More Trouble With Cats :(

[Guest OPointyDog]

Actually the cats are not the trouble, it's the dogs. I am crying as I post this because it's so hard to see a good outcome.

 

We have two older cats that we've had for a long time. Both hounds that have been placed with us were tested and were rated "cat friendly." We got Zoe two years ago, and she was really "cat correctable" and we worked hard, and eventually we got to the point where she was with the cats (always supervised) and would leave the cats alone. We used baby gates up off the floor as escape routes, and always crated Zoe when we were gone.

 

We got Mika about 18 months ago, and he's very reactionary - everything sets him off, and he leaps up and runs off to look to see what's happening. He barked at the cats, and then would try to chase them. Over the last 18 months we've tried pennies in cans, spray bottles, "NO CAT" in a deep voice, and treats when he ignores the cats. He improved somewhat (no more barking), but isn't really trustworthy, so we put the baby gates down, and the cats mostly live upstairs and the dogs are gated into the downstairs. Dogs are always crated when they are unsupervised. I even took Mika to a professional trainer to work on this issue, but he completely ignored the cat that she brought in to test him.

 

We've had a few chasing incidents over the last year - always in the kitchen, since the dogs have to pass through the kitchen from the gated area to go out the back door, and the cats have access to the kitchen. I check to make sure the cats are upstairs, and then let the dogs in. Sadly, Zoe has unlearned her tolerance for cats, since Mika taught her it was fun to chase them.

 

Last night, I thought our cat Ellie had gone upstairs, and I let the dogs into the kitchen to go outside. Unfortunately, they found her, and Zoe grabbed her and started shaking her. I screamed at Zoe and grabbed her collar and eventually got her to drop the cat, and then Mika grabbed the cat. More wrangling as both dogs are grabbing for the cat. Ellie finally got away and ran upstairs. I put the dogs back in the crates, retrieved the cat out from under the bed, and raced her off to the vet. Fortunately, x-rays show no internal damage - though I'm sure she's sore from being picked up and shaken so hard.

 

We are now leashing up with muzzles to go through the kitchen. Both cats haven't been downstairs at all since the incident.

 

I can't get the image of Zoe trying to kill my cat out of my head. I contacted the adoption group, which basically said, "you've done what you can training wise. Either you have to keep them completely separated or we can rehome the dogs for you." They were gracious and sympathetic, but it's so hard to think about giving them up. But I feel I owe it to my cats to give them a safe home.

 

Has anyone successfully lived long term with a divided household? Clearly the dogs are not cat safe, and I worry about my cats.... I am heartbroken about the idea of giving the dogs up, but also want my cats to be safe.... I feel so awful and that I've betrayed my cats by bringing the dogs in, but I also have worked so hard with both dogs on their health and behavior issues that I feel responsible and love them, too.

[XTRAWLD]

What a difficult position you are in. I unfortunately have no input, but what a heartwrenching decision you need to make, either way of re-homing or living in a divided household. Much luck to you!

[Guest Greyt_dog_lover]

Ok, I cut-and-pasted from a previous thread. I have been a cat tester for multiple groups as well as I foster greyhounds with my cats. Here is my method for the first few months I have new hounds in my house:

 

First week:

1) Muzzle does not come off the hound unless the cats are behind closed door, or hound is in crate, PERIOD.

2) Cats will be put behind closed doors for more than half of the day the hound is awake and I am home.

3) When the cats are around, the hound will have a leash attached (as well as muzzle, see above).

4) to work on desensitization, get some good small bites of food, such as cheese. Have significant other/friend help with the next few steps

5) One person has hound with muzzle and leash on one side of room, second person gets cat and walks into room holding cat. Person with cat sits on floor on opposite side of room and allows the hound to see the cat. Person holding hound calls his/her name, once the hound looks, give treat. REPEAT for 5-10 minutes. DO NOT allow cat to move or otherwise stir and make noise. If the cat gets upset, remove the cat, do not allow the cat to run or make noise as this may excite the hound.

