A Tale of Two Kittens and One Puppy » Do older animals naturally tolerate younger animals?

Do animals recognize babies and cut them slack? Or is it the luck of the draw, the personalities of the animals involved?

I’ve been able to watch a few adult-baby interactions among my pets, and while it definitely does depend on the personality of the animal in question, it makes me wonder if animals intuitively recognize a baby, of any species, and make allowances for them. Or not.

When Puss was almost 17, I adopted the boys — two 2 month old kittens. Puss had lived her life with Cleo since she was 1 year old. Puss and Cleo tolerated one another, but they were never friendly. They never groomed each other, for instance.

I had hoped that a kitten wouldn’t be very threatening to Puss, and that 2 kittens, who could play with each other, would be even less so. I was wrong. Puss hid for about the first 4 months.

We did the slow introduction thing, keeping the boys in our bedroom the first few weeks, then only letting them out for short amounts of time while supervised.

Still, Puss hissed and swatted at them, hid from everyone, and often ran away from them. In time, however, the boys learned to mostly leave Puss alone. I could trust them to be alone with her, without hurting her, even though they were almost twice her size.

Puss still hissed and swatted at them until she was gone, almost 4 years later. She never did learn to accept them.

And while the boys couldn’t help occasionally trying to wrestle with her, they never once scratched her or physically hurt her in anyway. Could they sense that she was old and frail?

Now I have Chester. He’s a puppy, a foreign object. Gizmo reacts to him much as Puss did, although he doesn’t hide.

Simba is the interesting one. Simba, who is a big bully to Gizmo, is oddly tolerant of Chester. Don’t get me wrong, he does lose his patience with all that puppy exuberance. I watched him reach out to whack Chester one day, claws out — in fact, his claws got hooked in Chester’s harness — yet Chester has never been scratched by the boys (yet; I’m working hard to keep it that way). It seems as though he knows how to use just enough pressure to reprimand, but not hurt.

Does Simba, and Gizmo for that fact, instinctively know that Chester is a baby, and while he should be disciplined when he goes too far, he can still get away with more than an adult dog (or cat) would?

I do not, at this time, trust Chester unsupervised with the boys. I’m not sure when I will. Someday I think I will. Someday, in fact, I think Simba and Chester may end up as friends.

Yesterday my husband had Chester out in the kennel with Simba. Simba actually gave Chester a head butt! I’ve never seen that. Simba, of course, was posturing for treats. It may, in fact, hark back to the be nice training I wrote about earlier.

Even though I haven’t seen any head butts, Simba was laying down for pets while I was playing with Chester this morning. He even moved on to groom himself while Chester was running around him, playing. Simba allows Chester to lick his ear. Gizmo still hasn’t allowed Chester that close.

The truth is that the boys could have seriously injured Chester by now. They could have scratched him, or even worse scratched an eye. And while there’s a lot of whacking and bopping going on, no one has been hurt.

It will definitely be interesting to see how their relationships develop over the next few years.

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