Our house was the setting for an interesting experiment last weekend. My Peruvian friend and former housemate asked me if I would be able to look after her two 3-month old puppies for four days while she made a short trip to Madrid. Of course, my house has been a dog-free zone since the kittens were born six years ago, and all three cats have been known to make a variety of strange sound effects whenever I bring a dog into the house, even if only briefly. Even though Ada and Gabriela's puppies were still smaller than the cats, I was interested to see what the reaction would be to having canines in the home around the clock. (cont'd below)
Well, the good news is that the experiment was quite successful. Yes, there was some hissing at the beginning; yes, the puppies took a couple of days to learn that you need to respect cats and watch from a distance, rather than jumping all over them…. But by the fourth day, a new tolerance had set in, and my canines and felines were co-existing in relative harmony. Glimmers of hope that one day, several years from now, my by then elderly cats might accept a new puppy as part of the family. Until then, they seem pretty happy that our home is a canine-free zone again.
