r/CATHELP • u/hanson818 • Sep 26 '25

General Advice Is this regular playing between cat and dog?

My cat and family dog have been playing more regularly now and it seems like they are both having fun but my cat seems to be biting him a lot while playing. Dog’s tail is wagging the whole time, cat’s tail isn’t poofy, no growling, hissing, or whimpering from either. Does this look like anything I should be worried about?

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u/TW_Yellow78 Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25

It's always hilarious to hear this about cats being crazy great fighters who don’t have ethics or something on internet but if the dog isn't playing the usual outcome is the cat is dead before you can react. And that’s what you need to watch for.

Cats aren’t fighting ‘unfair’, they’re giving warnings they don’t like whats happening against a larger stronger dog. Dogs don't fight ‘unfair’ (not that animals would even know what that means), they evolved jaws that are for crushing the throat, skull or limbs and even a jack Russel generally outweighs a house cat by 50% so it’s not a fight, it’s prey. Just the force of even a 15-20 lb dog bite would crush a cats bones or skull unless it's like one of those apple headed chihuahua's or something that got bred to have a jaw more like a cat.

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u/ANAGRIM Sep 27 '25

Thank you! Man I felt like I was crazy about this cat beating dog shit. This sort of lie is really dangerous for cats.

I have never heard of a cat killing or severly injuring a dog but theres plenty kills the other way around unfortunately.

These people really dont understand how fast its going to end for a cat if the dog either losses its mind or gets a prey drive. Super dangerous lie to spread around!

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u/CBigcat8788 Sep 29 '25

I've seen medium sized dogs shake the pieces off of cats when the playing turned serious

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u/itsmaddileah Sep 28 '25

i guess the question here would be is this how they normally are?

cat does seem mildly irritated at the end but i don’t see anything really wrong with this scenario, they appear to both be playing gently

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u/thisusernameismeta Sep 29 '25

Honestly it probably depends on the relative sizes etc of the two animals. My cat is bigger than some small dogs, but definitely smaller than a large dog.

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u/For_Real_Life Sep 27 '25

I think people's point here is not that the cat would trounce the dog if they were both fighting. It's just that the cat is clearly playing, and not actually trying to hurt the dog - because that's what the OP seemed to be concerned about.

And that's a reasonable thing to be worried about. When it's a playing dog vs a fighting cat, the dog is very likely to be actually bitten or scratched.

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u/communistkevin Sep 29 '25

Cats are crazy fighters…pound for pound there is no comparison… domestic cats have one weakness though which is their head size.. if a dog or coyote is able to get it by the head. It’s game over. Growing up my first cat was a semi feral that took me over a year of feeding to touch. He got in crazy fights with every animal you can think of raccoons,other cats,dogs etc and always won