Cats and Dogs Board game

INTRODUCTION
The Idea here is to make 2 separate board games that work very similarly and when put together create a third way of playing the game. The idea came to me when I thought that most people have an automatic answer to the question "Are you a cat or dog person?". This is my first attempt at designing a board game so any constructive criticism is very much appreciated.
So basically in 1 board game you play a team of dogs trying to rid the neighbourhood of cats and in the other you play a team of cats trying to rid the neighbourhood of dogs. I intend to make the boards so that they will fit together to allow players a third way of playing where one team controls the dogs and another team controls the cats and the teams fight each other to see which side wins.
MECHANICS
The game is going to use cards to represent items and effects as well as show the bad guys (either dogs or cats). Each character, of which there will be 5, will have a character card which will show there attack, defence and health and also have places to put armour, weapons and item cards. Combat will be done with dice rolling where you will roll a number of dice equalling your attack value and whether you roll a cat or dog symbol will determine whether you hit or miss. In return when being attacked you roll dice equalling your defence value and whether you roll a cat or dog symbol will determine if you block that hit or take damage.
GAMEPLAY
The board will show a neighbourhood with 6 houses around the outside with spaces in the backyards to place item cards face down. The centre of the board will have spaces for the main bad guy/boss (of which there will be 4 to choose from) as well as his minions which will appear during the game. Each player will pick 1 of the 5 playable characters or choose randomly and fill there character cards with tokens (see pic) that equal there starting stats. Each character is different and they each have a special ability that they can use.
On each turn each player can choose to either attack a cat in the neighbourhood or dig for an item in someones backyard. The aim of the game is to defeat the minion cards that will be placed in the centre of the table and then eventually defeat the boss at the end.

I am currently focusing on the dog game at the moment and have begun basic concept designs for the character sheets, item cards and tokens which I will attach to this journal. Anything I add to this journal from now on will only be about the dog game until I have finished play testing it. This is because the cat game will work in basically the same way just with different item cards, character sheets and bad guys so I want to iron out the rules and prototypes before starting work on that.
There are a few things I am struggling with that I could do with some input on. Firstly, the basic design of the characters in the game. I want the game to have a cartoony look to it so that it will be family friendly. Should I have the characters be 'realistic' as in on all fours (see the character sheet) or should I go for them being on 2 feet and wielding weapons and wearing armour (see pic) like in the board game mice and mystics (but a more modern style). I am edging towards the latter as it would make it a lot easier to come up with weapons and armour for the animals if they were on 2 legs so they could hold weapons in there paws and wear body armour.
Secondly but kind of linked to the first issue is coming up with names for the various items in the game. I want the weapons and armour to be kind of funny e.g. super soakers and doggie biscuit launchers rather than machine guns and knives if you get my meaning. Any help is very much appreciated and I will update when I can as I also work full time so don't get as much done on this game in a week as I would like.

Shaun