A Michael Broad Blog
A cat’s tail is made of bone (caudal vertebrae), ligaments, tendons, cartilage, muscle, skin and hair. A typical cat has between twenty-one and twenty-three caudal vertebrae which are extension of the spine. Exceptionally a cat with a full tail may have as few as eighteen or as many as twenty-eight of these bones. They …
A cat’s tail serves two main functions (1) to assist in balance particularly at times when balance is critical such as climbing trees to hunt and (2) a signal in feline body language when it takes up various positions such as ‘tail up‘ which signals a friendly approach. The small wild cat the margay …
This is a cat-to-human friendly nose touch greeting. Cats who are friendly with each do it a lot combined with the tail up and scent exchange rubbing including head butting. It’s very hard for a domestic cat to greet us with the classic feline ‘nose touch greeting’ for the obvious reason that we are …
Why do humans and dogs smile but cats don’t? Firstly, I am not sure that dogs do smile but I’ll concentrate on humans and cats, two species that I know well. Note: these are my thoughts because the experts don’t talk about cat smiles. If you have different ideas please leave a comment – …
Rudolph Furtado, POC’s Asian reporter in Mumbai, India, has recently returned from Indonesia where he noticed a large number of short-tailed cats and some with kinked tails. Singapore SPCA say short tailed cats are common and they are born that way. That is the obvious reason: genetics and inheritance; however, Robinson’s Genetics (a well-known …
The other day I was perusing a message boards in one of the cat communities to which I belong. I ran across a very strange question posed by an owner who was quite upset and concerned about his cat’s usual tail position. He asked: “My cat’s tail is always pointing straight up at the …
The cat tail up position in relation to a cat meeting another cat is a communication signal – a piece of body language – which says: “I am friendly and I accept my social status”. So, it is more likely to be initiated by a cat of lower status to a cat of higher …
