new kitten agressive towards dog.

The ange

we have a fab springer she's four years old is totally fine with cats. she'll sniff and try play then just ignore them. no aggression whatsoever.

anyway we adopted a 12 week old ginger kitten 2 days ago. he is a little nervous but a pet. so last night we tried to introduce them to each other. didnt go well, the kitten went nuts. back arched, hissing sprayed wee all over the floor. didnt die down, he just seemed to get more annoyed.

im worried now, i know it might take time but im nervous for their next meeting. the vet told me to leave it another 2 or 3 days. then ignore the cat's behavior and just carry on. give them 20 mins a day.

just wondering if anyone has any tips/suggetions

aonb

The kitten is probably reacting out of fear of your dog. Spitting/back arched, is basically trying to scare your dog off.
Give it time.
When your kitten sees that the dog is not going to hurt/attack it, it will gradually get used to having the dog around, and relax. I had a tiny rescue feral kitten that reacted like this when it first saw my dogs. In our case, the dogs would go bonkers and want to attack the kitten, so the kitten was justified in being scared.
As long as your dog ignores/doesnt react to the kitten, it should be fine. But it WILL take time. A little exposure a couple times/day should sort it hopefully.

My cat is snoozing in the sunshine on top of my terrier as I type, so it worked out here! But being terriers, and the cat being feral, it took several weeks of patience

fathead82

I got a kitten a few years ago that reacted the same way when he first seen a dog, within 2 months, he was sleeping on top of the dog. What worked for me was to leave the kitten where he could see the dog, in a crate with the top and sides covered so he still felt secure, and ignore all of his tantrums. It didn't take him long to learn that the dog wasn't a threat to him. Give him treats when the dog is around so he learns to associate the dog with nice things. It also helps if the dog ignores the kitten & isn't shoving his nose into the kittens face.

Bunnyslippers

It takes time, you've only had the kitten two days and he has to get used to you and his new surroundings as well as a huge scary dog!
My sister found a kitten stuck in a car engine about three weeks ago, no one wanted him so we've ended up with another furball! He's in the house with our rescue spaniel who ignores him, but to start with the kitten could smell the dog as kitten is sleeping in my sisters room, the dog sleeps just outside her door, so for the first week or so they didn't meet at all, occasionally he could see the dog asleep when my sister opened the door, usual fur up hissing reaction.

Gradually though the hissing turned to curiosity and he went up to sleeping dog and sniffed him! This has been going on for a couple of weeks and now my sister has the kitten in her office during the day while she's working, the dog is asleep on the floor, kitten will now happily go upto the dog or walk past him and ignore him, he even pounced on the dogs tail, as it was wagging, and tried to run off with it - spaniel not amused but did nothing!
Kitten still fluffs up his fur when the dog walks past him but he is getting better and is more curious than scared now, it just takes time and everything done gradually, smell first though as it's important your kitten gets used to that as part of his environment, dogs will kill cats so they are naturally right to be scared of them, so give it a month or so and they should be a lot better!:). For the first week or so you need to be letting him get used to you first and your house, then get the dog in as part of the picture!
When we rescued our spaniel it was the other way round as I don't think he'd had anything to do with cats, so took a good few months to acclimatise him to all our cats, now he just ignores them!:)