Animal Jingoism

Everyone, including Tom, seems to forget there was also a dog in the show.

"Squids squirt ink to create a substitute to escape their predators. It's an oily substance, difficult to dissolve in water, that becomes a sort of mass. On the other hand, octopi use ink as a smoke screen. It is water soluble in order to spread. Like oil and water, even the inks of the two species doesn't mix."

— Nintendo EAD on Splatoon

Sometimes, different species, such as cats and dogs or foxes and rabbits^note foxes prey on rabbits (and chickens). Cats tend to be rather friendly toward both foxes and rabbits (as well as cavies), are written so that they have a built-in and unquestioned animosity for no other reason than that they are stereotypically considered to be adversaries. A dog that doesn't chase cats will be considered "weird", even if they were raised together from birth. On the other hand, some cats will almost never chase after mice unless provoked. Those dogs will also chase squirrels.

Tiger Versus Dragon, Snake vs Frog and Dog vs Monkey appear to be more prevalent in Japanese media, since they're often alluded to in anime and manga. Tiger Versus Dragon started off as an allegorical representation of Yin and Yang, Snake vs Frog is based on an Edo Period "Rock-Paper-Scissors" style matchup^note This was codified in folklore by the famous epic Jiraya Gouketsu Monogatari featuring two ninja rivals, one using toad magic and the other using serpent magic, and Dog vs. Monkey is a stereotype that started when farmers used dogs to keep monkeys away from their crops. So, Dog vs Cat, Squirrel, and Monkey.

Real Life is more diverse. In general cats will flee from larger predators and dogs have an instinctual urge to chase whatever flees from them. But there are also cats who bully dogs. There are also plenty of cats and dogs who get along very easily and even like each other. Both will usually eat mice and rats (which also eat mice), although it is not uncommon for them to befriend the latter.

There are also fantastic counterparts in Elves Versus Dwarves, Fur Against Fang, Japanese Beetle Brothers, Tanuki/Kitsune Contrast, and Tiger Versus Dragon. Can overlap with Stock Animal Diet if the relationship is a predatory one. See also Mailman vs. Dog.

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Related tropes:

• Bird vs. Serpent
• Cat/Dog Dichotomy
• Dogs Hate Squirrels
• Elephants Are Scared of Mice
• Pets Versus Strays
• Predator-Prey Friendship (more of a subversion)
• Primate Versus Reptile
• Snake Versus Mongoose
• Spinosaurus Versus T. rex

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In Boarding School Juliet, "black dog" is a slang term for Towan, and "white cat" for a Westerner, because the two countries have been fighting forever over absolutely nothing.
• Cat Shit One is largely similar to the classic Holocaust story Maus, except it's a Japanese writer examining the Vietnam conflict. Americans are rabbits, Vietnamese are cats, Russians are bears, Chinese are pandas, French are pigs, and Japanese are monkeys (including an unflattering Author Avatar).
• The Fox & Little Tanuki: Wolves and foxes are stated to have a long-standing animosity for each other, so much so that the Sun Goddess specifically sent wolves to subdue Senzou before sealing him away. In the present day, Senzou and Mikumo (a wolf in charge of watching over him as he raises Manpachi) have a pretty hostile relationship.
• In Fruits Basket, Kyo and Yuki hate each other. Yuki is possessed by the spirit of the Rat from the Eastern Zodiac, while Kyo is possessed by the Cat (an animal who would have been part of the Zodiac had it not been tricked).
• In Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin: Dogs and bears are mortal enemies. The whole plot revolves around the dogs gathering enough "soldiers" to battle the bears, and the actual battle itself. Though the protagonist is able to overcome this, as shown when he got upset after seeing another dog kill two innocent bear cubs.
• Inuyasha: Played for Laughs with the animosity between Inuyasha (Half-dog-youkai) and Shippou (kitsune). In Japanese folklore, dogs and foxes hate each other and more than one secret kitsune wife has been outed by the clueless husband's loyal dog. Inuyasha is Shippou's favorite target for pranks and practicing his magic on, so Inuyasha tends to bite back.
  • There was also the time where a group of cat demons tried to revive their King who was defeated by Toga, and attempt to take revenge upon his sons since their father is dead. Both Koga and Rōyakan end up in the fight as well, essentially making this a fight between canines and felines.
  • Considering the above, this is completely averted with Bunza, a young lynx demon who Inyuasha goes so far as to call his "brother".
• Juuni Senshi Bakuretsu Eto Ranger: Monk the Monkey and Pochiro the Dog's rivalry is frequently lampshaded by their friends.
• March Comes in Like a Lion: A one-panel gag uses the snake and mongoose rivalry as a visual metaphor for a heated argument between Rei and Nikaidou.
• Medabots: The Anime of the Game features an odd and downplayed example: Spyke uses a DOG-type body medabot, which excels in ranged attacks, but pairs it with a Monkey medal, which usually specializes in hand-to-hand combat. As a result, despite its decent stats, he's an absolutely terrible robattler, since the lack of synchronicity makes his medabot barely able to function in combat. It's noted by Erika that dogs and monkeys don't get along despite being companions in Momotaro's journey. Still, despite being aware of the root of the problem, Spyke refuses to change the combination.
• My Hero Academia: Lampshaded and defied in the second OVA. Tsuyu Asui, who has frog-like physical features and abilities, is best friends with a girl who has the head of a snake. The other characters comment how that shouldn't be possible in nature.
• Naruto: The Snake vs. Frog theme shows up with Jiraiya and Orochimaru, and later their respective students, Naruto and Sasuke. Jiraiya can summon giant frogs (and later teaches Naruto how to do so) and Orochimaru has a heavy snake theme, complete with slanted, snakelike eyes and the ability to summon snakes of varying sizes.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • The mutual hatred between Zangoose and Seviper (see below in Video Games) became a plot point in a Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl episode, when a far too single-minded pack of Zangoose attacked Jessie's Seviper repeatedly throughout the episode, ultimately threatening to push it (along with Jessie herself, the rest of Team Rocket, and half the heroes' Pokémon) off a cliff. A more notable case also in the Hoenn series episode "Zig Zag Zangoose" that again featured Jessie's Seviper and a Zangoose owned by the One-Shot Character of the week.
  • In "Showdown at Dark City", Electabuzz and Scyther are stated to be mortal enemy species. However, this is never mentioned again.
  • A downplayed case between Ash's Lycanroc and Torracat in Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon, who are dog and cat-like species respectively and Friendly Rivals.
  • Pikachu (a Pokémon mouse) is enemies with Meowth (A Pokémon cat).

