A Michael Broad Blog
At heart this is about the domestic cat’s lifestyle when nursing females can be thrown together in a colony situation to which they adapt. The domestic cat is adaptable as they must be despite being essentially solitary. And under these circumstances it makes sense to sometimes share mothering. Also feline, nursing mothers are not …
I am writing about domestic cats. The reason for that is because not infrequently there’s more than one female cat available to share the responsibility of raising kittens. In the wild, it is far less likely that a female cat will encounter another and therefore what I describe below applies to domestic cats. RELATED: …
In the natal den, soon after birth, kittens recognise their mother immediately via three senses: warmth, feel and smell. However, they probably have little idea what their mother is meant to smell like. The smell of their mother is not in their DNA. This has been proved when kittens suckled an artificial ‘mother’ which …
Not always, is the answer. You would have thought that as the domestic cat is considered to be barely domesticated that they would have inherited the full range of parenting skills from their wild cat ancestor but it seems not (sometimes). I’m taking my lead in answering the question in the title from Dr. …
The language I’ve used in the title comes from that wonderful writer, Desmond Morris. He is also a great animal behaviourist. I would say that he is still the best. He explains why kittens don’t squabble when feeding at their mother’s breast. Soon after birth kittens have an attachment to their own nipple. It’s …
I can’t really add much more than what I say in the title so this is going to be a short post. But despite that I think the title is a very interesting one. It never occurred to me that a domestic cat’s milk is so much more full of protein and fats than …
A visitor asks: I have one cat that likes to chew on my hair while I’m sleeping; why? There are three possible reasons as I see it. Yes, one more than in the title! Grooming – specifically ‘allogrooming’ When one cat grooms another it is called allogrooming. This is an example of allogrooming. The …