6) do this multiple times during the day. After each session, the cat should be placed in a room, do not allow interaction.

 

Second week:

1) Muzzle does not come off the hound unless the cats are behind closed door, or hound is in crate, PERIOD.

2) Again, two people. One brings cat into room, one holds the hound with muzzle and leash. Person with cat should sit much closer to hound. The hound can be allowed to approach the cat and sniff. All the while the person holding the hound should call his/her name and treat when the hound looks away from the cat. If the hound does not look away from the cat, the person holding the hound on the leash should move away from the cat and get the hounds attention, if needed show the treat to the hound to break the hounds' attention.

3) REPEAT for 5-10 minutes multiple times during the day.

4) After each session the cat should be placed in a room, do not allow interaction.

 

Third week:

1) Muzzle does not come off the hound unless the cats are behind closed door, or hound is in crate, PERIOD (see the trend?).

2) Again, two people. The hound still has muzzle and leash. By this time the hound should be nearly 100% reliable in looking away from the cat for a treat. If not, repeat second week until you have 100% reliability.

3) Second person brings cat into room, sets the cat down and allows the cat to move around the room. The person with the hound should be ready for the hound to try to move, do NOT allow the hound to follow or approach the cat when it is moving around. Instead call the hounds name and treat. If during this week the cat takes off or the hound starts to get anxious (barking, panting, drooling, excessive pulling) you need to go back a week.

4) If you can now distract the hound while the cat is moving around the room, good. Keep this training up for a week.

 

Fourth week:

1) Muzzle does not come off the hound unless the cats are behind closed door, or hound is in crate, PERIOD.

2) Two people, same drill (muzzle and leash).

3) Now you want to get the cat riled up when you have the cat and hound in the room together. If the cat is calm, then push the cat to run out of the room or otherwise get the kitty to make noise. Hold the leash and repeat treating when the hound looks at you. If you cannot get the hounds attention, go back a few weeks in the training.

4) Repeat daily.

 

Once you can have the cat in the room running around and making noise and be able to get the hound to look at you for treats, THEN you can allow the cat to have free run of the house. At this time, put up the baby gates at strategic places around the home (such as hallways and maybe doorways) about 6" above the ground. This will allow for the cats to move freely, but the hound cannot follow. Also as others have said, pull away the furniture from the walls to allow the cats to slide behind. At this time I may allow the cats and dogs to be able to move around at night, but have to see both how calm the cats are around the hound and vise versa. Before this I do not allow the cats and dogs to be able to be in the same room at night when I sleep, period.

 

This method of desensitization is much more effective at getting hounds and cats to live together as it reinforces the behavior you want, as opposed to correcting the behavior you don't want. For correction to work, you have to be present.

 

Do not allow your cats and dogs to co-mingle while you are gone for at least the first 3-6 months, you never know what can happen when you are gone. The muzzle does not guarantee that your cat will not be harmed. A greyhound can still kill small animals with a muzzle on.

 

**NOTE**

 

Do NOT allow your hound to be loose with the cat in the house when the hound is not under your direct control (ie leash) for at least the first 3 weeks of my regiment. Secondly, a baby gate is not enough separation when you are gone. You need to close the door where the cat is when you leave, or crate the hound, either or, nothing less. Drugs, I don't think you need to medicate your hound, you need to do some alone training (do a search in the forums here).

 

 

Since you have had an issue with them actually making contact with your cats, you will need to start over totally with the training. I don't know if it is possible, but this would be the way I would start with the training. The problem with the pennies in a can, the water bottle and such is that you have to catch them when they have already gotten to the high energy level of chase, its too late at this time to train them, its just a reaction. Maybe this method will help. Realize that you can only train this method with one hound at a time. I would keep the other hound in a crate out of the room as to not make the situation a pack mentality and reaction off each other's energy.