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes features the ancient enmity between the Miaolings (cats) and the Woofians (dogs). It was later revealed to be because of something silly from when they still lived on the same planet.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering: The traditional cats-and-dogs rivalry is referenced in a few cards.
  • Feline Sovereign gives other Cat cards you control protection from Dogs.
  • This isn't limited to regular mutts and mogs. Mirri the Cat Warrior shares her four-legged kin's disgust for canids, and "canine" for her is much more broad than just domestic dogs.
    "No matter where we cat warriors go in the world, those stupid slobberers find us." — Mirri, flavor text for Arctic Wolves

Comic Books

• Blacksad has a rather dark twist on this in its second tome, Arctic Nation — the eponymous organisation is that world's equivalent to the KKK and paramilitary neo-nazi groups, only made up of white-furred or -feathered anthropomorphic animals who hate dark brown- and black-colored animals, even if the same species. There's also a less-seen Black Panthers equivalent for good measure.
• Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!: In a parody of Marvel Comics' House of M and DC Comics' Identity Crisis, which both end with the revelation that a female character had undergone a Face–Heel Turn, an issue of Teen Titans shows the Funny Animal Superheroes learning that feline former teammate Alley-Kat-Abra is responsible for various crimes, including the murder of Little Cheese the micro-mouse. The reason given is "I'm a cat! Cats hate mice!"
  • The trope is subverted in Captain Carrot and the Final Ark; the real murderer is revealed to be Alley's magically created Evil Twin, and the true Alley vows to resurrect Little Cheese. Interestingly, the story of Little Cheese's murder by Alley Kat Abra was apparently written under editorial fiat—Scott Shaw! (yes, the exclamation point is part of his name), the creator of the characters, when encountered at a Con, said that he was strongly opposed to the story idea, but told he had to do it anyway. The 'evil twin' retcon was his just revenge upon those editors after they'd gotten the boot.
  • Considering that on Earth-C, cats and mice don't hate each other (and any cat or mouse that did would be considered a bigot/speciesist), it makes the above-cited "reason" all the more out-of-character for Alley (and thus should've given reason for the Crew to be suspicious). Supporting this is one story where the Zoo Crew, while visiting other dimensions briefly, encounter one resembling Tom and Jerry; Alley found the sight of seeing "a planet terrorized by... primitive felines" to be disturbing.
• Cubitus: Cubitus the dog and Sénéchal the cat are sworn enemies and rivals who take delight in beating each other up.
• Gear is about a war between four nations of small cats, larger cats, dogs, and insects, doing battle by means of Humongous Mecha.
• Maus: The basis for the animal metaphor used to represent the persecution of the Jews under the Nazi regime. The Nazis are portrayed as cats, the Jews as mice; other nationalities are also portrayed as animals, depending on certain stereotypes of those nationalities and those animals.
• My Little Pony: Nightmare Knights: In Issue #3, a group of Diamond Dogs immediately show hostility toward Capper, a humanoid cat, simply because he's a feline, despite Capper's call not to resort to "this kind of base primal nonsense".
• Spider-Man: Shathra is an extradimensional wasp goddess who hunts Peter, claiming that it's the natural order for the spider to be consumed by the wasp. It's eventually revealed in Edge of Spider-Verse (2022) that she was originally from Loomworld and tried to map the multiverse as a wasps' nest. When her sister Neith instead created the Web of Life and Destiny, and their parents agrees this was better, she was consumed with jealousy, and her hatred of Neith's spider-totem decided her form.
• Supergirl:
  • In one series, it's revealed that the rivalry between cats and dogs is based on ancient cat-gods and dog-gods, a fight that still goes on in another realm today.
  • In "Supergirl's Super Pet", Linda's pet cat is harassed by dogs twice, one of which chases Streaky only because is a cat; and later Streaky dreams about chasing bulldogs.
  • Supergirl (Wednesday Comics): The story begins with the Super-Pets causing a disturbance because Krypto (dog) is chasing after Streaky (cat), without realizing that their rampage is tearing up the Metropolis' streets. Supergirl manages to get Krypto after he scared several mailmen out of their wits, but then Streaky chases after a plane because she has a cartoon mouse's head painted on the tail fin.
• Superman story "The Super Dog from Krypton": Even though he is not really a dog but an alien animal which happens to look like an Earth dog, Krypto chases after cats, and goes nuts when he hears a meowing.
• Tom Poes: No jingoism seems to exist between the animals based on their species. Tom, a white cat, gets along fine with Joost, the dog butler and Bullebas, the dog police chief.
• The Wasp: Played for Laughs, but both the incarnations of the Wasp, Janet Van Dyne and her stepdaughter Nadia Van Dyne, established at different points they have an innate distrust of Peter Parker, entirely because wasps and spiders are natural enemies in the animal kingdom. Janet and Peter later become friends, and for some reason Nadia only distrusts Peter; she has no problem with his protege Miles Morales (who she's actually very friendly with).

