Can guinea pigs and cats cohabitate?

[phdlife]

We have two young GPs that live either in a hutch inside or, during the day, in a pen in the garden.

A little while ago I had a love-at-first-sight moment with a rescue cat which I sternly squashed down because of the GPs, but my sister's just rescued a tiny kitten and I can't help longing, a little - but cats are predators, and so it seems like a bad idea to me.

Anyone got any experience?

[happy2bhomely]

Our cat and guinea pigs got on fine. When the pigs were out they would all touch noses with the cat and would crawl over to where she was laying for a little sniff! To be fair though, our cat is only just about bigger than a guinea pig. The pigs were here first and we have had the cat from a kitten.

[phdlife]

see, I was wondering if that would make a difference, getting a kitten. Dsis's one is actually smaller than the pigs and they're not yet fully grown. I thought, I wonder if we let them grow up a bit more, then...

Mind you, I want fish, too :)

[Pickthatupplease]

We have dwarf rabbits that roam free in our walled garden all day, and have recently got 2 adult cats. They get on fine. When we first got the cats, we showed the rabbits to them and let the cats see us fussing the rabbits. We've had no problems - they even shsre a pen in the catterynwhen we go on holiday.

Good luck

[phdlife]

wow, okay pickthatup, thank you! I shall investiate...

[duchesse]

Depends on the cat I'd say. Our 12 week old kitten spends about 30% of his time staking out the guinea pig in her run and would definitely have a go at hunting her given half a chance. He hasn't got much further than staring intently at her and stalking her through the bars of her run, but who knows what tricks he's planning on deploying next...

[guineapiglet]

Hi - for what its worth I would say ' never the twain should meet -' most cats will want to watch the guineas at the very least - we have never had cats, but ALL our neighbours did and they all ended up in our garden making our guineas' life a misery to be honest, it is just the nature of cats to hunt and stalk - for little guineas this is very very stressful, - and on several occasions I had to chase the cats off the run. We had one guinea who actually had a heart attack and died of fright after a cat ran after it - I am afraid I am very biased, being extremely anti cat for many reasons (!), and I don't want to make myself unpopular with cat lovers, as I am sure they will tell you that not all cats behave in this way...... in my experience, they do, and you can never rest leaving the guineas outside without worrying they may be caught or eaten.
!!