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How To Get A Dog And Cat To Get Along?

  • 02/07/2018
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It’s kind of great for pet lovers who would want to have different types of pets at home. The idea is not to have a specific type for your liking.

The case, however, doesn’t mean that you could just get a new one and throw it out in front of your current pet. It’s common with people who own a dog and want to have a cat to add in their family and vice versa.

Without proper care, knowledge, and consideration, you’d end up with a pile of stress where dogs and cats would chase each other around, bark and scream in anger, fight each other that may cause injuries or you’d end up with damaged home furniture.

The most common stereotype for pets belongs to cats and dogs. They are socially recognized as mortal enemies or foes that we’d often see in videos, movies, books, and more. That’s correct but that is because of their characteristics and behaviours.

Dogs are convivial and highly territorial. A new pet or cat would impose a threat to their natural characteristics where they would consider it a trespass and a danger to their master. You really can’t blame them for it as they just care about their human’s interest. A cat, on the other hand, is a bit distant and wants to do its own things regardless of any consent from their owner. They are also easily startled due to extra heightened senses and they are highly precautious about their surroundings. A barking dog trying to scare off a cat could really get cats all cranky.

Below are some of the considerations and techniques to get a dog and a cat to get along:

Animal Behaviour and Characteristics

First and foremost, the thing that you want to take into consideration would be the animal’s behaviour that’s going to be added to your current type of pet instead of breed. If you currently have a dog and would want to add a cat to the family, you have a chance to know and learn the behaviour of your cat and see if it can go smoothly with the behaviour of your dog. Thinking of a dog or cat breed rather than thinking about how it could live together with other animals would be pointless if they’d go trampling around.

Introduction

After some thinking about your cat or dog’s behaviour, introducing them after getting the pet would be the next step.

You just can’t just let them meet each other right away and let them randomly roam around. They’d be chasing each other around the whole day. The thing you would want to do is to get them into their own separate territory for a few days. You can get a dog or cat gate that could limit their space and movement and won’t allow them to get past each other.

This way, your dog will get some familiarization with the cat’s scent, presence and would witness that it’s actually not a threat to their owner. Cat, on the other hand, would slowly know and understand that the dog is not actually a threat to them and that they could slowly avoid getting startled by its barks and movement. The cat will eventually learn not to cross behaviours with dogs, especially with food.

This technique will not only allow them to get familiar with each other but cats and dogs have a rebellious tendency if you force them to like each other all of a sudden.

Switching Places

Let them cross each other’s territory separately. You can put your dog into the cat’s space, same goes for the cat. This will allow them to sniff out the necessary scent they need to identify that new animal they’re about to live with.

A scent is one of the greatest ways for animals to get in touch with other types of animals. You’d often see a new dog or cat smell you out on their first few days of living with you. That also applies to them. Allowing them to freely sniff each other’s scent on each other’s area would let them learn to accept each other.

Food and Toys

Even though they are now familiar with each other, they really don’t understand the behaviour of each other. Getting a separate food bowl for them would help but a large dog might come up to your cat’s food bowl as it eats and would cause a fight. The same thing goes with cats as they aren’t familiar with how dog’s hate it when some other animal eats out the food from their food bowl, a cat might come and eat from it causing some problems to occur.

You might want to really put their “separate” food bowl into “separated” areas in your house. Adding to that, you could do some training and apply some commands that wouldn’t let either of the two come across each other’s food.

Furthermore, toys also need to be sorted out and separated from each other. Dogs are territorial. They hate it if other animals touch their food bowl, how much more if other animals play with their toys? It could be disastrous when to animals would fight over who gets the toy or not. Additionally, there are some studies that some dogs could also get attracted to catnips. If you have catnip as one of your best cat toys, might as well let them play it on their own time to avoid any confrontations.

All this, by size, dogs would generally have no problem imposing what they want with cats. But there are lots of dogs in smaller sizes where cats have the advantage. It is best that regardless of whether you have a small cat or have a huge dog and who has the advantage, to keep them in check. There are some proper training to where you could actually let a dog and a cat enjoy each other’s toy and food without any problems.

Conclusion

Dogs and cats may be the number one stereotyped animals that were thought to be mortal enemies but they are actually one of the best pairs of animals on different types. You’d find it quite lovely and satisfying if you could work them out to live in peace and love each other. Seeing dogs and cats sleeping, cuddling and wandering around together would give you the best feeling in the world. It would imply that regardless of what types of animals live in one place, nature would always give some way to share love and care.

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