There is a stray cat in the community. You don’t know the cat and yet she consistently brings dead birds to your front door and meows until you come out. What does this mean? It isn’t unique but probably quite unusual. The way to try and understand this is to refer to the mother-kitten …
For me the answer to the question, “why does my cat lick me?” mainly comes from personal observation. Mother-kitten relationship My cat looks upon me as a mother cat. All domestic cats do the same. Our cats are kept in a state of perpetual kittenhood with us as we provide for them and unwittingly …
These side-by-side videos tell the story behind adult domestic cat kneading. PLEASE CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON AT BOTTOM-LEFT OF THE VIDEO TO PLAY THE TWO VIDEOS SIMULTANEOUSLY. Despite the copious amount of information on the internet about this form of feline behaviour some people don’t know the reason. Fair enough. Here is the reason. The newborn kitten kneads their mother’s breast to encourage the production of colostrum when feeding. The video on the left shows this clearly. Clearly, the adult cat is no longer a newborn kitten feeding at their mother’s breast but they think they are kittens because their every need is provided for by their human caregiver who acts as if they are surrogate mothers. This encourages the adult cat to never grow up emotionally and so they drop into the habits they had when they were newborn kittens even if it has nothing to do with feeding on their mother’s colostrum. It is entirely instinctive. The adult cat most often kneads their owners clothes while on their lap or their bedding as it smells strongly of them. Or as seen in the video they knead any part of their owner including their face. Just keep the claws trimmed please!
Kneading as an adult with a kitten’s mind. Infographic by MikeB at PoC. Click to see it larger if on a desktop or laptop.
This is an article by Elen, a visitor to PoC. We humans are claimed to be divided in to two categories, Cat people and Dog people. I basically agree. I do love dogs myself; I do however not feel I have a natural way of communicating with a dog, I call this ‘I don’t …
Cats take walk with their owners because they are behaving as a developing kitten would when they follow their mother from the nest in their development towards independence. It often happens along a well-worn path or track which is known to the owner and becomes known to the cat. Please read on. On this …
Is the question relevant to our lives? People ask it nonetheless. But frankly it is almost irrelevant. However, exceedingly rarely some cat owners do lick their cat and an avowed and self-declared crazy cat lady does it all the time because she wants to behave like a true mother cat caring for her newborn …
This is not an official world record so it’ll be anecdotal. With both formal and informal records, you’re bound to get some inaccuracies because people don’t always report what they believe is a record. It is a bit hit and miss. But remarkably Wikipedia state, on their oldest domestic cat listing, that Kitty in …
A study found that female domestic cats responded about 10% faster to kitten calls which conveyed to them a high level of urgency compared to kitten calls which were assessed as non-urgent. Females evaluate kitten’s emotional state The conclusion of the researchers was that female cats are able to evaluate the emotional state of …
Note: Some older videos on this page were hosted on Vimeo. That account has now been retired, so a few video blocks may appear blank. Thanks for understanding — there’s still plenty of cat content to enjoy!
