When Digit was a kitten, (this would be the Summer of 1990) Shiner had been with us for about 6 months. He was pretty comfortable with our situation, and was as usual very laid back about life. We had just moved into a new apartment complex which would allow us to get a cat. (My wife Kelley likes cats) So when we moved, we put out the word at our vet's office that we were looking.
We ended up bring home this little black kitten, who we named Digit because he had extra toes. Click here for more about our cats.
We introduced Shiner and the new kitten to each other at the vet's office. (Little did either know that this was a major test regarding compatibility.) We put the kitten on the floor, right in front of Shiner. What happened then was best described as a lot of sniffing. No growling, no hissing, just sniffing. After a few minutes, the two animals decided that they were pals, and there was "No big deal."
After we all got home, Digit decided that Shiner was his "Big Brother", or at least a giant hairy toy. Digit would stalk Shiner's fluffy tail, and when we saw the Digitkitten heading towards Shiner's tail in "stalk mode," we would drive Digit crazy by saying to Shiner, "Shiner! What a good boy you are." As you might expect, Shiner would react in an appropriate manner for a dog. He wagged his tail. This is the very same tail being stalked by a small multi-toed kitten. The reaction from Digit was priceless. In short, he freaked out. "It's ALIVE! POUNCE!"
Shiner had little reaction to Digit's "attacks" at all. He was so tolerant of Digit that he never really growled or snapped at him at all. At least he didn't react during the "tail stalking".
The two times Digit got a reaction out of Shiner was during Jeopardy. We watch Jeopardy every night. While we watched Jeopardy, Shiner would lie in front of my chair, and occasionally provide questions to answers, especially if the category was "Dogs", or something he knew something about. Well, perhaps he just took a nap, but back to the story. One night, we were playing along and I hear something I had never heard before. It was Shiner, whining softly, almost too softly to be heard. At first, I wasn't even sure I had heard it, but then I heard it again. I leaned over to touch Shiner's head, and you will never guess what I found. I found a small, black kitten, straddling Shiner's nose, chewing on his ears. Just to illustrate this picture for you, this is a probably 3 lbs. kitten, stuck on the face of an 85 lbs. Lab, both black as pitch. It looked like there was a little monster "glomming" onto this dog face. Shiner hadn't moved, and hadn't even picked his head up. His only reaction was to whine, as if to say, "Dad, would you please get this little alien cat off my face? I don't want to hurt him, or scare him. Just get him off please."
I did actually remove Digit from Shiner's face, and Digit only did this one other time, with identical behavior from Shiner.
For as long as Shiner was with us, he and Digit never exchanged "words", and were always pals. It was very cute.