One of the biggest issues I see come up when discussing bringing a Weimaraner in to your life is how to keep the peace between your new grey ghost and your resident kitty.
As most people already know, Weimaraners were originally bred to hunt feather and fur. That means they are pre-wired to want to chase, catch and kill furry critters like squirrels, raccoons, skunks, and even your beloved cat.
Weimaraners and cats can live together, and the best way to keep the peace is to manage the situation. Never trust your Weimaraner and cat alone together. There are plenty of horror stories of someone’s Weimaraner who has lived as best friends with their cat, but when the prey drive was triggered, the dog went after the cat, and sadly there are many bad endings to this scenario.
With this in mind, we have had our ups and downs keeping the peace between our feline and canine residents over the past few years, but have come up with a great solution to give kitty a safe haven where they can get away from the dogs as well as a place to keep the cat food and litter box away from your hungry Weimaraners.
Things you will need:
- Safe room for kitty like a spare room, basement or laundry room
- Dinner plate or other round object to trace on the door
- Jig Saw (You will also need a drill for a pilot hole to get the sawing started)
First we chose a location for the porthole. In our house the dogs have run of the main part of the house, so we chose the laundry room for the cats — a safe haven for them and their food and litter box, with nice cozy piles of dirty laundry for them to sleep in!
Once we chose our cat room and acquired the necessary tools for the job, we simply selected a plate of a size our larger cat could fit through, and then traced the outline on to the door we intended on creating a passage way through.
For the next part, you may find it easier to pull the hinge pins and take the door down. Drill a pilot hole inside the circle (the part that will be removed) and use the jig saw to cut the circle out. Voila, a kitty porthole!
On a side note, the porthole can also come in handy to keep the cats safe by placing a baby gate on doorway to block the porthole so the cats can’t get out of their haven – this has come in handy when we’ve had contractors in, or if we’re moving items in and out of the house to prevent escape.
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Mindy lives in Michigan and breeders under the kennel name Timberdoodle Weimaraners
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Very interesting idea.
Our cat is kind of gutsy so when we brought Lincoln home and began socializing them, Lincoln caught a number of swats to the face (though our cat is declawed) and even a little nip on the nose. Lincoln was pretty wary around him until he got bigger.
When we began training Lincoln in the field and saw how quickly the drive/desire he has for birds grew, we decided not to leave them together unsupervised, especially since our kitty is deaf and wouldnt have the advantage of hearing Lincoln sneak up on him.
Lincoln has never bothered much with our cat, and will even allow the kitty to cuddle up to him at times. However I have noticed on occasion that Lincoln will focus in on the kitty completely, which prompts me to give him a correction, but reinforces our decision to keep them apart when we are not there.
A very cute idea! In my case, I got the cat as an adult from the shelter a few months before I knew I’d be bringing my Weim puppy home. I wanted the cat to be established first. Then, I just let the cat do the correcting. My GSP was overly interested at first but the cat put her in her place very quickly. My Weim was no problem since he’d come from a breeder with cats who regularly put the puppies in their place if necessary. Now I just keep the squirt bottle handy so I can quickly issue a correction if necessary.
What a great idea if you own your own home and can drill through the doors. Another thought is a hall or linen closet as a safe room of you don’t want to give up a whole room to the cat (mine gets the office).
I would however recommend a smaller hole. Cat’s don’t need much of a hole to get through, generally speaking they use their whiskers to measure the width of a hole and if their whiskers fit through, their body will too. I can just see a determined Weim sticking his head through a 10″ hole and being so overly excited he tries to go through and either gets stuck, or breaks the door in the process.
I have been fortunate that Roxie respects a regular baby gate across the door and does not jump over it, even though she CAN. Plus, the cat gets extra exercise by jumping over to get in/out of his room.
We had a 10 year old Weim that was never exposed to a cat. We got our cat Roxi at 3 months old. The process we used is the cat lived in our pole barn till we got our Weim and Lab to ignore the cat with lots of treats and leash work. It took 2 months till they all got along. First 2 weeks were very had and we did two 20 min sessions each day to keep the cat n dog stress levels under control. Now the cat is in the house and they all get along. We lost our Weim to cancer in the spring and are getting a new 8 week old Weim as of today 12/4/21. The cat has a safe room with a wire gate so we will see how the new pup works with our setup. That’s for all the excellent information on this website.
Thanks for sharing your tip!
And enjoy your new puppy!