Rebuilding Dexter's confidence?

Hi there, I'm new here and also totally new to keeping cats. My fiance (who grew up with cats) and I recently decided to rescue a young adult cat from our local shelter during an adoption event. We picked him up and got him all the things a kitty apparently needs to be happy and healthy and took him home.

We do have two dogs but they have always been interested yet polite around other animals (they interact with cats when they go for grooming and we have small flightless yard ducks in the backyard that they share space with harmoniously).  Before this incident, Dexter (our new kitty) was very affectionate and playful, he liked to climb and explore and was just all sorts of bright-eyed and chatty and happy about life and he didn't mind the dogs either. 

But yesterday, totally out of character for my older boxer-mix, he pounced on Dexter and the two of them roughed each other up a bit (Dexter is not declawed because we don't believe in it). There weren't any serious injuries but I think that Dexter got really scared during the altercation. After we separated the two and after checking Dex out for serious injury (there weren't any, just a few broken claws) Dexter hid away under the bed in the guest room (the room where we keep his litterbox and one of his food/water dishes) and he hasn't come out since.

I feel so terrible that something like this happened to him when he's so new to our family and I'm worried that now he's never going to come out from under that bed and be the delightful kitty that we brought home just a short while ago. I've tried to leave him be to decompress and calm down but its gotten to the point that I'm starting to get worried because he hasn't moved from his spot since yesterday afternoon. Last night I wiggled under the bed to check on him and petted him a bit, he rolled on his side and seemed to appreciate the attention like usual. He hasn't been aggressive or anything, just sort of like his confidence in going about his catly business has been broken. 

So I guess my questions is: How should we go about helping him to rebuild his confidence? We've been talking about installing a cat walk so he can move freely from one side of the living room to the other without being within reach of any unwanted doggy attention and he does have lots of tall perches around the house and a 6 ft tall kitty hotel. If anyone has any advice on this or any pointers for anything else please feel free to share. 

Would certainly be worth investing in some Feliway diffusers. On a whole, you need one per each room Dexter spends time (unless it is a large room.)

I think installing a catwalk is an excellent idea! Try placing some special treats on the walk to get Dexter acclimated to it. I think I would do this when the dogs are out of the house at first.

You can also try putting Dexter's food/water bowls on top of a blanket that smells like the dogs or feeding him some canned food on it so that he begins to re-associate the dogs with something good.

Hopefully others will have more suggestions for you.

Thanks for the tips, just before I got this reply I had been doing some researching into these Feliway things that everyone was talking about. I went ahead and purchased a 3 pack plus refills on Amazon and got speedy 1-day shipping (since it was only an extra 3 dollars, I love Amazon~) Our house is just a small ranch type house so I think 3 would probably cover the rooms that he would be spending most of his time in (the guest room, the living room, and our bedroom). And yeah, he's quite the climber so I don't think it'll be hard getting him adjusted to the walk, do you think I should carpet them with something for traction when he's moving about? and also, is is better to just have long shelves going across or should I do smaller shelves and the stagger them so he's kinda going up and down like stairs across the wall?

I also got to talk to our vet about the introduction process (my Boxer-mix can sometimes have anxiety issues) so the vet was able to refill his Xanex prescription (he hasn't had to take it in a long while so its refill time had run out, but the last time we had a big life-changing event he took it for 2 weeks while he adjusted to the change and then when he came off the medicine he didn't have any anxiety about the new thing because it wasn't really new anymore, he'd already developed a been-there-done-that attitude about it.) So that should help on the dog side, I think it will help if everyone is feeling more mellow while they're going through the get-to-know-you stages.

If anyone was wondering, Dexter came out for me for a bit and was acting very affectionate, he played chase with me on the guest bed with his feather-on-a-stick toy. He took a couple treats but I don't think he's eaten any of the food set out or gone to the bathroom but hopefully he's working up to it.

ChoppyChops said:

 
If anyone was wondering, Dexter came out for me for a bit and was acting very affectionate, he played chase with me on the guest bed with his feather-on-a-stick toy. He took a couple treats but I don't think he's eaten any of the food set out or gone to the bathroom but hopefully he's working up to it.

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it might help dexter for you to stay close/nearby him while he's eating his canned/dry food. make sure he's drinking water too. you could even add a little water to his canned/wet food, to help him get some water. or you could offer him some water from a faucet -- beware though, drinking water from a faucet can be very addictive for some cats and they'll ask/cry for it from then on.

Feliway is great and I think spending extra time with him like mickNsnicks2mom suggested is  good idea.  I'm glad he seems to be coming around a bit; it sounds like he had a bad scare.  It sounds to me like you are approaching this right.  He's lucky to have you! 

Keep us updated on how things go please! 

Doing another update since a few people asked for it here and via private messages:

Dexter is out and about again, he's more wary of the dogs but its still pretty soon since the little scuffle. He's not spending 95% of his time under the bed anymore. Most of his time is spent lounging on the guest bed and watching the ducks and geese in the yard from the window. He's eating regular meals now, he loves his dry food and we've been letting him try different flavors of the higher quality wet foods that I've read about, his favorite is whitefish, if I let him pick his can, he always goes for the ones with whitefish. 

I installed a more sturdy baby gate in the guest room (this one is metal and has an door rather than having to take the whole thing out of the way like the cheap wooden ones). That way he can jump over it when he's feeling insecure and have that room as his own space. And we've put in the Feliway wall plug-ins in the three main rooms so hopefully that'll start to help and his cat-walk is in the works, we have 3 shelves close to his kitty tower so far but are planning on getting more so that he can cross the entire living room without having to come down on the floor if he doesn't want to. 

Is there anything else I should be doing? (or if anyone has any other cat owning tips they want to share that's cool too even if its not about behavior, all suggestions are appreciated, like I said earlier, I'm a total newbie at cat keeping~)

That all sounds good to me!  It usually takes some time for the Feliway to work so keep that in mind.  All in all; good progress! 

i'm so glad to hear that dexter is moving past the "little scuffle".

has he tried out any of his cat shelves yet? very exciting! i've been adding cat wall furniture over the last year or so, and my snick uses them every day. are you buying or constructing your own cat shelves?