 

Chad

[ramonaghan]

No advice either, just loads of sympathy. I have two cats as well and always said "they were here first, so they take priority if things don't work out" (not to mention one is almost 11, so he's not going anywhere). It would devastate me to see one of them being picked up and shaken like you describe. Having had Sweep a year and a half now, though, I also can't fathom how hard it would be to rehome her. I hope someone with more experience will be able to offer you some encouragement as you face this decision.

[Guest grey_dreams]

I'm really sorry for what all of you are going through. I know how hard it is to deal with a dog that doesn't tolerate the cats. Just wanted to say, that when they first come home (and for as long as it takes until they can be trusted) they are leashed to me 24/7 (plus muzzle until I can see how they react) while I am home, including at night while we sleep, and are separated by closed doors/crates when I am not home. I don't allow any chasing ever. And the leash lets me regulate and respond to the interactions on the spot, including redirecting and praising immediately as the reaction occurs. You got Zoe to a point where she could tolerate, but now she has rapidly unlearned all that because of Mika's influence. Maybe if Zoe was alone again, with a lot of time, you might be able to get back to that place. But with both of them, it seems that will be difficult at best, and perhaps not possible.

 

I think because of the incident last night, you have two choices, to either live with a permanently divided home, or rehoming. If you have a very large house, you can divide it, but be aware that it's not optimal because the cats know the dogs are in the other part (and it makes them tense nervous and fearful) and the dogs know the cats are in the other part (and it keeps them aroused and alert). And it only takes one small oversight on a hectic morning (such as a closed door that is not fully latched and gets pushed open when you are not at home) for the unthinkable to happen. When we had to live for 4 months with a dog that couldn't tolerate the cat, my house was a like a fortress and the tension was fairly high. If you go that route, please add an extra bolt or chain up at the top of the door that separates them (and check it twice before leaving the house), because if a determined dog worked on a door handle for several hours, they could probably manage to open even a well-closed door.

 

I'm very sorry for what happened. I'm glad your cat wasn't hurt worse. It's a very difficult situation

[GreytNut]

That's a tough situation. We never allow the cats out with Riley unless it's under strict supervision. He's like your Zoe in that he's cat correctable, but not truly trustworthy. We are continuing to train him and he's gotten much better, but I still will probably never completely trust him. The cats have the run of a large bedroom and all of their food, litter and toys are in there. They spend most of the day lounging on the bed or in the window. They come out when someone can closely watch. We close the dog door, Riley goes to his bed, and then the kitties come out. If we have to leave the room for any reason the cats get put away.

 

In your case it sounds like even supervised interaction is out of the question. You will have to carefully think about how to keep your kitties completely separated from the dogs with no common areas, and consider safeguards to keep it that way (i.e., self-closing doors so someone can't forget to close one, an extra door between the cat area and the dog area that functions like an airlock, whatever works for your setup). If you can't be certain that your cats will never cross paths with your hounds, it's probably best to rehome the hounds. Your cats deserve to be safe, your dogs deserve not to be constantly tempted with prey they cannot have, and you deserve to be able to relax in your own home.

[KristenMichele]

Im so sorry this happened to you. I would be devastated if this happened in my home. I have 2 cats and 1 Grey and I worried from day one this would happen to my cats. Sadly we have the opposite thing happening here. My cat Diva attacks my Grey. Not violently, but if fanny gets too close she meows and chases her. The crazy thing is my Grey is Scared of the cats. It's makes me laugh all the time. But I'm thankful I'm not in the other situation. I agree you should be able to relax in your home and not worry.

[3greytjoys]

I feel for you in this difficult situation, and relieved your cat is expected to be okay. Sadly, I agree with grey_dreams and GreytNut, especially since this involves your indoor family cat. Once dogs (any breed) get as far as aggressively shaking, and sharing a captured cat, behavior modification rarely makes a lasting difference, imo. Strong instinctual prey drive can't be trained out of a dog. This situation with your dogs' "shared" effort is not surprising, it's canine pack mentality. (Similar pack behavior occurs in dog parks, etc. if an injured dog cries in distress, is perceived as a smaller or weaker underdog, or hunted as prey, often the entire group attacks the targeted dog.)

