Payal Khandwala adopted Muji, a brown tabby, some time in 2017. The sole furry resident of her Colaba home, life with Muji was fine until early this year when the Khandwala home decided to adopt Niko, a dog. "I had done some research online and took care to introduce them to each other's smells and do it slowly and not just go, 'hey, here's a friend, have fun'." For the first few days, the humans in the house didn't let the pawed creatures meet. It was just about smells and seeing the other from afar. "But then one day, my cat came and swatted at the dog," says Khandwala.

Nervous about not wanting the two to form a bad association, Khandwala reached out to animal behaviourist Amanda Tong. Now, the compromise at home involves cordoning off the two animals to different parts of the house. "My pup is afraid of the cat and while they may co-habit eventually, we know now to never let the two animals hang out unsupervised. One could be mauled one day—either the dog can kill the cat or the cat can gouge out his eyes and blind him. We had not considered this before we rescued the fellow."