Dogs and cats don’t get along. That’s what folk wisdom tells us, and we’ve been trained on that story in a thousand ways. In movies, cartoons, books, and in everyday life. And it doesn’t stop there. These days it’s easy to notice there are also two kinds of people, the cat ones and the dog ones. And those, they say, don’t usually get along either.
I’m one of the dog ones. My fiancée is one of the cat ones (not just in looks, but in personality). So let me tell you what it’s like to live right on top of that border.
Two ways of being in the world
A dog is loud. A dog is rough. It comes in sniffing, licking, bumping into you, no manners. It takes a hit, takes pain, and a minute later has forgotten all about it and wants to play again. For a dog almost everything gets solved with the body and with sheer persistence. And then there’s the whole leader thing. Either you lead or you get led, there’s not much middle ground.
A cat is something else. A cat is delicate. It feels touch differently, feels noise differently, senses the change in the air before you do. A sudden move, a piece of furniture out of place, a louder voice, and it’s already pulled back, already felt threatened, already vanished under the bed. It’s not being precious. It’s that the world hits harder in there. What’s just a startle to a dog is an invasion to a cat. And while a dog picks one leader for the group, every cat thinks it’s the only leader there is. Which is what makes them so interesting to live with.
Neither one is wrong. They just feel safe in different ways.
A house full of cats
I adopted two dogs a few years ago. Over time you learn that concessions have to be made or the whole thing turns into a constant war, because us dogs don’t like to give ground. I learned to keep out of their sight the things they’re not mature enough to handle (for one it’s rocks, for the other it’s trash bags), learned to give them what they need to be okay, and learned to let go of the mess, the fur on my clothes, and the racket they make every single time the garbage truck rolls by. In return, they learned not to shit indoors, not to steal my food when I leave it somewhere easy, and to listen when I say no. After all, I’m the leader. Or I like to think I am. It’s a relationship of trade and trust, built over time, with some growling on both ends. But in the end we understand each other and we like being together all the time.
A few months ago my fiancée moved in. And she brought her two cats, completely attached to her, and her to them. I had never taken care of a cat in my life. Nothing against them, I’d actually considered adopting one for years, but I ended up with the dogs first and didn’t want any more obligations after that.
Just like that, I, the dog, became a minority in my own house. And when you live with a cat the whole place changes. There’s cat toys, cat boxes, cat books, a cat fountain, cat hideouts, and cats for cats. Ordering a t-shirt with the cat’s face on it to hand out to friends and family seems to be just a matter of time, they say.
Living together
At first there was separation. The cats’ space and the dogs’ space. Each group’s stuff, each group’s moments. Then the barrier started coming down. We learned to look at the problem and think of a solution, instead of just reacting.
Cats have sharp claws and strike fast when they feel threatened. That was my biggest worry at the start. An attack from the cats could trigger retaliation from the dogs, and that could be catastrophic. But a dog has infinite curiosity and infinite persistence. It wants to sniff, lick, get into everything with the new members of the house, and it won’t give up despite the scratches and the threats. Which annoys the cats a lot. It fell to the dog to understand that the cat doesn’t want the same level of contact it does. That you can care about someone without crowding them. That the right dose is different for each one, and that putting yourself in the other’s place isn’t losing ground, it’s fitting into it better.
There was never a real standoff. There were, sure, a few tense moments. These days things run more smoothly. Everyone still in their own corner, not much interaction. But neither group is confined to one part of the house anymore. There are different rhythms under the same roof. What there isn’t anymore is exclusive territory.
Building
I would personally love to see the dogs playing with the cats. I don’t know if it’ll happen, but things seem to be heading that way. Either way, us dogs have already learned a lot from the cats who moved onto our lot and made it a home. We’ve learned to be smarter, gentler, and more aware of someone else’s space.
And maybe that’s all it ever is, in the end. Not turning a cat into a dog, or a dog into a cat. Learning enough of each other’s language to build, slowly, a place where both would fit whole.