What does this mean?

[ESALove]

My cavalier will bark at one of the cats when the cat is near his food or one of his toys. Or like if he is in his path.
The cat is clearly displeased (growling and ears back and sometimes swats at him), so maybe cavalier is afraid of him sort of?
Cavalier will continue to bark and sometimes eventually just run past the cat anyways. I always watch these interactions carefully.
Dog doesn't seem to be aggressive to me...more like he is politely saying "dude, you're in my way." haha.
He just sits/stands and barks at the cat. No growl or showing his teeth.
Is this alright or should I be concerned?
It's more the cats aggression that I'm wary of right now. But anything to be concerned about with the dog?

 

[Karlin]

That just sounds like puppy playfulness to some degree, but yes you don;t want that ending up being guarding behaviour. I'd feed him somewhere the cats can't be, like in a crate if he's crate trained or a pen or separate room. Also you don't want to leave food down for a dog (especially as free-feeding adult cavaliers tend to become fat cavaliers ), but give him 10-15 minutes to eat and if he doesn't finish then lift the dish without making any fuss and put away in the fridge (if wet) and no treats or food til the next scheduled meal when he gets a normal sized meal again, left without fuss and no cats about, for 10-15 minutes.

And yes the tricky thing with cats is a swipe would tend to be to the face and eye area so you just want to keep watch generally and make sure there's no escalation or whatever. If he's doing a lot of barking at the cats you can cheerfully distract and redirect him to a favourite toy or chew. But mostly this is all part of settling in and getting to know one another and sounds pretty normal. The barking in puppies is generally an invitation to play, too! That cats might have no intention of responding to