So, you have decided to get Akita after reading all our recent posts on Akita and knowing well everything about his character. However, you are wondering how you can make him go along with your little cat at home? Mainly because we said he is a powerful dog with really no patience. So, carry on reading to find out what can you do you have Akitas and Cats, Can Akitas go along with Cats?
The short answer is: It’s dependable, sometimes they do get along, and sometimes they don’t. Akitas have very high prey instincts that can really rupture everything before you can even notice. That’s why it’s better never to trust your dog to be with the cat alone, also if he seems to be a very adorable dog.
A Quick Glance at Wolfdogs in General
Wolfdogs have strong prey instincts with a firm relation to their packs. They deal with any strange animal as their enemy. Therefore, it’s highly popular with these dogs that they never live with any smaller animals as they can rupture them.
A Quick Glance at The Purpose of The Akita Breed
As we covered in our very first post about Akitas, that they were bred in the mountainous region in Japan. They were bred originally for hunting purposes to track down any small animal and have him killed in a matter of seconds to help the hunters.
That being said, we can conclude that they aren’t bred to live with small animals. They are intolerant of any small animal like cats due to their origin.
So, generally, they don’t live with cats.
How to make Akitas and Cats Live Together
So, if you have a cat and you want your Akita to live with her, you have to follow specific steps:
- Buy your Akita at a very young age: Like 8 weeks, this will make sure that he’s still young and can’t do harm to the cat. Whatever happens, never try to leave an older Akita with a cat immediately. They must know the cat and been taught how to live with him/her for sometime before they are left alone with him/her.
- Ask about your Akita before adoption: If you have a cat, it’s nice to ask about him. Is he aggressive? Depressed? Etc.
- Don’t make him older than the cat: So, if you are going to buy a puppy, don’t buy a kitten with him. Try always to have the cat older than him.
- Never leave them alone at first: Please, just because he is so calm in front of you, he won’t leap at her. Usually, they try to kill the cat when they’re alone. So it’s always advisable to separate them whenever you will go out or not be at home.
- Remove the cat when he becomes hyper.
- Introduce your Akita to the cat gently (The most important part): Covered in detail downwards.
- Train him to stay with her: Covered in detail downwards.
Generally, these tips are essential, and you should never ignore them.
Introduction Tips For Akitas And Cats
So, first of all, you have to make sure that your cat isn’t afraid of dogs. If your cat is, then it is best to never buy a dog-especially Akitas with her. You can test that by visiting a friend who has a dog with your cat (just make sure your friend’s dog isn’t violent against cats).
If you are confident that your cat will be ok around dogs, then it’s time to introduce your Akita to the cat, you have to understand that this is the most crucial part, if it fails, then you will struggle the rest of your life:
- Make sure your Akita is tired before introducing him to the Cat: Try to walk him around the house or play with him. Just make sure that he doesn’t have enough energy to run after the cat.
- Make sure your Akita trusts you: Generally, it is not great to adopt a large Akita who distrusts you and introduces him to a strange creature like a Cat and expect him to go along with her great.
- Introduce him to the cat while he is on lead: Yes, make sure that you are in charge of what it’s happening. That’s because the cat is fragile. If your Akita gets hold of it in his mouse, he will rip her off in a second.
- Never allow jumpy or bitty behavior: Yes, it looks cute that they are both nipping each other. However, it is not. You have to make sure that there are rules and they have to follow it. The cat isn’t allowed to do any harm to the Akita, and he isn’t allowed to do so.
- Never let the cat go to the Akita’s food: Akitas are really aggressive when guarding their food, as we covered early in this post, they are dominant, and they never like anyone to reach their food unless you don’t take it from them. So, it is better to keep the cat safe and teach her never to touch his food.
- Make sure he doesn’t have Separation Anxiety: As we said earlier in this post, that when Akitas have SP, they can have a destructive behavior that can really turn into killing the cat.
It’s understandable that when Akitas and Cats living together, there might be some sort of dominance for one over the other. Cats are known to be wild animals, and Akitas are known to be playful and aggressive. So, we can’t really predict which one of them will be dominant over the other.
Training for Akitas and Cats.
Yeah, you can’t ignore training at all. This will be one of the most important things to do in your life (at first) to make sure there won’t be any murdering around.
In fact, let me be more specific and tell you that this training is to make sure that they can be alone together without you watch them. However, I want you to understand that you can’t leave your dog and cat together without following every step of this tutorial closely.
- Start by leaving them alone for a short time while you are in-house: It is pretty simple. Go to the kitchen with both Akita and cat and leave them. Then come back and treat both of them for not harming each other. Try to increase the time they’re left alone gradually and making sure you treat both of them. Please make sure that you are ready to separate them if something happened and pay close attention to them (using your ears).
- Now, start to close the door of the kitchen or the room, to make them feel that you aren’t watching them and repeat step one. Come back and treat for every couple of mins.
- If they do anything wrong like fighting each other while you aren’t around, make sure never to yell at any of them. Just separating your Akita from the cat will do the job.
- Now start going outside the house: Ok, this is a huge step. You have to do it after you are sure that they are Ok with each other whenever you’re there in the house and they hadn’t had a fight for 2-3 weeks. If they are Ok, then you have to take the training to the next step.
- First thing, as always, make sure you have an easy way to jump right into the house in seconds if something happened, this is essential. Start by going out for 1 min, then come back and treat them. If you find them Ok and they almost didn’t move, just increase the period.
- If you happened to hear any fighting, jump right into the house and separate them.
- If you have a CCTV, it will really help, you can check them while you are far away, to make sure that they don’t feel you around. This will make the training looks like the Real-World Scenario.
- If you found them really good with each other, start by leaving them for really long periods like 3-4 hours.
- If you found your Akita has SP anxiety then treat him first before leaving him.
- If you have long working hours, then it’s best to ask a friend to check them once in a while and treat them if he found them good.
If you have done the above steps correctly, then you will have a good Akita and a good cat 🙂
Conclusion:
Akitas can go alone with Cats only if you are sure that they are both of them are correctly trained. There are really many dogs that go along with Cats. However, don’t take the aggression of Akitas for granted. You have to make sure to set-up everything correctly before leaving them alone for long working hours.
Hope you have enjoyed our post and make sure to read our earlier ones 🙂