I broke the rules, and it worked.

Well, First I introduve him to cats because I trust them that much. He didn't even beard up, and the cats were more intrested in the crickets I had sitting to the side. ;p

Well, it's your dragon. At the very least, never leave them together unattended.

This is very irresponsible.You may get away with it once, maybe 100 times, but trust me, you are going to end up with a severely injured, named, or dead bearded dragon eventually. It could be today, tomorrow, or next year. That's the point, not whether "it worked" or not, lol, it didn't "work", you simply got lucky.

It's not at all about "trusting" your cat...It's a cat buddy. It might be an excellent, well-behaved cat. But it's a cat regardless, and as a cat owner you have to know that they are naturally born hunters. It's not about "trusting" a cat, you cannot actually "trust" a cat, as they don't think in terms of "oh, I really want to chase down that lizard and bat him around with my claws, but I won't because I'm not supposed to do that, he trusts me not to"...They aren't that high-functioning, unfortunately. It will happen, just remember we're telling you this now and warning you to not be a completely irresponsible bearded dragon owner, because your beardie doesn't deserve this behavior from you, he deserves to be protected by you.

And you also need to remember the fact that ALL CATS HAVE A BACTERIA IN THEIR SALIVA THAT IS LETHAL TO BEARDED DRAGONS, IT KILLS THEM SLOWLY BY CAUSING A HORRIBLE INFECTION. AND IT'S ALL OVER THEIR PAWS AT ANY GIVEN TIME BECAUSE THEY LICK THEIR PAWS CONSTANTLY. SO ONE LITTLE PAT OF YOUR BEARDIE BY YOUR CAT'S PAW CAN LITERALLY KILL HIM, IT HAPPENS EVERY DAY. THAT'S WHY THIS IS MIST IRRESPONSIBLE.

I agree that cats can mostly be dangerous around other small animals and it's best to keep them apart. However merely licking or touching a beardie or any other animal is not going to hurt it.

While I would never leave them alone together I will let the mine roam I just keep a very close eye on my cat. My cat got in the tank once when we didn't have it properly set up and the cat had our poor baby beardy in his mouth. It scared the poop out of us and we cat proofed our enclosure right away. Now that our beardie is bigger the cat is not that interested.

As far as this saliva infection business I can't say much, never seen anything about that before and Fritz who was in the cats mouth has grown up to be a strong healthy guy. So I don't know. Like I say, just don't leave them together

edit: no skin was punctured during this incident with my cat! And trust me it never happened again

What I'm saying about the saliva is that yes, actually, licking a beardie, or having a beardie come in contact with cat saliva can make them very sick. It seems like not many people know this at all, they don't know that the risk even exists. Yes, if a cat claws or bites a beardie then the saliva and the bacteria getting inside the open wound is much riskier, but there are numerous instances of documented events where a beardie has become infected by cat saliva without having an open wound, you are more than welcome to do your research, it won't be hard to find numerous cases of this online. And in the few instances that I know of personally ended with the beardies dying, simply because the owners had no idea that cat saliva was any risk at all to their beardie, just as most cat owners don't think their cat will reach into their beardie's enclosure and pull them out or bat them around until they die.

I'm assuming this is a kid or teenager that wrote this post, as not many adult's would title a post "I broke the rules and I got away with it!"...So in my opinion it's very important that this young person learns now what is responsible bearded dragon owner behavior and what is irresponsible and just plain foolish. This post sounds like the OP was purposely "testing out" whether his cat would kill his bearded dragon, so I'd much rather try to educate him than reinforce what he did and have him come back on here tomorrow or next week with a near-death beardie that has been tortured by a cat...

Hello,

Please do not leave them unattended, it is very dangerous. Don't let your cat get too interested
in your dragon, they are very predatorial & unpredictable. I don't want anything to happen to
your little dragon.

Tracie