Comic Strips

• The Far Side has dozens of cartoons pitting cats against dogs, including the infamous "Tethercat" and one in which Pavlov conditions his dog to attack Freud's cat at the ring of a bell. One sketch published in The PreHistory of the Far Side has cat-shaped and dog-shaped protoplasms striking hostile poses at each other, with the caption "And cats and dogs have hated each other ever since."
• Garfield:
  • The dogs (minus Odie) enjoy this, and he's asked them why on more than one occasion. They never come up with an answer.
  • Garfield also subverts this trope by befriending a mouse named Squeak (and letting him bring other mice over for house parties), much to Jon's annoyance. But he does play it straight with spiders.
  • In an early-80s strip, Garfield and Jon watch a movie about a lion attacking an African village that seems to be nothing but one graphic killing after another. Garfield unabashedly roots for the lion, even as Jon cringes and covers his eyes in horror.
• Krazy Kat: Downplayed — the dog is friendly to the cat, and the cat likewise towards the mouse, but the mouse in turn makes the cat's life Hell.
• Peanuts:
  • Snoopy has always hated cats. On many occasions, he has taunted the "stupid cat next door" only for the cat — whose name is eventually revealed as "World War Three" — to promptly scare him in return (usually shown as the unseen cat SWIPE!-ing a huge chunk out of the doghouse). The only time Snoopy ever beat that cat is when he thought Woodstock was in danger. He also once wrote a story called "Kitten Kaboodle" with basically no purpose other than hating on cats.
    Linus: Do you think there's a market for anti-cat stories?
    Snoopy: Playbeagle has bought the whole series!
  • Despite being a beagle, bred to hunt hares and rabbits, Snoopy generally gets on fine with bunnies. The fact beagles and rabbits are meant to be enemies has been referenced a few times, usually involving Snoopy getting in trouble with the Head Beagle.
• Pearls Before Swine: Played with, using the sensitive, intelligent character Zebra, whose never-ending efforts to reach detente with various predators (originally lions, more recently crocs) inevitably fail miserably. In one strip, he writes a moving letter asking why; the lions' response is "Yu taste gud!"
• Many American political cartoons depict donkeys and elephants in conflict with each other, most frequently as stand-ins for the Democratic and Republican political parties.

Fan Works

• Savu0211's The Lion King comic The First King explains why lions and hyenas don't get along well. Generations ago, one of the Prideland's lioness' murdered a bunch of innocent hyenas, including the matriarch, in a rabies-induced madness. The hyenas changed from tolerant of the lions to hating them.
• Kiba and Tamaki have an immediate hatred for one another due to their respective affinity for dogs and cats in Son of the Sannin. Well, they claim it's hatred. Everyone else (except Naruto) sees it as Belligerent Sexual Tension.
• My Ideal Academia: Kenji, the dog-headed chief of the Musutafu police forces, and Ragdoll, the cat-themed professional hero, can't stand each other and start bickering when near each other. When Yu asks why, Aizawa says it's just a quarrel between a cat and a dog.
• Gray Ghost in Manehattan's Lone Guardian exhibits a lot of cat-like traits. After fully realizing what she was and why, she notes in retrospect that it's rare when she doesn't feel like fleeing from dogs, even those who are friendly.
• Marooned in Madagascar:
  • The crocodiles, and especially the panicky Crocodile Ambassador, are absolutely terrified of Gloria (a hippopotamus), due to the hippos’ reputation for savagely killing crocodiles.
  • While they already share a common enemy in Julien and Clover, Wigman becomes especially enthusiastic about fighting on Bone-Fossa’s behalf in LALA's Last Stand after finding out that his opponent will be a lion. As Wigman puts it, killing a lion is a major honor for any wildebeest.
  • The fabled animosity between mongooses and snakes is so strong, that even Savio (a New World serpent) intuitively knows what mongooses are and that they pose a threat to him after mistaking Mary Ann for one in The Odd Family.

