Good news!

[AuroraGyps]

Yes I, auroragyps, have good news that I want to share with you all. This Sunday, after a weekend visit to my Aunt & Uncle's in upstate NY, my mother & I brought my cat Lady Zeal (see Avatar at left) to come live with us. After her having to stay with them for almost a year, she's back with me again. Ok, so the reason she's not living there anymore is cause she kept peeing on things more and more, but other wise, she's a great cat. There's more to why it didn't work out than that, but I'm not going to go into it.
The only problem is that my parent's pit bull Max (nicknamed "Doofus Maximus" for good reason) doesn't like cats. In all things he is a mellow dog, a total mush, and is very well behaved... it's just that his favored enemy is cats I guess. They met a couple of times so far, with Zeal in a carrier or in a crate in my room (w/ dry food, water, small litter box, a blanket, and toys) and Max has been OK-ish so far. He listens to our commands, he doesn't growl, he doesn't pull us off our feet to get to her, BUT he does bark sometimes, and he does want to get closer. Zeal on the other hand is curious, but really couln't care less... until he get's his face 2 " from her and then she hisses and growls, but doesn't take a swing at him from between the bars.
So, for now I have to split my time between the two of them because they're both needy critters and we'll keep working on bridging the gap between them slowly.

 

[trancejeremy]

Dogs just need time to get used to cats, I think.

I have 3 cats, but then I sorta inherited 2 Black labs a couple years ago. (They literally showed up on my doorstop as puppies. Not little puppies, but like 6 month old ones - so fairly big and hyper). Anyway, they kinda wanted to go after the cats at first, so I had to keep the dogs outside, but every day I would bring them in to meet the cats. Eventually they got used to the cats. And in fact, usually one of my cats sleeps right next to them. Not that my dogs especially like that, but have pretty much resigned themselves to it.


Actually, I now have more of a problem with my cats bothering the dogs than vice versa. One cat really really really likes the dogs and will harass them - lying next to them, licking them, rubbing up against them, etc. Which frankly, the dogs don't really like.

Then one of my other cats likes to harass them in a mean manner. Because he knows they aren't allowed to fight back, he'll swat them, or sometimes block their way.