My 2 cats are scared of the new dog...

Jasper and Pimm have had the shock of their little lives, we adopted a dog. They have never met a dog before. Chase is a chihuahua mix - he is pretty small (14lbs) and has very little prey drive. For the past two weeks we have been training him to not pay attention to the cats and ignore them when they come around. He is very good and never chases them when they freak out and run away. The boys have a safe room where they have their bed, litter box, toys, scratching post and food and water. The thing that I am worried about is that the boys constantly stay in there safe room. They come out for a second but as soon as they hear the jingle of Chase's tags they dart back to the room in fear.

What can we do to keep encouraging the boys not to be afraid? We have tried playing with them to lure them out, giving them treats, petting them when they are semi-exploring. Are we in the right track? I miss my cuddle time with them!

Hi.  This is not something I have any experience of but I am sure you gave it a lot of thought before going ahead with this change. It sounds like you are on the right track having set up a nice safe space for your feline family, and have been spending time looking at the training needs for your little dog.  I don't know if you have read the article on this site about introducing dogs to cats but it might give you some more ideas.  I have included the link to the articel below.  I think one thing that is important is giving your cats time, and allow them to build up confidence at their own pace rather than for them to feel forced in to something and then be more likely to have an experience where they get very frightened.

http://www.thecatsite.com/a/introducing-cats-to-dogs

Hoping your fur family settle calmly together and you are all able to relax n  each other's company soon.

Thank you for the link. In the past 3 weeks we have made some progress. The cats will eat their food with the dog present, will sleep in their bed with the dog right next to them and will cuddle us when the dog is in the next room. The issue is they will do this all upstairs and will not come downstairs. Their litter box, food and water normally live downstairs. If I move these back downstairs will they start coming back down? I worry that they will starve themselves out of fear of the dog and not use their litter box. At the same time I don't want them to feel like they never have to leave upstairs because it has everything they need. Am I over thinking this?

Our dog is really good with the cats, he does not chase them and mostly ignores them.