 

Each cat's reaction is different. One of our younger cats was frightened by a visiting dog's extremely high prey reaction. The dog was muzzled and leashed, and later crated. The dog never made any physical contact with the cat. Very strict cat/dog location management was required during the dog's visit, but that particular cat was too frightened to go downstairs for a year.

 

Some people successfully divide their house with controlled management (greater success in adult only households). Higher prey is higher risk. As others mentioned, accidents happen if anyone lets their guard down, a cat darts out, or dog forces his way into the cat's side. I know Greyhounds that open door knobs -- GreytNut's smart suggestion of a secondary upper door lock is good for creative dogs, and/or if children share the home. The airlock (catch) system is a lifesaver. We avoid stuffed toys that resemble small, furry animals. Of course, outside environments are considered "game on" for any small moving animals through most Greyhounds' eyes.

 

Positive thoughts for whatever you decide to do in this difficult situation.

[Guest OPointyDog]

Thanks everyone for your sympathy and ideas. I still feel terrible about what happened, but we're doing our best.

 

For now we're working on "fortifying" our house and making sure there's no contact. We are very lucky that we've got a few things going for us - there are only two people in our house, both adults, and we live in a large Victorian house, so there are a lot of rooms and doors and places for gates. We've already set up an "airlock" system - the dogs go into that area only on leashes when they leave the house. Another thing we have going for us (!) is that Mika is so destructive that we already have protocols so that he's always crated when he's not supervised. Zoe loves her crate, so we crate her too - they are crated at night and also when we're not home, and there's two sets of doors beyond their crates between them and the cats. We never leave them loose and unsupervised because they can't be trusted not to destroy things. So I don't worry about the cats at night or when we're gone. We're going to get a permanently mounted gate (the current one is pressure-mounted) for the kitchen and rearrange the laundry room so we can shut the door rather than putting a gate there. We'll get a secondary latch for that door, too. We also don't have furry toys or stuffies because Mika chews them up and eats them. Only kongs and nylabones. (Did I mention he's destructive?) I do let them chase things and play with toys (mostly balls) when they are OUTSIDE and supervised so hopefully they aren't too deprived.

 

Thankfully, Ellie (the cat) is amazingly resilient. After we got home from the vet, she stayed in her cat cup upstairs and didn't get out of it until the next day. I was really worried about her because she seemed really dazed. She wouldn't come downstairs. But by Friday evening, she was pretty much back to normal and slept under the covers with us, and was rolling around wanting her tummy rubbed. This morning she came downstairs for breakfast. I was surprised! We did decide today to move the cats' food upstairs and feed them there to limit their need to come downstairs so they will feel safer. The upstairs of our house has 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and big sunny landing with bay windows, so they are not being deprived of space. The dogs have never been upstairs so they also aren't being deprived of something they've had previously.

 

The interesting thing to me is that neither dog is really obsessed with the cats - they see the cats through the gates (which we're fixing/replacing so that won't be true) and don't stare or drool or exhibit much interest. You can easily call them away from looking at the cats, and they don't really search for them. Our other cat is quite loud and she wanders around mewing and carrying on where they can hear her, and they don't even lift a head off their beds. It's really the running motion that sets them off, I think.

 

I have talked to our adoption group about the future potential need for re-homing. Nobody wants this, but I think if we need this option in the future, we will do it for the protection of the cats.

 

Thanks again for the thoughts and advice - they have given us good ideas of what protections to put in place.

[Guest grey_dreams]

Glad to hear you have a solid plan for now. I'm really happy to hear that Ellie bounced back so quickly! Just wanted to add, just in case you may not have it, but if you could plug in one or two Feliway diffusers (and refills) in the upstairs part of the house where the cats will be staying most of the time, that will really help them. You said that they aren't being deprived of something, but I guess they used to have free run of the whole house before you got Zoe? Anyway, Feliway is really wonderful for cats.