Furry Surprises

2/23/2015

Okay. So we used to think that you never know what you are going to find at the beach. I would like to amend that. Apparently, you never know what you are going to find when you get back home from the beach either. This week we are having winter again, so on Saturday in anticipation of the cold weather, we took the puppies to the beach. When we got back home, there were two little kittens hiding under our parked car. They didn't look like they wanted to run away. When we got Miss M out, she tried to go under the car to visit with them- all we saw was a little gray butt sticking out from under the car with her whole back end wiggling along with her tail. She would have been all of the way under the car had she not been on the leash.
Miss B and Mr. C have been wanting to make friends with cats since they were small. Grandma and Grandpa's cats really disagreed and wanted nothing to do with them. We don't really want dogs that can't get along well with small animals. Pit bulls have enough of a bad reputation already. When other dogs catch and eat cats, people just brush it off by saying that dogs just don't get along with cats, but if a pit bull catches a cat, all of a sudden it's a mindless killing machine that must be stopped. So, we decided it would be a good idea to try to get our puppies used to cats.
We haven't been rushing it at all. We want the cats and the dogs to get along, and we don't want any of them traumatized along the way. The first night, we kept the cats in a bathroom completely separated from the dogs. Yesterday, we only let the cats out when the dogs were in their crates and kept them all separated for most of the day. We put a baby gate in the open doorway of the bathroom and took the puppies one at a time back and forth in front of the door with the cats in plain sight. Today, we let Miss M spend a little time by herself out of the crate in the same room with the cats. It went really well. One of the cats seems to like dogs better than she likes people. The other cat isn't completely comfortable with the puppies yet. It went so well with Miss M that we decided to try it with the other dogs too. While I was making a batch of puppy treats in the evening, we decided to leave Miss B and Mr. C out with the cats free to roam but with the baby gate still in place so that the cats had an escape route if they needed it. Miss B was just happy to be out without the little puppies to bother her, and she happily chewed on a box and a toy in peace. One of the kitties was bored with the dogs and went back to the bathroom to curl up in her kitty bed. Mr. C was sooo happy that there was a cat in the house. He could hardly sit still and kept trying to lick the other one on the ears. The cat just laid there and let him smell her and lick her. We could hear her purring the whole time. He was so excited and was trying really hard to be gentle. We didn't let him play with her very long because he's big enough to hurt her on accident.
Miss S liked the friendly cat too, but was way too excited to stay out very long. When the cat would get up and walk anywhere, Miss S would get bouncy and try to follow her. She was way too focused on the cat, so I put her back up. Mr. M was definitely not ready to play with the cats- he was just way to high energy this evening. We decided to bring Miss M back out and let her play with the cats some more.
She absolutely loves the cats. She doesn't understand why Kitty P doesn't want to play but really gets along with Kitty S. They visited with each other for about 30 minutes (under close supervision of course). Miss M followed the cat wherever she went, and any time Miss M would walk away, the cat would follow her. She wasn't very happy when it was bedtime and she had to leave the kitty. Here are some pictures of them together.