Films — Animation

• An American Tail uses the old Cats vs Mice rivalry as a metaphor for the rich vs the oppressed immigrants in the late 1800's.
• Disney:
  • In Bolt, Mittens tells Bolt that cats hate dogs — because secretly they want to be dogs. Throughout the film, she and Bolt echo cat/dog rivalry sentiments, addressing each other as "Dog" and "Cat" until their friendship grows. The Show Within a Show plays this up as well, giving its villain the name Dr. Calico and a fondness for cats — which, it's implied, he employs as spies.
  • BothThe Lion King (1994) and the remake feature a lion/hyena rivalry, which actually reflects the reality of the African savannahs to a certain extent. Though The Lion King inverts it, based on the old misunderstanding of their interactions. Newer research suggests that most of the time it's the hyenas who do the hunting and the lions who steal their kills, though both will freely steal from each other or other predators when given any opportunity.
  • Zootopia subverts the notion that foxes and rabbits are natural enemies. Initially played straight in that Officer Judy Hopps is raised to consider foxes as dangerous and untrustworthy, has a childhood experience where she is hurt by a fox, and is urged by her father to carry fox repellent. Yet her investigation forces her to work with Nick Wilde, a red fox, and while solving the case Judy gradually confronts her prejudices and she and Nick become best friends and, when Nick joins the ZPD in the epilogue, partners.
• Migration: Chump initially shows disdain toward the Mallards, resenting the fact that ducks are often fed by humans.

Films — Live-Action

• The Adventures of Milo and Otis: Averted, as the story is about a cat and a pug dog who are friends. However, this is seen as kind of an Odd Friendship by other animals.
• Cats & Dogs:
  • The first film had unwaveringly heroic dogs constantly defending humanity from unchangingly evil cats throughout recorded history.
  • Subverted in the sequel, which features a cat agency dedicated to protecting humanity.
• Godzilla (2014): Godzilla, who as usual looks like a gigantic reptile, is said to be a prehistoric alpha predator who preys on the MUTOs; many-legged, egg-laying gigantic insectoids which are decidedly the far greater threat to humanity in this film, which is analogous to how reptiles in real-life often feed on insects. However, the MUTOs are also able to fight back against Godzilla, and if they best him or one of his kind, then they use their body as an incubator for their young.
  • The jingoism is downplayed in the sequel, Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), when Godzilla accepts a lone female MUTO as one of his subjects after it submits to him as the kaiju's new alpha.
• In Nico The Unicorn, mountain lions and unicorns are said to be natural enemies. This proves true when one kills Nico's horse mother.

Folklore and Mythology

• Explained in an African folk tale. According to the story, Cat and Dog were once great friends and did many friendly things together. But then came hard times and Cat and Dog had to go their separate ways. Dog wandered off and Cat found a human family to shack up with. Dog eventually went to Cat and begged to be allowed in so he could get a decent meal. Cat took pity and directed Dog to his owner's brother, but not before extracting a promise that Dog not come back. Dog kept his promise for a while, but eventually either forgot or judged that circumstances rendered the promise moot, and shambled on back to see Cat. Cat was pissed, to say the least. So dogs aren't chasing cats because they hate cats-they want to be friends again, and cats still refuse to forgive.
• According to the folk tale of Eastern Zodiac, during the race towards the Yellow Emperor or Buddha (Depending on the Writer) the Rat and Cat convinced the Ox to carry them through the waters but near the shore, the Rat pushed the Cat and it drowned (or in some versions survived but still missed the goal) thus the reason why Rats and Cats hate each other ever since.
• In Buddhist mythology it is said that the bird-like Garudas and the snake-like Nagas were involved in a Forever War until Buddha managed to negotiate a truce.

