Introducing Cats to New Puppy

Hi everyone-

It's been a while since I posted on here but you've all been a great go to source when issues have arised.

I have two cats that are about 1.5 years old (male and female). My girlfriend recently purchased a 3-month old puppy (a Morkie- 1/2 Maltice, 1/2 Yorkie). He's a great dog and really wants to play with the cats who at first didn't take to him too kindly.

They are getting better and defending themselves when he comes chasing, not using claws but giving him a nice slap on the nose, but a friendship is far from developing. More recently I am now having problems with my female cat spraying and pooping in various spots around the house where he might go.

I am looking for advice on the following:
1) Any suggestions you might have to help us develop a better relationship between the cats and a puppy
2) Any suggestions you might have that I can do to help alleviate the spraying and pooping.

Thanks everyone in advance for your help.

Your cat is spraying to defend her territory. When we adopted our puppies, we confined them in one portion of our house and let the cats have the rest of the house. They had their territory and the puppies had theirs. We placed cat trees in the rooms where the puppies were confined to give the cats a place to get away from the puppies.

Puppies are naturally playful and if they don't have one of their kind, they will play with whatever is available to them. We first adopted one puppy and after 30 days of watching him be frustrated when the cats wouldn't play with him (he was bigger than the cats at 10 weeks old), we went back and adopted his brother to give him a playmate. DH and I tag teamed with the puppies so that they got their play time and the cats got their human time. Our cats sprayed the first puppies kennel and quit when we adopted the second one.