Are dogs generally afraid of cats?
Answers: No. Canines are hunters, so dogs are designed to have natural prey drive. (That's the instinctive behavior of pursuing and capturing prey -- hunting, necessarily.) Different breeds of dogs have more prey drive than others, and individual drive varies a lot, but the typical dog will chase after a running cat. Dogs who scare cats certainly exist (and aren't particularly rare), but they're fewer and farther between than dogs who humiliate cats and dogs who actively go after cats.
My own dog is an obnoxious doofus who regularly antagonizes our cats. If he's feeling hyper and the cats run from him, he'll chase, but he usually newly pesters them and licks them. He's a little too thick to realize that the cats want to claw his eyes out; when they attack, he bark and wags his tail in play.