Literature

• Angela Nicely: In “Puppy Love!”, Mr. Nicely doesn’t want a dog because they have a cat and “cats and dogs don’t mix”. Later, Max and Scruff the dog do indeed chase Pusskins, though Angela does point out that some dogs get along with cats.
• The Cat That Walked By Himself, by Rudyard Kipling, has it that after the cat can't resist giving a snarky answer, the dog declares that it will chase cats, and the story ends with the statement that this is why dogs to this day usually chase cats.
• Averted for the most part in Churchmouse Stories. Peter and Gabriel (a mouse and a kitten) quickly become good friends and while Gabriel initially asserts he's not supposed to like Trumpet (a spotted puppy), any antagonism disappears after Trumpet asks about his thinking hat.
• The Cricket in Times Square: Averted, as a mouse (Tucker) and a cat (Harry) are best friends. A flashback book even averts Cats Are Mean by having Harry be the one to initiate the friendship in the first place. A later book even has the pair adopting an orphan puppy.
• Discworld:
  • The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents: Subverted in the story proper, as the talking cat and talking rats get along just fine, but Maurice became "amazing" in the first place by eating one of the talking rodents, although that was before he became intelligent, obviously).
  • The ancient enmity between rats and humans is also subverted. Between rats and terriers, not so.
• A Fly Went By: Subverted. The cat thinks the dog wants to bite him, but it turns out the dog was just running in fear of a pig.
• High School D×D: There's a bit of Cat vs. Bird between Koneko (a nekomata) and Ravel Phenex (a phoenix demon). The two started off as rivals in the first Rating Game, and later become rivals for Issei's affection.
• Redwall has many varieties of this (though the animal characters are essentially humans with fur). Rats and mice have disliked each other from book one. Raptors are hostile toward prey species until they've been properly introduced. Four-legged predators (except for badgers and otters) are usually antagonistic throughout the story.
• Reynard the Fox: Reynard is considered to be the rival of Isegrim the wolf.
• Many other animals don't come off looking too good in the mythology of Watership Down. Dogs in particular are portrayed as incredibly stupid compared to the Guile Hero El-ahrairah. In this case it's because the story is actually told from the point of view of rabbits, who being prey animals see most other animals as horrifying and monstrous killing machines.
• Dick King-Smith:
  • The Sheep Pig (filmed as Babe): Sheep and dogs are both convinced the other is irredeemably stupid, and sheep also refer to dogs as 'wolves', refusing to believe they have truly changed their nature.
  • Literature/Martin'sMice is about a cat who hates the idea of killing and eating mice and eventually tries to keep them as pets.
  • Ace uses the more conventional cats vs. dogs, with the Deadpan Snarker cat a more sympathetic character than the snobbish dog (who believes that being a corgi grants her some kind of royal status).
• The Incredible Journey: Played with, with Bodger the bull terrier and Tao the Siamese. The two of them both hate (other) cats, and because of this are best friends, having bonded by terrorizing the local cat population together.
• In The Place Inside the Storm: the Big Friendly Dog Rufus is not a fan of the robotic cat Xel. He keeps whining and whimpering and looking at his owner for permission to attack.
• In Prehistoria: The Raptor's Tail: The two species of Mongolian tyrannosaurs, Tarbosaurus and Alioramus, are mutually antagonistic as the latter will try and kill the young of the former to kill them before they get big and so Tarbosaurus will likewise go out of their way to attack Alioramus. Alioramus is also mutually antagonistic with the small raptor, Adasaurus for the same reasons. Justified Trope as the author based this behavior on real-life dynamics between tigers, wolves, and jackals. Tarbosaurus and Adasaurus meanwhile, as shown with the focus characters of Khan and Ruby, are actually friendly to eachother.
• Tailchaser's Song: Played dead straight, as the cats even have a legend that serves as a "Just So" Story for the rivalry between their kind and dogs.
• Erin Hunter:
  • Warrior Cats: Cats view dogs as either annoying and filthy (they don't cover their "dirt" like cats) or brutish predators when let loose. This is justified as, because they're feral cats, they don't have any socialization with dogs like kittypets do.
  • Survivor Dogs: Sharpclaws are not very dangerous to dogs, but they are annoying, especially their claws. Dogs also view them as sadistic animals who torture their prey.
• A Dog's Way Home:
  • Bella defies this. Other characters think she's a typical cat chasing dog, but Bella gets along with cats because she was adopted by one as a young puppy. She even goes as far as to adopt an orphaned cougar cub while on her journey.
  • Bella's temporary "brother" Dutch, however, likes to chase cats. As a result, Sylvia keeps him on a leash because she has a nursing cat that Dutch is a danger to.
• The Way of Kings (2021) by Louise Searl features the perfectly natural dislike between lions and hyenas. At least until a lion and a hyena get to know each other ...
• The uplifted foxes in Rivers of London all think like cold war spies, for unknown reasons presumably connected to whoever uplifted them and why. It's not clear who the opposition is, but at least some of them view all cats as potential enemy assets.

Live-Action TV

• Grimm: Several Wesen species are enemies; the wolf-like Blutbaden vs the pig-like Bauerschweins, the snake-like Lausenschlange vs the mouse-like Mauzhertz, etc.
• Resident Alien appears to indicate a cephalopod rivalry. Harry enjoys Octopus's many jokes aimed at cuttlefish, calling the species "so stuck-up."

Puppet Shows

• In the spoof Behind the Scenes documentary for the Dog City special, the "stunt-dog" is a cat in a dog costume. He claims that the supposed antagonism between the species is a myth, and has no idea that, with his costume head obscuring his vision, the dogs are deliberately making the stunts more dangerous.

Tabletop Games

• Cat A Little Game About Little Heroes explains that, 1000 years ago, cats won a three-way competition between cats, dogs, and humans, thus earning the right and responsibility to protect the last-place entry (humans) from evil. Dogs also love humans and protect them, but resent the cats for beating them.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Blink dogs and displacer beasts are ancestral enemies. Displacer beasts are panthers with tentacles growing out of their shoulders, making this the age-old war of cats and dogs.
  • Cessirids, wolflike monsters associated with illithids, and kaoulgrim, the hounds of the githyanki, despise each other and will always attempt to fight to the death when they meet.
  • Pegasi normally reserve their enmity for evil beings, but bear a particularly deep-seated hatred of griffins and hippogriffs due to their fondness for equine prey.
• Mausritter: The player characters are mice, so the bestiary includes stock mouse predators like cats, owls, and snakes.
• Mutants & Masterminds: Implied by the World of Funny Animals setting in Worlds of Freedom, which notes that Captain Thunderkat and Dr Metropomouse actually get along fine in a way that suggests this is surprising.
• Pathfinder: Despite both races being mostly good and neutral, catfolk don't care at all for ratfolk. It's suggested that they think of them as vermin that they should be guarding the world against.
• World Tree (RPG): The doglike Cani and the feline Sleeth tend to get along very poorly, as per traditional cat-and-dog rivalries. Cani are intensely social, obsessed with social standing, and like people neatly sorted between leaders and followers; Sleeth find their social structures repugnant, and hate taking orders. Sleeth, alone among all prime species, can detect the smells the Cani social cues depend on; they also uniformly ignore them, which infuriates the Cani. The Cani's tendency to challenge each other and other Primes over authority also tends to induce violent reprisals from the much more high-strung Sleeth. Perdithorne, a species of lynx-like monsters, also dislike Cani more strongly than they do other primes.

