Here is some information about cats grooming themselves and others taken from a number of studies on the Internet listed under Google Scholar.
- Mutual grooming – allogrooming: When cats groom another cat they normally direct their attention towards the head and neck area.
- In a two cat hierarchy i.e. one cat being dominant over a more submissive cat, the higher ranking animal is more likely to groom the lower ranking animal than the other way around. This indicates an ulterior motive – see below.
- The cat doing the grooming adopted a higher posture i.e. standing and sitting upright compared to those being groomed i.e. sitting and lying.
- In about one third of the occasions when one cat groomed another there is agonistic behaviour (aggressive behaviour).
- Those cats doing the grooming “showed offensive behaviour more often than groomees (those being groomed)”.
- Those that did the grooming groomed themselves afterwards.
- Whether the cats were related or not had no effect on whether they groomed each other.
- It is suggested that allogrooming (mutual grooming) in domestic cats might be a way of redirecting potential aggression to avoid the cost of aggression in terms of their health and wellbeing.
- Prevented from grooming: In terms of autogrooming i.e. when a cat groom themselves, if they are prevented from grooming themselves because an Elizabethan collar is attached for three days, in the 12 hours immediately after removal of the collar, grooming increased by two thirds and “scratch grooming” by 200% indicating that cats have a set routine and if they can’t carry out that routine they catch up.
- Time spent grooming: A cat can spend about 25-30% of their time grooming. Some cats can even spend up to a third of their time grooming (might this be in homes where they are bored and have nothing to do or their environment is unclean?). My cat is an indoor/outdoor cat he doesn’t spend more than about 5% of his time autogrooming as a rough estimate.
- There is no difference between longhaired and shorthaired cats in terms of the amount of time that they groom and the way they groom.
- Most autogrooming is carried out around the head in the form of face washing (31%). The next in line is the licking of the hind limbs at 21%, sides and back at 13%, neck and chest at 11%, anogenital region at 10%, abdomen at 9% and tail at 5%.
- Flea control: When cats groom themselves they control the number of fleas on their body. In one study they prevented cats from grooming themselves for three weeks in a flea infested environment. Those that could not groom themselves had twice as many fleas compared to those cats who could groom themselves.
- Tapeworms: It should be noted that when a cat removes fleas by grooming they can ingest them and in doing so ingest tapeworm eggs. This is how cats get tapeworms.
- Grooming after eating: In a study by John Bradshaw, the author of the book Cat Sense it was confirmed that the majority of cats in the study devoted much of their time to grooming after they had eaten. I’m sure cat caregivers have seen this. It’s been put down to removing food particles from around the mouth and the legs i.e. the forelegs. There will be other reasons one of which is probably to ‘package’ eating and grooming together. When a cat has eaten they have a full stomach, they feel relaxed and better and are therefore in the mood to do their ablutions as part of a package. Cats, as you know, spent a lot of time autogrooming i.e. grooming themselves.
- Human intervention: human intervention in terms of grooming is required for shorthaired cats to control fleas by grooming with a flea comb and for longhaired cats it is suggested that the caregiver should groom their cat daily. Persian cat fur is particularly long (actually overly long) and the caregiver should intervene at least once a day to prevent matting. Matting is a health problem in cats with very long hair.
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