# Introducing a new puppy to our cat



## Fizz.warr (Sep 27, 2016)

Hi, I am new to this forum and are bring home our Cockapoo puppy in 4 weeks. We all ready have a cat who is about 18 months old and am looking for some advise on how best to introduce them, would really like them to eventually be friends. We don't live in the biggest of houses so will be difficult to keep them seperated for long periods of time. I am planning on putting a stair gate up so that the cat can have upstairs to get away from the puppy. If anyone else has any success stories and how they achieved this I would really appreciate it.

Thanks

Victoria


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## HenryPup27 (Sep 28, 2016)

Hi Victoria

I am new here too, I just saw your post and thought I would join up so that I could reply to it. We have a 9 year old house cat...he is very shy around new people coming into the house and doesn't like a lot of noise, but generally he's pretty chilled out when the house is operating as normal. We went back and forth with our decision as to whether to get a dog and what kind. We felt that any terriers might tend to want to chase the cat, so in the end we went for a Cockapoo as they have a good reputation with integrating with cats. I was terrified of upsetting the cat, so I made sure I looked into everything in detail.

I'll try to keep this short as there is a lot of information out there with regards to introducing a new puppy to a cat – I will do bullet points! These are the things that worked for us – Henry (7 month old Cockapoo) and Bailey the cat now co-exist beautifully.

• If it's possible logistically, try to swap blankets between the puppy and cat before the puppy comes to live with you. You need the puppy to smell the cat and the cat to smell the puppy well before he/she appears in the house.

• If you are going to use a crate/bed etc, get these in place in the house well before the puppy arrives so that your cat can sniff them and get used to them, and even rub his/her face against them to mark them.

• We have a 3-storey town house, and the cat's things (bed/litter tray/food etc) were always on the top floor anyway, so we decided this would only ever be the cat-zone, so that he knows he's not going to get 'bothered' up there, and isn't going to have his food eaten or litter tray invaded! There is now just one gate in the house, at the bottom of the stairs up to the top floor. The rest of the house is open to all!

• When we brought Henry home, he lived in the kitchen (with a gate across the door) for a couple of weeks. Apart from this being great for house-training as it has access to the garden, this also gave the cat the opportunity to come and investigate this new creature in the house without fully committing. Cats only feel safe if they have an escape route, never force a cat to do anything or it will do the opposite as you will probably know anyway.

• I gave the cat as much attention as possible still, even though that's hard when you are training a new puppy (!), and in the evenings he would get on my lap in the living room as normal and I would get some time with him on my own. My boyfriend would then occasionally bring Henry up to the living room, just for short periods of time (sitting on the other side of the room), so that they could see each other. Then they would go back down to the kitchen after about 10 minutes or so.

• The integration took a number of weeks, so try not to rush anything. Little and often, and always on the cat's terms, let him/her come and watch, he/she needs to learn the movements of the puppy.

• If you can possibly help it, try to never let the puppy chase the cat. Constant supervision is needed at all times at least to start with. 

• On the odd occasion, Henry tries to get Bailey to play with him (Bailey isn't interested of course!) so we distract him with something else if that happens.

It's so hard to explain it all in a few words, but all of the above worked for us – just take it really really slowly. Our cat now loves the attention that Henry gives him, and they are like partners in crime! Henry thinks the cat is the best thing ever and really wants to be his friend, whereas I think the cat thinks the pup is stupid but is always around winding him up! Be careful of this too - our cat hasn't ever run away from the puppy, he's always stood his ground which has really surprised us because usually he's so shy. That has definitely helped. But these days he'll mince about and waft his tail in Henry's face to get a reaction. Henry's face is a picture when he does that!

I hope this helps, not an exhaustive list by any means but hopefully some of it will be things you can do. Feel free to ask anything!

xx


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## fairlie (Sep 7, 2013)

This is brilliant advice and worth every ounce of effort because they'll go on to have a very long friendship and the cat will keep your pup from ever feeling alone when you must go out.

Using a house lead will reinforce the "we don't chase cats" rule which can be transferred to "we don't chase birds, squirrels, sheep, rabbits etc..."when you are out. Balls, sticks and other dogs (when permitted) are the only things good puppies should chase.


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## Fizz.warr (Sep 27, 2016)

Thank you so much for this information it's great. Our cat sounds similar to yours totally fine with us but can be a bit shy when our people come round it he is outside. 

Our puppy is about 3 hrs away from us at the moment but my mum is going to visit her this week so I will see if she can get a blanket with her sent on for the cat and post it down to me. 

We live in a small 2 bedroom terrace and we have an outside cat so I am going to struggle to keep them spectate all the time. I can't lock the dog in the kitchen as then the cat won't be get outside so we were thing of keeping the puppy in the hallway with a stair gate so the cat has upstairs undisturbed but he will have to brave the puppy to get outside. Do you think this will be ok??

I also don't want to lock the cat inside with a litter tray as I think this would stress him out even more. We will be at home with them both for almost 2 weeks so am hoping in this time we can get an idea of how it will all work with them. I just really want them to both be able to get on, my worst fear is the cat moving out!!!


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## HenryPup27 (Sep 28, 2016)

I think that sounds fine, you'll get to grips with what works with your room setup once the puppy arrives. When our cat used to come towards Henry to observe him through the gate, I would slowly open the gate a bit, sit on the floor and get Henry on my lap and hold him firmly and talk gently to them - this worked in calming them both but also meant that Henry couldn't make any sudden movements towards the cat. They could then see each other up close without any surprises! Eventually this progressed to giving them both treats near to each other. They would touch noses through the bars, in fact they did that quite early on, and they still do that a lot now! So sweet. 

You'll find what works for them both, but you do need to go really slowly from the start. If your cat gets spooked early on it might be difficult to reverse the situation. As I mentioned before, definitely get as much of your house set up before you collect the puppy. Gates, toys, bed, everything, so that your cat can get used to all that new stuff in his own time. It probably helped that our cat is a house cat and therefore had never encountered a dog before, so he didn't have a clue what Henry was, good or bad! So he wasn't scared, just curious mostly. We made sure he wasn't pressured into getting near to Henry, it was all on the cat's terms. 

It's great that you'll be around for the first two weeks to supervise. I really hope it works out for you, I'm so relieved that our hard work paid off, it is difficult but try to pay as much attention to the cat as he had before. Then he won't feel left out.


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## HenryPup27 (Sep 28, 2016)

Hi Victoria

How are you getting on with your new puppy, and how is he/she and your cat getting along so far??

Alison
x


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## Annabellam (Nov 3, 2015)

First of all i think its important to pick the right place. A sort of common ground and a place where both of them can feel safe.

Seperate the animals: Letting one free while the other is enclosed should allow one to investigate the other's scent etc.

Make leashed introductions. You can leash the dog while you introduce the two. You can be doing this everytime they meet until they both get used to each other to a point that they are calm. Mostly the dog will ignore the cat once calm.

You can allow unsupervised meeting after a long period of monitored interactions.


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