Video Games

• A little known one, but revealed in a Japanese guide book. In Animal Crossing: New Leaf, certain pairs of animal villagers are less likely to get along. Those would be a cat and either a mouse or hamster, a dog and either a monkey or an ape, and a wolf and a sheep.
• Battleborn: The boss of the DLC "Toby's Friendship Raid" is an anthropomorphic leopard seal alien and the nemesis of Toby the penguin alien. Fitting, since in real life leopard seals eat penguins.
• Earthworm Jim: The title character is an earthworm, and his nemesis Psycrow is an evil crow. Birds eat worms, obviously.
• The premise of Jazz Jackrabbit is an interplanetary war between spacefaring turtles and rabbits, with explicit references to "The Tortoise and the Hare" in the supplementary materials.
• The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass: The Ocean King, who resembles a whale, is tormented by the evil creature Bellum, a demonic squid.
• For the most part, the Little Tail Bronx series subverts this, as the dog-based Caninus and cat-based Felinekos get along fine, and any conflicts that occur between the two are more the result of individual clashing ideals rather than any pre-existing self-destructive nature. Fuga: Melodies of Steel plays this for drama, as The Berman Empire consists of dominantly Doberman Caninu who persecutes and/or torture the Felineko on-sight for merely existing on their land. The biggest known escapees of this are Sheena and Blutwurst, but while Sheena became a Shrinking Violet as a result of her torture and genuinely doesn't hold any ill-will towards Caninu, Blutwurst became twisted by their ideals and soon became a Hunter of His Own Kind in the name of General Hax.
• Mad Rat Dead: Mad Rat hates cats, though this is a Justified Trope because cats obviously want to kill and eat him. Heart is the exception to this.
• According to Mega Man & Bass, Snake Man "likes" Toad Man, while Toad Man dislikes Snake Man. Snakes eat toads in real life.
• Mappy is a clever inversion of the usual "cat-and-mouse chase" scenario, in that you control the mouse police trying to catch cat burglars.
• Minecraft: Certain animal mobs are inherently inimical to one another, and will attack each other on sight.
  • Wolves are central to a number of this rivalries. They will hunt down and kill any rabbit, sheep or fox they spot, leading to these creatures being pretty rare in biomes they share with wolves, although the foxes' higher speed will usually let them escape. If it cannot see any players, the Killer Bunny will target wolves and dogs, which will attack it right back.
  • Foxes and stray cats will also hunt down and kill rabbits, and polar bears will attack foxes as well.
• Pokémon: Several types of Pokémon are noted to be natural enemies of one another; these are generally either based on traditional "animal rivals" or on predators and their prey. In these cases, you can actually witness the jingoism during horde battles, where you'll fight four of one and one of the other, with the four ganging up on the one and ignoring you as long as the odd one out is in the field.
  • Zangoose (a mongoose) and Seviper (a snake), are natural enemies who attack each other on sight, to the point where their rivalry seems to be the only trivia ever mentioned in their Pokédex entries. Despite this, they can breed with each other.
  • Heatmor (anteater) and Durant (ant). One attacks the other for food, the other retaliates in self-defence.
  • In Pokémon Sun and Moon, you get to witness a similar rivalry between Mareanie/Toxapex (a crown-of-thorns sea star) and Corsola (an animate piece of coral). The former is a natural predator of the latter and when a wild Corsola calls for help, its cries will sometimes draw the attention of a Mareanie, which will proceed to ignore the player and attack the Corsola.
• Senran Kagura features the Hanzo shinobi school, with a frog logo. Their most direct rival is the Hebijo school, symbolized by a snake.
• Sierra: In one educational textgame (Apple II era), wolves eat foxes.
• Splatoon features a rivalry between the surface-dwelling Inklings (squids) and the subterranean Octarians (octopi):
  • They were enemies in the Great Turf War 100 years ago, and the single-player campaign of the first game kicks off after the Octarians steal the Inklings's energy source. Relations used to be amicable before the Great Turf War, which started because of increasingly limited territory due to the rising seas.
  • Subverted with the release of Splatoon 2's Octo Expansion, which not only has Octolings migrating to the surface en masse out of a desire to integrate with Inkling society thanks to having their minds opened by the events of the Hero Mode campaigns, but reveals that most Inklings nowadays regard the Great Turf War as ancient history and have no issues with sharing their land (even if some of that is because most of them don't even know what Octarians actually look like). Indeed, relations have improved to the point where one of Inkopolis's most popular idols is actually an Octoling. A lot of the remaining tensions between the two species can be chalked up to the actions of just one individual (DJ Octavio, the Octarian overlord, is a noted user of Mind-Control Music and therefore it is possible the Octarians have literally no choice but to follow his call to war).
  • Splatoon 2 and Splatoon 3 also feature hostilities between Inklings and Salmonids. Historically, roving bands of Salmonids would raid Inkling societies, often leaving nothing behind, but technological advances sometimes aided by other parties with their own agendas against Salmonids have allowed Inklings to hold ground against those that simply Zerg Rush like zombies, leading some Salmonids to adopt more sophisticated weapons and strategies (often acquired in trade with the Octarians). This is not entirely unexpected, given schooling squid are hunted by schools of salmon.
• Star Fox: Fox and his old rival Wolf embody the traditional rivalry of foxes and wolves in a space-age setting. Ditto with the series' Big Bad Andross, a primate, and the Big Good General Pepper, a dog. Both consider each other sworn enemies.
• Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! has the Breezebuilders and Land Blubbers, which are based off of birds and grubs respectively. The two sides have been at war with each other for quite a while, and Spyro has to help them both in order to get their talismans.
• Touhou Project: Averted with the three Cat Girls, who are in friendly terms with other characters of species usually enemy to cats. The first, Chen the Nekomata, is the servant of Ran Yakumo, a Kitsune, which is related to dogs. The second, Orin the Kasha, is best buds with Utsuho, a Hell Raven — thus, a bird. The third one is Shou Toramaru (actually a tiger), who is the master of the mouse youkai Nazrin.
• Several species in Viva Piñata will fights if they get too close to each other. While most of them are predators and prey, other pairs, such as Barkbark and Kittyfloss (a dog and a cat), aren't.

