A Michael Broad Blog
Female domestic cats can show maternal instincts when being courageously protective of babies and toddlers. On this page there are four videos. Three of them clearly show a cat protecting a toddler. In two of them the cat attacks a dog who is attacking the child. These are very brave acts by the cats …
Potentially, bobcats could be friendly to humans and the video on this page supports this. In the video we see a young bobcat on a golf course who wants to play with some golf balls thrown towards him. The golfers are nearby. The bobcat is understandably nervous of their presence. He behaves like a …
People thinking about adopting a purebred cat want to know whether Ragdoll cats are good with dogs and the answer at root comes down to whether an individual Ragdoll cat is socialised to dogs in general. What I mean is whether an individual Ragdoll is used to being around dogs because they were introduced …
Although the response of a domestic cat to new people in their home (including visitors) will vary between individuals depending on their confidence and character, in general domestic cats will be fearful and defensive. There are one or two things which can be done to assuage some of the anxiety and make them more …
This is a quick note and no more because there is not a lot of information about this due to a dearth of studies. However, the presence of a mother cat during the socialisation of her kittens can have a negative or positive effect upon the socialisation process. There is evidence to suggest that …
Domestic cats are not born to love people and their default position with respect to other cats is to be suspicious of them. This is the nature of a solitary animal. I wonder, though, if this is entirely true after approximately 10,000 years of cat domestication. Perhaps the ability for domestic cats to love …
A kitten’s personality is dictated by inherited behaviours and environmental experiences; the nature and nurture argument, which has been around for donkey’s years. It is universally accepted that the important socialisation period of cats to people appears to occur between two and eight weeks, whereas it is less effective if delayed until after seven …
With ‘optimistic enthusiasm’ is the way Dr Bradshaw describes how dogs make contact with other dogs. We know this is because their wild forebears were highly sociable wolves. The ancestors of domestic cats were ‘solitary and territorial’. The result for modern day domestic cats is that the ‘default’ mentality for them is that they …
