Cats and dogs...

[trarms]

I have two cats (around five years old) and would like to get a dog at some point. Does anyone have advice/tips about introducing a dog (puppy or adult) to cats who are already established in a household? Thanks!

[74Turker]

Cats are typically resilient. If a dog is behaving badly, they will give them a swat. The best you can do is to make sure the dog is calm and exercised when you introduce it to your home, so that it enters the house respectfully. The cats should be able to handle it on their own from there, as long as the dog doesn't have a specific aggression issue toward small animals.

Puppies are more work to take care of, but whenever we've had pups the cats always tried to mother them.

[FarmCat]

When we added a dog to our household, we restricted the dog to the first floor. The two cats promptly moved themselves upstairs. They refused to come anywhere near the dog, so we moved their food upstairs and gave them a 2nd litter box. One cat started coming back downstairs after a few months. The other one stayed up there for almost a year before she decided the dog wasn't going to hurt her.