Web Animation

• RWBY: Alluded to, as the Cat Girl Blake reacts with inexplicable hostility to Zwei, her roommates' puppy. Played for Laughs in the non-canon spinoff RWBY Chibi, where Blake is constantly hiding from Zwei and is, at times, horrified to be around him.

Webcomics

• Bob the Angry Flower: Robots and bears are natural enemies. This makes as much sense as anything else in Bob the Angry Flower.
• Ghost of the Gulag features a war between the Wolf Clan and the Boar Clan, as well as a tiger who despises them both but is forced to pick a side in the war.
• Kevin & Kell: Half the jokes rely on this, or subvert it. In general, animal jingoism exists in-universe, but the main characters don't buy into it, as you'd expect when the title characters are a wolf/rabbit couple. The Interspecies Relationship Support Group shows many couples (or in one case, polycule) comprising "natural enemies".
• Gunnerkrigg Court features Reynardine and Ysengrin, the fox and wolf of legend. While neither of them can really claim to be those animals anymore, Ysengrin was very upset to see Reynardine take the form of a wolf.
• Girly has made that chickens and ducks are sworn enemies.
• Pixie and Brutus: One strip shows Brutus' perspective on becoming a member of Pixie's family. When told she's a cat, he considers it even worse than if she were a small, yappy dog. Of course, that changes when he sees her.
• In Poharex, the dinosaurs have a mortal enmity with the Rakair, a species of evolved rauisuchians. They also hate humans, though to a lesser extent.
• In Homestuck, Jade can't help but growl and bark at Jaspersprite when he starts meowing, because the latter is a cat, and the former, through a very complex series of events, has the instincts of a dog.
• Bob and George: Rush, Tango and Treble have this going on, even though they're all robots.
• In CoyoteVille, Sean, a coyote, often hunts rabbits via Looney Tunes-style trickery.
• The Glass Scientists: Jasper's reaction to a cat falling on his head suggests that werewolves and cats aren't exactly best friends.
• Sheldon: Arthur the duck has a deep-seated loathing of chickens, which he consider to be profoundly evil beings and behind most of the world's troubles. This is rather peculiar, as he's the only intelligent animal in the setting — chickens are by and large perfectly normal animals.
• Skin Deep: Marshall, a raven spirit animal, dislikes being misidentified as a crow, as he claims that crows are filthy animals.

