With more multi-cat, full-time indoor cat arrangements, it’s important that people understand the natural social organisation of cats. And perhaps the greatest problem for a cat caregiver when looking after cats in a multi-cat home is adding a cat to the “colony”. In effect a multi-cat home is a managed colony of cats. They …
Domestic and feral cats sometimes live in groups and the lion, a big cat, lives in groups (prides). These are not the only two cat species who live in groups as male cheetahs also form coalitions. Domestic and feral cats Domestic cats often live solitary lives and they’re considered to be solitary animals but …
Why do domestic cats lick each other? The answer is the one you’re thinking about! It is a social exchange that can follow the friendly tail-up greeting. Mutual licking between cats is called allogrooming. Incidentally, the word, as you might imagine, is a combination of ‘allo’ and ‘grooming’. You know what grooming means. The …
A question was raised as to whether feral cats in colonies become inbred. They might become inbred because we know that, when given the opportunity, domestic and feral cats engage in what humans might consider to be orgies! Feral and domestic cats are very good at procreation and my colleague Elisa described it as …
The same question, but on the flip side of the coin, would be “Are feral cats solitary?”. People often think of domestic and feral cats as being essentially solitary because of their inherited behaviour from the wild cat but the truth is that feral cats should be considered as having the character to be …
East Bay Regional Park District is a system of parklands and trails in Alameda and Contra Costa counties to the east of San Francisco, California, USA. In all it covers 125,000 acres in seventy-three parks with over 1,250 miles of trails. There is clearly lots of wildlife there, including birdlife. The park staff have …
NEWS AND COMMENT: Taiwan’s ‘cat village’ is the town of Houtong in the north. It is referred to as a ‘cat village’ because there are hundreds of cats while the population of humans is smaller. And it has become a tourist attraction because of it. It was originally a mining town but the population …
It is wrong to say that only lions live in groups because feral and stray cats live in colonies. And domestic cats in households often live in small groups too. Both the lion and the domestic cat are different species of cat (Panthera leo and Felis silvestris catus respectively). You might find that the …
