What affects us affects cats
A decent number of people are asking why their cat is shaking his/her back legs when walking. I’d like to try and answer this question because I have seen this myself with my cat. My late lady cat did it occasionally and every time it was because there was something on her paw that …
In this interesting video, two Canada lynx cats are in a close encounter standoff over territory – a home range. What I love about the video is that they do a behaviour that looks like an aggressive, feline, mock head butt (as opposed to the friendly variant). It is like two horned animals facing …
I think that “love bites” is a slightly misleading description of what is happening. There’s not a lot of love in a cat bite although it is frequently done with only a touch of aggression (play aggression) rather than as a genuine, hard bite. Nonetheless it may hurt and it may break the skin. …
This is a good example of what I would describe as defensive cat body language. Of course, it normally takes place between adult cats who are in a stand-off. They might be trying to avoid a fight by forcing one or the other to walk away (very slowly!). It could also be described as …
The cat in the picture is my companion, Gabriel. He is belly up but he would have done it whether I was there or not. It was not an invitation to pet him or anything else. It was just comfortable for him to be like this. The belly-up position of a domestic cat is …
Cat back twitching, what does it mean? It signifies mild annoyance or irritation in my opinion. In this post, I am putting to one side the medical condition called ‘feline hyperesthesia‘. I am sure that a lot of cat owners have seen feline back twitching. From personal experience I see it rarely but it …
Cats owners want to know what their domestic cat’s tail movements and positions mean. I thought I had done a page on this but apparently not so here it is. There are also two large links to cat tail types and an article about cat tail anatomy. The tail is a ‘balancing organ‘. It …
The drawings show the varying aggressive postures of the domestic cat from Paul Leyhausen’s study Cat Behavior (1979). The book is still available on Amazon at the staggering price of US $690.05 for a new copy! Second hand the book costs $214. Thanks but no thanks. I hope I am not in breach of …