Web Original

• Empires SMP Season 1: Cod and salmon are enemies to each other, and it's never quite confirmed why. However, come the finale and it's Played for Horror, since an attempt at resolving this enmity/rivalry ends in the whole world going down with them.
• Lioden: Lions and hyenas are shown to have mutual animosity towards each other, with numerous encounters allowing you to steal from, antagonize, and outright attack the hyenas you encounter. Due to this, in the Lone Wanderer storyline it takes quite a while for your king and the striped hyena Laharu to come to trust each other even while they work towards a common goal.
• Reynard Noir The cat/dog rivalry is inverted here: Cassandra Cat and the technically canid Slylock Fox have an on again/off again romance. However, speciesm is fairly rampant amongst the population as a whole, especially in the case of predator vs. prey species or humans vs. nonhuman. Sayings such as 'blind as a bat' are even regarded as speciest slurs.
• Serina: The carnivorous badger-like Gravediggers and the herbivorous elk-like Antlears, in an evolutionary arms race toward intelligence due to the Gravediggers learning to construct increasingly complex traps to catch their prey and the Antlears learning to better escape and avoid their traps. This culminates in the two species becoming true sapients and waging war, with the Antlears emerging the victors and driving the Gravediggers out of their forests.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: Dogs and the fictional Rainicorns are said to be enemies with one another, despite Jake and Lady Rainicorn in a relationship and eventually married. Unlike most examples, however, there's a reason: they fought over territories in the Crystal Dimension.
• Animaniacs:
  • "Smell Ya Later": Stinkbomb declares that it's the duty of dogs to chase squirrels, but he doesn't know why.
  • Subverted in the "Rita and Runt" segments, in which Runt habitually goes into an aggressive posture/attitude at the mere mention of a cat yet is too stupid to recognize that his best friend Rita is a cat.
• Arthur:
  • Pal the dog and Nemo the cat are portrayed as bitter enemies. Strangely, this wasn't always the case; Nemo's debut episode had the two of them get along just fine, before they gained animosity for each other for no apparent reason since "The Secret Life of Dogs and Babies".
  • Amigo the dog is mistrustful of fleas, and his immediate reaction to encountering the talking and clearly sentient flea Pepe for the first time in "Flea to Be You and Me" is to try and squish him!
• Babar has elephants and rhinoceroses as enemies. This is partially based on Real Life as both animals are known to be aggressive to each other in certain situations. Also, it helps the traditional depiction of elephants as peaceful Gentle Giants and rhinos as violent Always Chaotic Evil, non of both depictions to be entirely fair.
• Beast Wars: Despite not being actual animals but Transforming Mecha who can turn into them, the characters still sometimes display this. For example, cat-bot Cheetor snarls at Rattrap upon seeing his new beast mode and much later laments that he should never trust a dog when wolf-former Silverbolt betrays him.
• Ben 10: Omniverse: In "Catfight", as soon as Rook frees him from the cat-themed villain Nyancy's control, Ben turns into the canine Blitzwolfer to terrorize her.
• Bojack Horseman, despite being set in a world where half of the cast are anthropomorphic animals, uses this mostly for one-off visual jokes. Season four has the first instance of it impacting the storyline in a real way, with Princess Carolyn (a cat) being uncomfortable to find out that her mouse boyfriend's family has a holiday dedicated to demonizing cats.
• CatDog: The Greasers (a trio of dogs) hate cats with a passion, making it their hobby to beat up CatDog whenever they meet. Cat himself is shown to carry a strong hatred for Winslow (a mouse) too, though that might not be completely due to his natural instincts considering Winslow's personality. However, one episode did have Cat succumbing to his natural instincts and attempting to eat Winslow.
• Dog City occasionally alludes to cat/dog rivalry, most notably in the episode "Cats 'N Dogs", in which Bruno is outraged that one of the apartments is going to be let to cats. It turns out to be a dog named Katz. His attempts to explain this to Ms. Fluffé (herself a cat) manage to get him (briefly) fired. Meanwhile, the Ace Hart story involves a gang war between Bugsy and a cat mobster called Claude Badly.
• Felix the Cat: Felix's relationships with mice range from friendly to Vitriolic Best Buds-ish. Notably, he has a mouse friend, Skidoo, living in his house.
• Looney Tunes:
  • Tweety and Sylvester. "I tawt I taw a puddy tat!"
  • The 1946 short Fair and Worm-er parodies the concept. A worm is being chased by a bird, who is being chased by a cat, who is being chased by a dog, who is being chased by a dogcatcher.
• My Gym Partner's a Monkey. Here, the animals are sentient and speak and are anthropomorphic (some more than others) but the snake kid still fights with the mongoose kid only after learning from a documentary that they're natural enemies.
• Rocko's Modern Life: Parodied:
  • Heffer's grandpa (a wolf, see below) hates wallabies. The good news is, his eyesight isn't so good and he mistakes Rocko for a beaver. The bad news is, he's not too keen on beavers either.
  • Cats and turtles are said to be mutual enemies, without much explanation, in the episode "The Big Question"/"The Big Answer." This rivalry exists solely for the purpose of creating tension leading up to the marriage of recurring characters Filburt (a turtle) and Dr. Hutchinson (a cat).
  • One episode shows Heffer — a steer who was literally Raised by Wolves — being sent out to "bring an elk home for dinner". He ends up dating one.
  • Turned on its head concerning the relationship between Ed Bighead and Rocko: Cane toads (Ed's species) are an invasive species in Australia, but the American Ed thinks of the Australian Rocko as an invader in his life.
• Rosie's Rules: Gatita, a cat, is scared of Benito, a dog. However, they become friends later on.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: "Pet or Pests" has Gary developing a mutual hatred for a worm SpongeBob takes in. Fitting as snails and worms in this show are the undersea equivalents of cats and dogs respectively.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): Zigzagged. Tiger Claw (a mutant tiger) scoffs at the idea that he should dislike Rahzar (a mutant dog) because of his species, only to admit to wanting to eat Fishface (a mutant snakehead fish) because of his species not even a minute later.
• In Thunder Cats 2011, this is very much Played for Drama. Third Earth is presented as a "world of warring animals" where Thundera's Proud Warrior Race the Cats rule their empire as the self-styled Superior Species that brought order to their world. They've fought a generations-long war with the Lizards, and see little problem with enslaving those hungry Lizards they catch raiding their crops due to the Cats' systematic monopolization of arable land, even lynching them, if they feel like it. The "Alley Cats" of Thundera's slums think nothing of beating and mugging hapless Specific minorities like Dogs. All tailed Cats are themselves confined to the slums while tailless nobles live lives of wealth and privilege, and right-to-rule is granted only to Lions.
• Tom and Jerry: Most cartoons fall into this. Jerry is chased by Tom, who is in turn chased by Spike solely because they are a mouse, cat, and dog respectivly. Yet at the same time they are shown to get along with each other fine until, or unless, something causes them to fight again. In one cartoon where Tom throws Jerry out he starts to miss him and is glad when he is actually back.
• Hanna and Barbera later went on to create Pixie, Dixie and Mr. Jinks (for The Huckleberry Hound Show), and Motormouse and Autocat (for The Cattanooga Cats show) which naturally have similar themes; the latter involving vehicles.

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