A senior dog bravely battled a cat from his food bowl—because it was on the other side of a window.
Coco, a 10-year-old Jack Russell cross, lives in Galway, Ireland, with his owner Garry. Originally from Dublin, Garry now documents his life in the countryside on his TikTok account @dubgonewest.
In addition to Coco, Garry's family is made up of his wife, baby daughter and an "army" of black cats—which began when a stray cat, whom they named Bluey, began showing up in their garden.
Coco and the cats "get on great," Garry, an electrician, told Newsweek. "He acts tough through the window, but when they're face-to-face, they just accept each other."
A video of Coco squaring up against one of the cats from behind the safety of the window has left animal lovers in stitches, receiving more than 15,000 views since being posted on October 6.
In the clip, Coco can be seen eating breakfast from a bowl on the windowsill while a cat watches from the other side. Coco responds by snapping, growling and baring his teeth at the feline, who is paying no attention to him.
Garry narrated the video, saying: "Poor Coco. Stressed out on a Sunday morning thinking the cat is going to take his breakfast.
"He's acting extra brave because he knows the window is in the way. There's no way he'd talk to them like that if he was outside with them."
In the video's comments section, one viewer wrote, "If that window was open the cat would come in and take poor Coco's breakfast straight away."
Garry replied: "Yup! And Coco would pretend he couldn't see the cat."
"He's got thug life going on," another user wrote, as one said, "Love how the cat's not bothered in the slightest."
"I'm with Coco, if anyone tries to take my food I get on like that too," another user added.
Dogs and cats can learn to get along, depending on each animal's personality and how they are introduced, according to the Animal Humane Society.
The AHS recommends taking the introduction process slowly, keeping the pets apart for a while until they are used to one another's scent, watching them carefully on their first few meetings to ensure they don't give chase or are aggressive to one another, and rewarding both animals for good behavior.
Garry told Newsweek that he and his now-wife welcomed Coco into their family 10 years ago, when they were still dating and visiting her family in Galway, where her parents' dogs had had pups.
Coco was noticeably shy, so they took the puppy with them back to Dublin, as he put it, "to spoil him and get him out of his shell."
"On the first night he just sat on the couch ignoring us and slightly frightened," he said of Coco, a mix of Pomeranian, papillon and Jack Russell breeds.
"The second night we were watching TV in bed when we heard him [jump] off the couch, come into the room, jump onto the bed and go to sleep. That was it. We knew we had a new pet and we weren't bringing him back to Galway—until we moved there about three years ago," he continued.
Commenting on the reaction to his other TikTok videos, Garry said: "People seemed to like the videos with animals in them and me narrating them with my Dublin accent. There are so many bland videos on TikTok, so people seemed to latch on to the way I do mine."
Garry is "loving" his move to the west of Ireland, saying it's "great being in the country and surrounded by nature. It's a great place to raise a family, too."
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