We got a new male kitten yesterday which is wonderful but we have a cat and a dog. Our dog is a giant chocolate lab and has pretty poor socialising skills with other animals and our cat is an adult female black cat.
The cat was our first and she's had bad experiences with neighbour dogs, but overtime she's managed a reasonable relationship to the dog. He can't get upstairs so she dominates there, he dominates downstairs. He doesn't go for her in an aggressive way and in fact he's scared of her when she hisses, but he doesn't realise he's a big lad with quite sharp claws so he jumps all excited every time she's been into the room. He hasn't really learnt not to do that. My cat became slightly more reserved but I guess having dominance upstairs reassured her. Shes often been very maternal to my little sister so I guess mum thought a kitten could work.
The kitten is I think 8 weeks. Yesterday my family tried to do face to face intro since you can't really avoid the big dog and as expected the dog jumps and gets excited and the kitten is terrified. The cat initially didn't seem to recognise the kitten but at a later attempt both hissed at eachother.
He slept fine in my room. Ate a tiny bit today but hasn't gone to the toilet and seems to be more confident to explore at least in my room. My question is how can I best help the kitten to get settled, and in an ideal world have him be confident both up and downstairs with both the cat and the dog being used to him. Thank you.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/h9eyan/socialising_a_kitten_to_a_cat_and_a_dog/
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