wrestling match and Moe will sometimes try to clean Harry.
My my sister was getting a new house built, she had to live with my parents for about 5 months. She took Harry with her, but my mom’s allergic to cats, so I took the two cats in. When they moved into the new house and I brought the cats over, the first thing Harry did was run at Moe, pounce him and they started chasing and playing in the new house.
At one point in my teens I had a springer spaniel (my Mom got rid of it because it was stupid, but that’s neither here nor there). Anywhose, one day my Mom brought home a tiny kitten she had found. I mean this thing was a runt, and could sit in the palm of your hand. The spaniel adopted the kitten as it’s own offspring and watched over it and did other dog-style maternal things, and this was in spite of the fact the dog never had a litter.
The moral of the story is one day I woke up, got out of bed, opened the door, and there, laying at my feet, was my springer spaniel, lactating and the kitten was nursing. The kitten stopped, looked at me in what I took to be a reproving manner, and meowed.
I took this as a sign from God that I shouldn’t go to school that day and went back to bed.
My family had a dog who was very loving and maternal. We’d had her for a while when we got a new kitten. The first couple of days they were scared of each other, but then they got to be fast friends. The dog would bathe the cat, pick fleas off him, and wag her long tail for him to chase. She even allowed him to nurse! They used to sleep together, with the tiny kitten curled up on top of the dog. The kitten didn’t really have much use for us humans; he loved the dog and played with her more than with us. When she was killed by a car he wandered around the yard for days, meowing pitifully and looking for her.
I think part of their strange friendship may have stemmed from the fact that we had given away the dog’s litter of pups on the same day that the cat was separated from his mother and came to live with us. She was in high maternal gear and he wanted his mommy, so they bonded.
Emily, my mom’s tortoiseshell, views Casey the Golden Retriever as beneath her notice much of the time. But Casey seems to like her fine. Of course, Casey likes everbody and everything in sight, since she’s a Golden.
I have, however, caught Emily rubbing her cheek against Casey on several occasions. Obviously she views the dog as hers, somehow. Casey has no problem with this. The six-pound cat bosses the eighty-pound dog around.
Our unneutered male dobey/rott/lab cross loves our cats. He’s an older dog (13 now?) Wags his tail, does the bum sniffing thing (rather too vigourously sometimes as the cats get pushed around/over, so we have to discipline him a bit) The oldest cat is leery of the dog, but the younger two rubs against his legs, mew at him, treat him like a people. Works out pretty well. They sleep together sometimes, but the dog doesn’t stay in much at nights anymore.
I’ll note that the dog has never been hostile to the cats to begin with, but we used to have a cat that was a real dog hater. Prince would try to sniff and end up with a bloody nose. Made him a bit cranky.
I’d say that cats and dogs can grow to love one another just the same way they can grow to love humans. After all, we’re a different species, too. (Yes, I know they’re bred to love us.)
My first dog, Deejay, who is undoubtedly the sweetest dog that has ever walked the face of God’s earth, certainly loved the cat we had when we got her (Missy) and Missy loved her. They were inseperable. If I took Deej for a walk, Missy would come along of her own accord. Missy disappeared and we got Casey, who loved Deej too… but wasn’t as fussy about Bingo, the dog we got later. He definitely preferred Deej over Bingie. So go figure.
My mom’s dog Johanna (no longer with us) was convinced that Quigley, and orange fluffy guy cat, was a) caramel flavored, and therefore chewable and b) hers. Quigley had a constant patch of wet, dog spitty fur (which disgusted him to no end), and if my mom wanted to give Johanna a treat and couldn’t find her, she had only to call Quigley. Johanna would hear his name and figure her cat was around and being fed, and by God she was going to get in on it!
My parents’ current dog, Gracie, looks capable of removing your limbs yet tolerates having food removed from her mouth by Shadow, a smaller than average black girl kitty. Shadow stands on her hind legs and bats at Gracie’s mouth to get what she believes to be her fair share. The same cat also used to sleep in Gracie’s bowl when she was a kitten. Gracie ate around her.
So I would say that cats and dogs can absolutely like each other. Either that or we just have some really odd pets…
Got a kitten and a puppy at about the same time. They were playmates as kids and though they lost some of their closeness when they grew up, they often slept together and would just sort of hang out together.
Another time, different animals: had a dog who had pups while the resident cat was still pretty young. The cat treated the puppies as “toys”…she didn’t hurt them, but they yelped now & then when pounced upon. Mama dog tolerated this even though she was very protective of the pups around most humans. After the pups were all given away, Mama sort of adopted the cat as her only child. They often groomed each other. Dog was very protective of her feline foster child. Mess with that cat? I pity the fool.
I knew a Doberman that had a pet kitten. He loved it, and looked after it. When his owner moved out of home, he went with her while the kitten stayed with her parents. He fretted for his kitten for weeks.
My parents found a very young (apparently) orphaned stray kitten at the same time they had a dog nursing a litter of pups. The mother dog adopted the kitten and it would nurse alongside the pups. By the time the kitten reached adulthood it picked up several doggish traits - it’s gait was different from that of a cat, it made yipping noises instead of meows, and pretty much behaved like a dog.
When we first bought our (sadly no longer with us) cat he was only a few weeks old.
Next door there lived a pair of aldult labridors they made friends and it would be an unusually sight to watch them eat of of food bowls a the same time.
