Best Cat Breeds for Dogs: What the Research Really Shows

Two pieces of research have looked at cats and dogs sharing a home. Neither found a breed effect.

So which cat should you get?

What they did find is a number, and it isn’t about breed at all. It’s about how old the cat is when the two first meet.

That’s an unsatisfying answer if you came for a shortlist, so what follows is both: what sits behind the breed lists, and the variable the evidence supports.

The number the breed lists leave out

Before you choose a cat, it’s worth knowing how often this goes wrong, because the honest answer is reassuring and almost nobody quotes it.

Menchetti and colleagues surveyed 1,270 people who owned at least one dog and at least one cat. Of those households:

62.4% had a cat and dog that played together
68.5% had them sleeping together at least occasionally
0.5% reported mutual attacks

Half of one percent. That’s the number you want in your head while you read breed lists that imply your choice is finely balanced.

One caution before you quote it back at anyone: 0.5% is the share that reported attacks, which isn’t the same as saying 99.5% of pairings are happy. Plenty of households sit somewhere in between, tolerating each other without playing or sleeping together. But mutual aggression is rare.

Where the breed lists come from

The rankings are built on temperament reputation, not on any measurement taken around dogs. The largest study of cat breed behavior never asked the question, and it’s worth seeing exactly what it did ask.

The largest study of cat breed behaviour is Salonen and colleagues, 2019, covering 5,726 cats across 40 breeds grouped into 19. It measured ten behavior traits, and here they are in the paper’s own words:

“activity level”
“contact to people”
“aggressiveness towards human family members”
“aggressiveness towards strangers”
“aggressiveness towards other cats”
“shyness towards strangers”
“shyness towards novel stimuli”
“excessive grooming”
“wool sucking”
“owner-evaluated behaviour problem”

Read it again, and notice what you’re not seeing. Nothing in it measures how a cat behaves around a dog. There isn’t even a sociability trait for other cats, only an aggression one, which is a different thing.

The household study is more direct about it. Menchetti’s team went looking for patterns in which pairings turned aggressive and reported that no significant breed findings emerged.

So the lists you’ll find aren’t wrong so much as unsupported. They’re built from temperament reputation, which is how people already describe Ragdolls and Maine Coons, then applied to a question nobody measured.

What actually predicts it

Age at the first meeting is the variable with evidence behind it, and it comes with thresholds: under six months for the cat, under a year for the dog, and younger is better within that range.

Feuerstein and Terkel, publishing in Applied Animal Behaviour Science in 2008, found that a first encounter at an early age, up to six months in cats and up to one year in dogs, let most cohabiting pairs correctly interpret each other’s body language. They also found that the younger the animal at that first encounter, the better the understanding and the better the chance of an amicable relationship.

Menchetti’s households point you the same way from a different direction: in most of them, the first meeting had happened before six months of age.

Two studies, different countries, different methods, and they land on the same variable. That is a much stronger signal than any breed ranking on this subject, and it points at a kitten rather than at a pedigree.

They learn to read each other, which is the interesting part

Here’s what makes the age finding make sense.

Cats and dogs use some of the same signals to mean opposite things. Feuerstein and Terkel scored those specifically. Of 113 “opposite” behaviors displayed by cats, dogs read 75% correctly. Of 148 displayed by dogs, cats read 80% correctly.

Neither species was better at it than the other. They had both learned a second language, and the ones who learned it young were the ones who got it right.

That reframes what you’re choosing. You aren’t looking for a cat born tolerant of dogs. You’re looking for one young enough to learn what your dog’s body language means, which is a question about age and not about pedigree.

So which cat should you actually get?

Judge the individual cat in front of you, because that’s where the evidence leaves you. A few things are worth asking about regardless of what the cat is:

Has it lived with a dog before? A shelter or foster carer often knows this, and it beats any breed label.
How old is it? Under six months is the researched window. Older cats can absolutely manage it, but you’re outside the range the studies describe.
How does it handle a novel, noisy thing? “Shyness towards novel stimuli” is one of the traits Salonen’s team did measure, and it’s closer to what matters here than any breed’s reputation.

If a breeder or rescue tells you their breed is famously good with dogs, that isn’t a lie. But what have they actually seen in their own cats? A specific answer about specific animals tells you more than the general claim does.

The introduction itself has a standard sequence, and the shelters disagree about its timetable in ways worth knowing. That’s covered in the piece on introducing a cat to a dog.

What about the dog’s breed?

The dog’s breed has a slightly better evidence base than the cat’s, though not by much, and it works through a different mechanism.

Chasing breeds carry more risk, and the cat charities name them directly rather than ranking them. That’s about predatory motor patterns rather than temperament, which is a different mechanism from “gets along well”.

For a worked example of one of those breeds, including what the veterinary charities say about that pairing, see dachshunds and cats.

Best cat breeds for dogs: what owners ask

What is the most dog-friendly cat?

No study names one. The largest cat breed behavior survey didn’t measure behavior toward dogs at all, and the largest survey of cat-and-dog households found no significant breed effect. The best available answer is a cat that met a dog before it was six months old.

Which cat breeds are good with dogs?

Ragdolls, Maine Coons and Birmans are the names that come up most, and those reputations are about general placidity rather than anything measured around dogs. Treat them as a reasonable starting point and not as evidence, and weigh the individual cat’s history more heavily.

What’s the best breed of dog to have with cats?

The research is thinner here than the confident lists suggest. What’s better established is the opposite: chasing and terrier breeds carry more risk, because a running cat triggers a predatory sequence rather than a social one.

What is the 3-3-3 rule for cats?

It’s an adjustment timeline for a newly adopted animal, three days to settle, three weeks to build a routine, three months to build trust. It says nothing about two animals meeting each other, and I go through it properly in the piece on dachshunds and cats.

Can an adult cat learn to live with a dog?

Often, yes. The age finding is about odds and not a cut-off, and Menchetti’s 1,270 households included plenty of pairings that worked. It means going slower and expecting tolerance rather than the sleeping-together outcome that 68.5% of those households reported.

Kitten or adult cat, if the dog is already here?

On the evidence, a kitten, because the window the research describes is the cat’s first six months. Set against that, a kitten is more fragile around a large or clumsy dog, so the answer depends on the dog you already have as much as on the cat you’re choosing.