What affects us affects cats
The word “intact” nearly always concerns domestic cats. Both the neutering of males and spaying of females takes a piece of anatomy away from them. For the male cat the operation is the removal of both testicles (castration) and for the female cat, the surgery is the removal of the uterus, fallopian tubes and …
There are two important issues concerning domestic cat character: friendliness and socialisation. They do overlap but they are distinct. Whereas socialisation ‘acclimatises’ the kitten to the presence of humans and dampens down a cat’s fear of humans, friendliness can be inherited, and it is a personality trait which makes the kitten/adult bolder and more …
As you might well imagine, the reason why tortoiseshell cats are nearly always female is to do with the genetics and how the genes that dictate the coat colour and pattern are linked to the sex of the cat. Female mammals have 2 X chromosomes while males have one X and one Y chromosome. …
Admiral Insurance admirably (!) provide the public with the results of an interesting survey about cats going AWOL (absent without leave). I have decided to present the information very succinctly in a list of facts which are presented below (with some comments). The numbers concern cats in the UK. I would expect something similar …
The first point to make is that we are discussing neutered male cats and spayed female cats. That has to be a basic criteria in this discussion. There’s no point comparing unsterilised male cats against spayed female cats for instance. It is just not a comparison that makes sense. I can answer the second …
We don’t know everything that there is to know about domestic cat behaviour. That is the first point to make. Please don’t expect clean, definitive answers to every question about cat behaviour. This is one of those instances in my opinion. But the question is relevant to a study that I’ve just bumped into …
Tomcats can’t, it seems, tell the difference between females who have been spayed and those that have not been spayed. This information comes from Dr. John Bradshaw in his book Cat Sense It is based upon his admittedly “casual observations”. He writes that “tomcats seem unable to distinguish between neutered females that form the …
If you are of a squeamish disposition you might want to stop reading 😉. I am just joking because I am sure by now that most people know why female cats scream at the end of mating. The title is a question that people ask but is slightly inaccurate because the female screams at …
