Introducing a kitten to a home with a dog...

In My Humble Opinion
1

Perhaps this has been asked and answered, but I just did a search for this and after about 5 pages with no luck, I got lazy and figured I’d just ask.

I am a dog person. I don’t hate cats or anything. Some people have really cool cats, some don’t. All in all, I’m an animal lover…

My fiance has had cats and dogs his whole life…but before we met, he was more of a cat guy. And REALLY, REALLY wants to adopt cat.

Problem…

I have a 6 year old German shepherd named Maxx. I’ve heard shepherds have a high prey drive. Maxx has never been around a cat really. There was one in the yard one morning when I let him out. The cat took off and he ran after it until he got to the street and I guess he thought “screw it” and came back (this was before he was trained on the invisible fence).

There’s also a cat that rolls around outside and he will watch from the window with calm infatuation. One day it was on the roof of the garage (detached garage) and Maxx sat politely on the ground watching it. Now barking, no aggression, mostly curiousity.

With smaller dogs, he’s also more curious than anything.

My question (finally) is how have some of you gone about introducing a kitten to your dog. I’ve read that it’s fine if the dog sees the kitten as its property, but I’m not about to put my dog on the couch and ask him questions about his childhood. I’m more interested in what people have done, methodically, to make the introduction go smoothly.

I’d be super if those of your with shepherds or other “high prey drive” dogs can weigh in.

Maxx is friendly, lovable, playful, quiet and inquisitive.

I appreciate any and all advice and suggestions!

2

It is against the law to put the word ‘kitten’ in a thread title without putting pictures of kittens in the OP. You need to buy a kitten to rectify this oversight.

3

All dogs and cats are different. You just have to try and see how each of them reacts. It is unlikely that the German will try to kill the cat. They will probably both be skittish for a while. I have had many Shepherds and Shepherd mixes along with many cats and they all seemed to get along fine after a week or two. Just be there to closely watch for the initial introduction or two to see what you are up against. If you get lucky, it will be a non-event.

4

Give the cat an out - a place he can escape to if things get too tough for him. I’d suggest introducing them very slowly, such as putting the cat in a (dog-proof) carrier first, and see the dog’s reaction. And don’t trust them alone together for a long time - dogs can kill cats very easily (especially a kitten who doesn’t have many defenses), until you are sure the dog won’t hurt the kitten. This could take months.

My dogs will chase cats in the yard, bark at strange cats, etc., but they see our cats as part of their ‘pack’ and leave them be. My cats stay indoors, and I have heard of dogs who know a cat from indoors but will chase it if it is let out, so be careful there, too.

5

I have a pair of greyhounds that I had to introduce a six-month-old kitten to last year. The dogs were familiar with our older cat, but he’s a sedentary creature; an active youngster bouncing all over everything felt like it would be way too different to ask them to adapt to all at once, even with two hounds that are fairly low prey-drive.

Primary rule was that the animals were not allowed alone together until the hounds stopped taking an interest. Once the cat’s just part of the household scenery, you’re in pretty safe territory. Curiosity – sniffing, nudging, licking – was fine; intensity – that ears-up, unwavering stare – got an immediate, mild correction and meant that both animals had to leave the room. The kitten was more or less confined to the bathroom for the first few days as a quarantine measure until he got a bill of clean health from the vet, but the dogs could hear and smell it; again, curiosity was fine, obsession wasn’t – no parking in front of or scratching at the door. It was easier after the vet visit; the dogs sleep in our room, so we just started closing the door to our room at night and let the cat out to get his scent all over the house. Once the dogs got to be pretty ho-hum about the new fuzzball, we gradually relaxed supervision. A year later, there haven’t been any incidents.

If Maxx shows a lot of intensity toward the cat and it doesn’t relent with correction and familiarity with the newcomer, it’d be a bad idea to ever let up on supervision. Some dogs just have too high prey drive to get on with smaller animals.

6

Here, here, so that the demand for kitten and puppies picture doesn’t grow into a torches and pitchforks riot, here are some videos of kind puppies and kittens living together in harmony!

7

A very good friend of mine has a cat and dogs. He’s the World’s Biggest Asshole (with a heart of gold) type. Kitten he got was part of a stray litter he took in. Mostly, he claims, because the broad working front desk for the apartment complex who told him about the cats was sporting major cleavage, but he still treats the cat like a real Cat Person would. Calls him Night Ranger. He’s got a couple of dogs, one of them a former stray (I assume from a similar story, and he named it after one of his favorite brands of liquor).

Cat does just fine. Whenever he visits family and takes the ‘kids’ with him they mingle with their dogs, forming a little pack and everything. Storming up and down the stairs, on top of the furniture, even the cat closing up behind, sometimes leading it.

We think Ranger (the cat)'s line of thinking is something like “these idiots look more like me than the fat guy does, so I must be one of them.”

8

When I brought Snickers and Biscuit home from the shelter, they were tiny little kittens- they weighed a pound each. We’d had two adult cats in the house when we adopted Auggie, a mutt who weighs about 50 pounds. We were down to one adult cat at the time, and wanted everyone to have plenty of time to get used to each other.

We got a big, 3-level ferret cage and put it in the living room and put the kittens in it, along with food, water and litter box. We took them out several times a day to play with them, and to let Auggie sniff around at them. They slept in the cage for a few weeks, then we started shutting them in our room while we were gone and at night. A couple of months after we brought them home, they had the run of the house, and Auggie and the older cat were both fine with them. We donated the cage to the shelter where we got the little fuzzbutts.

