Why Do Cats Lick Themselves After Being Stroked? A Closer Look at a Curious Behavior
Cat owners often notice a peculiar and consistent behavior: after you stroke your cat, especially in certain areas like the back or head, they immediately lick themselves where your hand just was. At a glance, this might seem like simple grooming—perhaps your touch disrupted their fur, or they’re “removing” your scent. But if you look more closely, this post-stroking licking could reveal something far more subtle and important about how cats perceive us, and how they process the shared space between human and feline.
Despite decades of research into domestic cat behavior, surprisingly little has been written about this particular action. Yet it’s something almost every cat owner will have witnessed. Could this behavior offer a window into the emotional and sensory world of the domestic cat?
Common Explanations Fall Short
The most popular explanations for this behavior tend to fall into two camps:
- Scent Removal: Some believe cats are fastidious and don’t like foreign scents on their fur, so they lick to “clean” the area.
- Fur Maintenance: Others suggest your hand simply disrupts their fur pattern, prompting an automatic grooming response.
While these explanations may have some validity, they don’t quite add up when you consider how cats actually behave in other contexts. For instance, many cats actively seek out their owner’s scent, nestling into worn clothing or burrowing under duvets where their human scent is strongest. A cat that chooses to saturate itself in your scent is unlikely to be trying to “remove” it moments later.
An Alternative Hypothesis: Savoring the Scent
A more compelling explanation is that cats may be “tasting” or processing your scent through licking—not removing it. Cats possess a vomeronasal organ (or Jacobsen’s organ) on the roof of their mouth, which allows them to analyze chemical signals in much greater detail than we can perceive. This system is primarily used for detecting pheromones and other complex scents.
When a cat licks its fur where you’ve stroked it, it may be trying to gather more information about you: your scent, your emotional state (which some evidence suggests can be chemically detectable), or even subtle residues like sweat, oils, or lotions. This behavior may have more in common with the flehmen response than with ordinary grooming.
In this light, licking could be a form of sensory integration—a way for your cat to process the physical and social significance of your touch.
Stroking as Allogrooming
It’s worth noting that in cat-to-cat interactions, grooming isn’t just hygienic—it’s social. Allogrooming (mutual grooming) is one of the clearest signs of affection and social bonding among cats. Cats tend to groom others in areas they can’t easily reach themselves, such as the head and neck. This makes sense, since these are also the areas we humans tend to stroke.
It’s entirely plausible that our stroking is interpreted by cats as a form of allogrooming. The immediate self-licking that follows might therefore be part of a reciprocal social ritual, rather than an act of rejection or cleansing.
Not a Sign of Discomfort
Crucially, if a cat seeks out your presence, enjoys petting, and then licks itself after, this doesn’t suggest discomfort. Quite the opposite: it suggests a complex, integrated response to touch that includes both social bonding and scent processing.
What’s more, cats that dislike being touched don’t usually groom after petting—they avoid the contact altogether. This reinforces the idea that post-stroking licking is part of a natural behavioral sequence, not an avoidance tactic.
A Missing Piece in Feline Behavior Research
For such a common and easily observable behavior, it’s remarkable how little scientific attention this has received. While researchers have studied feline grooming, scent marking, and social bonding in depth, the specific behavior of post-stroking self-licking—especially in relation to human scent and touch—has been almost entirely overlooked.
Yet this small behavior might hold big implications for how we understand the cat-human bond. Is your cat simply resetting its fur? Or is it savoring your scent in a quiet moment of feline mindfulness?
Time for a Dedicated Research Project
This behavior deserves a dedicated research project. Carefully structured observation, paired with biochemical analysis (e.g., changes in fur chemistry post-touch), could reveal whether cats are engaging in scent analysis, self-soothing, reciprocal grooming, or something entirely new.
Understanding this could deepen our appreciation of the emotional lives of domestic cats—and help us better respond to their needs, preferences, and affections.
So next time your cat licks the spot where you touched it, don’t assume it’s brushing you off. It might be their way of getting just a little closer.
Conclusion:
Given the frequency and subtlety of this behavior, and its potential implications for the human-cat relationship, it’s time for science to take it seriously. A dedicated study could help clear up the purpose of this behavior once and for all—bringing us one step closer to understanding our feline companions who can sometimes be somewhat enigmatic.
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