For books:
The Monks of New Skete, and "The Perfect Puppy" are two books I've had highly reccomended. The monks book was one of the first written for positive reinforcement training, and while the publishers updated the book accordingly there have been some significant advancements in training since it's origional authoring. Hence the second suggestion of the perfect puppy, it's more recent and offers a ton of helpful information.
The cat:
Fortunately you have a puppy, meetings between cats and adult dogs can have some serious problems the adult dog may have been conditioned to chase cats, and the cat may have been conditioned to run away from dogs. Thats just a nightmare to deal with.
When an adult animal meets a "baby" animal of another species all sorts of strange things can happen. Big cats on the savannah will suddenly be taking care of a prey animals child. And just take a look at humans, we are suckers for "kittens" and "puppies".
Cats are however fairly independant, because of that I'd agree that you should let your cat meet with the puppy on his/her own terms.
The first few days might not be the best time to introduce the two either, from my experiance my puppy was very very frightened his first few days with me. It took about 2 weeks before the personality I saw at the breeders started to shine through. Up until then he was quiet, staying by my side, and scared of darn near everything.
If they happen to meet in the first few days then just keep a close watch on both your puppy and the cat. I'd have em seperated, one inside a playpen the other outside of it. The last thing you want is for the cat to swipe at the puppy his first few days there, or the puppy to lunge at your cat. That'll be the start of a "Tom and Jerry" cartoon right there.
Crates:
As others have suggested crates are great! That said I wouldn't say my pup was exactly "Crate trained" at 4 months.
He's been crated in the evening when I sleep, and he spends the days in a puppy playpen.
Vash has only had one accident in my house while he was either in the pen or in his crate. All his other accidents were when I let him out and wasn't listening to what he was trying to tell me, or simply thought the fact he wasn't whimpering and instead barking ment he was just wanting to play.
You can't expect a puppy to hold his bladder long though, the typical rule of thumb is that he can hold his bladder for his age (in months) + 1 hr maximum. So if your pups 2 months old he should be able to hold his bladder for 3 hrs, assuming you haven't fed him or given him water. It takes 15-30 min after a pup eats/drinks for them to have to potty again.
The reason I wouldn't say vash is crate trained, is simply because I still have to lure him into his crate with treats, and he won't go in it on his own. I don't think he feels like it's his "den". And that could potentially be due to how I have trained him.
As a side note, when I picked up my puppy I bought a bell at walmart, it came with a poop bag, you hang it on the door and there are instructions on how to train your puppy to ring the bell when he has to go potty.
While I have occasionally had to fight with Vash because he sometimes thinks he can ring the bell to go out and play without going potty, 99% of the time he understands when he rings the bell he's going outside and staying there until he poops and pees. The other 1% of the time he's too smart for his own good, he knows he can get me to give him attention if he rings the bell so when he's feeling like I haven't given him enough attention he goes and rings the bell repeatedly.
Sadly every time your pup rings the bell you have to take him out (thats how the training works). However when I realize he's doing this I roll the bell up over the door handle so he can't access it for a while, he seems to understand now.
Fence:
The playpen I put my puppy in while at work is 26" high. Vash is 4 months old now and I fully believe if he wanted to he could escape the pen. This is especially noticeable when he jumps on the side to greet me when I come home to take him out for his potty break at lunch.
I know for certian that a 3ft high fence won't keep a fully grown sheltie from jumping it if they really wanted to.
That said you do have a little while before you need to deal with that issue. A puppy is more likely to try and dig their way under the fence in order to escape than to jump it.