9

As a continuation from katie1341’s post … instead of restricting the kittens … I restrict the dog (tie him to his bed or piece of furniture! I don’t mean tightly/cruelly!) … same sort of thing really!

If you can totally prevent the chase scenario then you’ll have a lot more success.

Once dog learns this kitten doesn’t run from it, once the kitten learns not to run … the situation doesn’t escalate.

Of course … there are some kittens born knowing they are gods and dogs are underlings … I have one of those … she’ll stand up to any dog, they are all scared of her! It is more an issue of protecting the dogs!

10

Buddy the World’s Friendliest Cat’s two best friends are the neighbour’s German shepard and the neighbour’s neighbour’s German shepard. The only down sides of the relationships are the paw prints in the windows from the dogs trying to get inside, and a wet cat from all the licking by the dogs when they come inside.

They interact very well, and roughouse a bit (dogs chase cat, cat chases dogs), so when things get a bit too rambunctious, I intervene and tell them to be gentle, for I don’t want Buddy to get accidentally trampled. I also take care when playing fetch, for the dogs are so much faster than Buddy that he gets run over unless I am careful about the direction in which I throw.

In short, deliberate harm is not a worry at all, but accidental harm due to the size difference is something I watch out for.

11

I’m thinking of introducing a kitten to my Rhodesian Ridgeback once my older Norwegian Elkhound is gone. The old dog is great with cats (grew up with two) but I don’t want to subject him to a kitten at his age (almost 15). The Ridgeback only had cats around for the first couple of months in my home and they were both timid so she never learned how to behave around them. I had to have both cats put to sleep due to old age and health problems two years ago.

Here’s a helpful link I found when I was researching this:

http://www.sfgsrescue.org/articles/cat.htm

12

I have had dogs with really high prey drive and cats in the same household. Usually, I’ve let them sort it out. All it took was for the kitten/cat to get a good swipe at the dog’s nose to teach the dog some boundaries… and sure enough, the dog kind of got the picture.

That said, I was careful about it and did teach the dog SOME manners.

Right now, I have a pack of 4 dogs who do “critter” (they will hunt rabbits in my yard) so I wouldn’t trust them around a kitten or a cat. They are a pack and will hunt that way. But a single dog with prey drive is more likely to be curious and get swatted on the schnozz… and learn that messing with the front end of a pissed off cat is a really bad idea :wink:

13

I brought 2 very young kittens home and intoduced them to the 2, year-old pit bulls belonging to my next door neighbor’s. I started off having the cats on my lap and letting the dogs come up and sniff & let them check them out. Next it was letting the dogs into my house with the cats, then once the cats became outdoor cats, they all started running around together. The worst thing the dogs do is poke the cats with their noses and slobber on them.

Its very amusing watching 2, 5 lb. cats putting the smackdown on a 90 lb. pit though.

14

Thank you all so much for your suggestions. It looks like the common sense answer will prevail, but you’ve all provided some very helpful insight and techniques!

My biggest fear is that if it runs Maxx will chase it. He’s very big and clumsy. But like some of you have mentioned, and I’ve read somewhere before, with shepherds, the cat has to be a pack member or property.

I’m pretty sure I’m the alpha. Maxx does test me on occasion. For example, he strolls into the kitchen, I tell him “out.” He steps back [just over the door threshold and then will either step a little closer, or drop his ball over the threshold and make like he was “just getting his ball.” But aside from being almost as stubborn as I am, he is a member of my pack and not the other way around.

15

Oddly ,I find it often depends on the cat. I have 2 beagles that hunt and try to kill any critter they can. We heard about a woman who was getting rid of her cat. Chances are they would put it down. So I took it.
The cat was terrified. I put it in the back room with the kitty litter overnight. Next day he came out like he owned the place. The dogs wanted to sniff him. After about a minute it was all over. No problems since. He is declawed so he was vulnerable. He still smacks the dogs every now and then. Quincy will chase him around the house after awhile. The younger beagle ,Nordberg, pretty much ignores it. So you just never know.

16

If you adopt from a shelter, you might ask them if they have any cats or kittens that have already been introduced to dogs. We used to foster kittens and the shelter loved our kittens because they grew up learning how to handle our big shepherd-mix, and the shelter tried to get families with dogs to adopt those kittens. Most of these cats think of dogs not as friends, necessarily, because the instincts run counter to that, but they understand that most dogs will back down after a swat on the nose.

Don’t get a declawed cat, and if you’re really worried, don’t get a kitten. A cat that’s had most of its growth already (even 9 months old or so) will be much better equipped to show your dog that the cat can handle itself.

17

Whoops- doublepost!

18

One other thing I thought I’d mention - when I started thinking about adding a cat to peacefully coexist with Zilla the Rhodesian Ridgeback beastie mentioned above, both breeders I talked to as well as my vet strongly recommended getting a kitten over an adult cat, because they thought the beast would be more likely to ‘adopt’ a kitten as her own rather than an adult cat, and they said getting the dog to think of the cat as ‘hers’ was pretty important to them peacefully coexisting.

Zilla has a strong prey drive, and very playful, but is not what I’d call “cat-aggressive.” She wants to play with them, but doesn’t want to kill them (which doesn’t mean she wouldn’t accidentally hurt them if unsupervised). When I was on vacation recently, she stayed at a friend’s house who has a cat, and though she pestered the cat incessantly, she didn’t want to hurt him. If the kitty had been more ‘bad-ass’ and less timid, I suspect he would have smacked Zilla once on the snout and that would have been the end of it.

Outside running small furry animals are a different story, though. I wouldn’t trust her with any small animal outside.