Male coon cat & male German Shepherd.. Help!!
 

We just adopted a one year old male coon cat, we also adopted an a 9 month old German shepherd a few months ago and he's wonderful with my 2 year old. Anyway we kept our cat in our room for 2 days. We have his bed in our room so I'm sure the cat (named Oscar) smelled him. We introduced them today and Blaze (our German shepherd) whimpered and did this low whimpering bark torward Oscar . Oscar immediately did the scared cat pose, we didn't hear any hissing. I closed our bedroom door and blaze went to lay down on our bedroom door smelling for the cat and after about a minute or two the dog just got up and went somewhere else. They are both very mellow and chill, blaze has NEVER played with a cat, with other dogs he very submissive and loves to play. He's well socialized and so is the cat. I've never had a car and dog before just dogs or cats. Any advice? Thank you!

It sounds to me like they will be fine. Anytime a dog does not lunge at the cat, things are good. The only thing to worry about is if the cat runs and the dog chases. They will probably scatter your furniture and rugs in every direction. I would just watch them for a few weeks. The pup is bound to be curious about the cat but doesn't sound like he means it any harm.

As long as your dog doesn't drop his head and stare the cat down waiting for it to move, I don't get worried. I call that the "death stare". Even lunging and excited barking can be fixed. But that stare is not good.

It sounds like yours will be fine together. I would put your dog on a leash and continue to expose him to the cat. At least with a leash, you have control of the dog if he decides to react.

Thank you! We had the dog on a leash the whole time. He never pulled or showed any sign of aggression. We had treats ready, he listened very well when we asked him to sit and lay down, but he kept whining at us. I'm sure he wanted to play and chase the cat around. I just want to be sure and not make any mistakes to make them uncomfortable :)

They sound like they are probably good but I would always keep a close eye. I had a cat for 5 years and got a 1yo gsd and it did fine at first but 6 months later... no cat.

There is another good thread active right now --shoot I can't remember the title, something about "our new GSD hates our cat" or something like that. Some good info in there about acclimation.

They'll probably be fine, but you don't want any "mistakes" that you have to "fix". You might check out some of the suggestions in that thread. :)

good thing about maine coons they dont usually bolt from dogs they are a calmer more mellow cat breed from the ones ive seen/had.

Yeah, that's the name of the thread....it's mine. It's under "general information." The thing Jax08 said about staring has me sort of worried.......now I'm going to have to see if our dog does that. How can you tell if he's giving him the death stare or just looking at him?

my gsd eyes would glaze over and stare. went on for the 13 years we had kyra. fortunately we had great verbal control with "leave it" and sit and stay. the cat was here first and had escape routes. the cat teased her on a daily basis.