cat behavior explained

Can cats be gay like humans? No.

Can cats be gay? Can male cats be gay?

People ask Google for an answer to the above couple of questions and today, in The Times, we have an article reporting on a study into “gay behaviour” of non-human animals which I think will help answer them. The research is published in the journal Nature Communications. Same-sex sexual interactions can serve to form and …

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Cat's meow

Cat’s meow is a reflection of the kitten-to-surrogate mother relationship we have with them

There are two very well-known biologists and cat behaviourists who, in my view, agree on this point which is that the domestic cat sees us as surrogate mothers. We don’t quite know how they really process their observations of us but in terms of their behaviour towards us it reflects a kitten-to-mother relationship. These celebrity …

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Flehmen response in a domestic cat

This behavior unfairly gave the cat the false reputation of sneering at people

Until the internet really took hold and began to genuinely educate millions of cat owners about cat behaviour, there was a misconception about a strange aspect of feline behavior when every so often a cat would be seen to pause and adopt a curious sneering expression as if disgusted about something or that the cat …

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Cats have not yet sussed out human manipulations of human objects

Domestic cats haven’t yet worked out many aspects of human activity

This is an interesting illustration from Dr John Bradshaw’s book Cat Sense (which you can download to Kindle by the way which allows you to search for keywords) on the topic of how well or not so well domestic cats understand what is going on around them in the human world. As cat owners, I …

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Cat Opening Door

How do cats learn to open doors?

Domestic cats have good learning abilities as shown by the fact that they adapt to indoor living. They make sense of their surroundings by classical conditioning and learn how to open doors through ‘operant conditioning’. We see a lot of videos online of cats opening doors; often interior doors and sometimes fridge doors. It looks …

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When You Believe Your Cat Has Emotions You Are More Attached to Her

Do cats think of us as surrogate mothers, equals or kittens?

The conclusion from a couple of PhD experts, Dr John Bradshaw (Cat Sense) and Dr Desmond Morris (Cat Watching and many other books on animal and human behavior), is that cats do not think of us as equals. The domestic cat thinks of us as (1) surrogate mothers and/or (2) kittens and/or (3) superior creatures …

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Can someone explain to me why my cat just sits and stares at me for a long time?

The full question from Reddit.com is: “Can someone explain to me why my cat will just sit and stare at me for minutes at a time? What does this mean in a cat’s world?” It accompanied the photograph below that they took from their bed. This is an extended version of the response that I …

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Cat sniffing their owner

Cats sniff your face at night to check that you are alive! I was the first to suggest this.

Years ago, I suggested that at least some domestic cats sniff their owner’s face at night to check that they are still alive! Click this link to read that page. I wrote this at the time (about 6 years ago to the day): My firm impression is that cats sniff our face while we sleep …

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Domestic cat flicking leg after eating

Why do cats sometimes flick one hind paw after eating?

We are referring to domestic cats. Perhaps wild cats do it as well. Some of them probably do and one species definitely does: the African wildcat, the ancestor of the domestic cat. I have just this minute watched my cat eat some dry cat food and immediately after eating he flicked or briefly shook his …

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4 fundamental types of domestic cat play

What are the games that cats play?

There are four fundamental types of domestic cat play: Play-fighting – practice for defending against predators and subduing prey. The mouse-pounce – practice in stalking small prey animals. The bird-swat – practice in attacking escaping birds by taking flight. The fish-scoop – practice in catching fish. You’ll see them during play either between kittens or …

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Domestic cats might make a beeline for cat-phobic people because they are more passive than those who want interact with the cat but are strangers

Why are cats perversely attracted to people who dislike them?

Some people think that domestic cats, rather perversely, are attracted to people who don’t like them. And if this is true at least to some extent, it deserves an explanation. And the reason is probably fairly straightforward namely that in a room of people where one or two dislike cats and into which a cat …

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Feline zoomies

Why do cats suddenly make mad dashes around the house?

Why do cats suddenly make mad dashes around the house? This is otherwise known as the zoomies or the cat crazies. It is a very comprehensively discussed topic on the internet. I have written about it before but here I go for a third time! Every cat caregiver has noticed their cat companion suddenly make …

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Rainbow bridge

Cats have no fear of death which is an enormous advantage over us

  A cat has no concept of its own death and so it cannot anticipate it, no matter how ill it feels. – Dr Desmond Morris If an old domestic cat left to their own devices falls ill, they don’t think that they are dying. They feel pain and discomfort and what it means to …

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Note: sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified.
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