I think Gracie is the most perfect dog in the world. My cats, on the other hand, this that she is the spawn from hell. We’ve been trying to integrate Gracie with our four cats for about a month now and we’re having very little success. We’ve tried supervised visits with one cat in a neutral area, we’ve tried group meets, we’ve tried just about everything and the cats simply want nothing to do with Gracie.
When Gracie sees one of the cats, she wants to play, so she gets a little bouncy and hops around a little bit. The cats see this as a threat, so they hunker down, growl and hiss at her. After a month the cats haven’t figured out that she’s trying to play and Gracie hasn’t figured out that they don’t like her.
Our hope has been that they would somehow find a middle ground, then we could all live happily ever after. Right now I’d settle for a good nights sleep. I’ve tried to have Gracie sleep on the bed with us, but she just won’t leave the cats alone and Holly and I can’t take all the bitching from the cats. Finally, at 3am this morning, Holly and I agreed to put Gracie in her crate. I hate to do it, because she’s in her crate for most of the day when we’re out working, but what else can you do?
We did have one good night sleep with the dogs and cats and that was about a week ago. All the cats had bailed on the bed and were hiding in the master bathroom. Gracie had fallen asleep and then the cats slowly snuck back onto the bed. I was dead tired and didn’t stir all night (which is rare). We all slept together in perfect harmony until 6AM. That’s when Gracie woke up and all hell broke loose!