Learn About Your Cat's Behaviour

Why Does My Cat Do That?
A Cat's Eye View of the Human World

ONE OF THE THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND IS THAT -

WHAT DO PEOPLE AND CATS HAVE IN COMMON?

LET'S START BY TALKING ABOUT COMMUNICATION

SO WHAT MIGHT A CAT USE TO LEAVE THESE MESSAGES WITH? They don't have paper and pens do they?

TO ANSWER QUESTIONS 2 and 3, LETS LOOK AT WHAT CATS ARE BUILT TO EAT.

SO, LETS COMPARE THE LIFESTYLES of DIFFERENT CAT GROUPS

ONE OF THE THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND IS THAT -

HOUSE CATS TREAT THEIR OWNERS AS BEING NOT VERY SMART FELINES AND SO THEY TRY TO TEACH US IN THEIR OWN WAY - they treat us as cats, and we have to be smart enough to figure out their language so we know what they're trying to tell us and then make it easy for them to understand what we want as well. A key concept here is that an adult cat is as trainable as your own mother. With care and persistence, you can get a cat to do what they want when you want them to, but most owners are not prepared to put in the time to change a cat's behaviour radically. But, if we can understand the world from the cat's point of view, then we can change that world so the cat is more likely to do the things we want it to.

Kittens, on the other hand, are as trainable as children so if you fulfil their needs and teach them early, then they will continue to do the things you want. The key concept here is that what a cat learns by the age of 5 months old - and especially by the age of three months old, is going to influence what it does for the rest of its life.

I've got ten questions up here on the board that I will try to address. If we have time we can look at other issues you may have. Briefly at the end I will tell you some interesting things we found out about cats by surveying owners, and if you have not done so already, I would appreciate you filling out the survey that expands on the first one.

WHAT DO PEOPLE AND CATS HAVE IN COMMON?

Eating washing learning communicating playing sleeping going to the toilet What do people do when they get home? Prepare and eat afternoon tea and dinner, have a bath, children will play outside and play inside, watch TV, talk to the other people in the household, kids do homework, write a letter or send an email.

What might a house cat do in the afternoon? eat afternoon tea and dinner, play with toys, play with owners, scratch the furniture, use the litter tray, groom herself, sit on owner's lap, sleep.

What might a farm cat do in the afternoon? hunt for dinner, make a nest and sleep in it, avoid being caught by a dog, avoid a car on the road, climb a tree and scratch it, sniff for other cats, go look for a mate.

Thinking about natural behaviours, we know that cats evolved living in small communities of related females, with males visiting seasonally to mate with them. Kittens were raised communally and not many survived. Evenings were spent hunting for mice and rats and avoiding bigger predators. Life was pretty short and brutal and filled with parasites, poisons and other dangers. On the positive side, there were great distances between cats, males covered the territory of three to ten female colonies and interaction between outsider cats was infrequent and usually made via smell (urine and facial pheromones). Fighting could be fatal so leaving messages was a good way to keep your distance.

Today, our cats are confined, castrated or spayed and made to interact with many humans and lots of other cats. Their lives have been radically changed but the thing to remember is how well most cats have adapted. At the Cat Clinic, however we see quite a few cats that can't cope. These cats try to get their owner's attention by peeing in the wrong places (including on their owner's head sometimes) and that's guaranteed to get a reaction! Other behavioural signs of a cat with stress include regularly fighting with other cats (or people), spending their lives hiding, or peeing blood in the bathtub.

All animals have to achieve the same outcomes - eat, drink, sleep safely, find a mate, raise offspring. I'm going to show you how we have made it pretty difficult for a cat to complete its genetic and evolutionary programming for these tasks, so you can be amazed at how well your cat has adapted and admire it for what it does do right rather than worry about what it does to displease you. Before you chastise a cat - imagine it is your mother you are going to correct and do it considerately!

LET'S START BY TALKING ABOUT COMMUNICATION

What makes a cat different to, say a dog for example? Cats like to live alone or in small groups, where dogs like to live and work in bigger groups called packs. Humans band together in tribes and for some reason form into massive cities! This is a very big difference because when you communicate with only a small number of others you can have a special language, can't you? Usually people will say things to each other or within their family that no one else will understand except you and them. On the other hand, when you talk to someone else outside your group, like a person in a shop or a waiter, you have to use more careful language so they understand. Well, cats like to talk to only a few other cats, ever, so they only need a few words to tell each other a story. Cats actually would rather NOT SEE another cat because they find that misunderstandings occur and then they get into fights and get hurt. Dogs, on the other hand, like to be in big groups and they have a complex body language and smell language that can be understood by a bigger group - they have a bigger vocabulary. Dogs are always looking for ways to understand what you want, because once they are part of a group they are happy. Cats tend to look for ways to leave messages for you or all the other cats in the area so they don't have to talk to anyone.

Cats therefore communicate by smells which hang around for ages and communicate only the very basics like - who am I? How long ago was I here? Am I a boy or girl? Am I ready to mate and have babies? I hunted here so there are no mice here GO AWAY. Because cats keep to a certain area, they can set up sort of a simple email for the other cats around - the basic message is 'don't be here when I am, I'll be here the same time tomorrow or next week, so keep out of my way' and cats can smell these messages from a long way away because their noses are much much better than ours. In fact three times as much of their brain processes smells - so to a cat smelling a perfume or other strong smell is like us walking into a blinding light! Remember also that the musk in perfume is derived from the glands of sexually active cats called civets - I'm surprised that cats so rarely get upset about the smell on their owners just before they go out on a date!

SO WHAT MIGHT A CAT USE TO LEAVE THESE MESSAGES WITH? They don't have paper and pens do they?

Urine - we also call it spraying, and it's the main one, we could call it pee-mail! Faeces - cats use this to mark boundaries, Anal gland secretions - these usually secrete onto the faeces unless the cat is frightened and empties the glands onto anything nearby Scratching - the scent glands in their paws leave a smell, plus the marks leave a visible sign, Head rubbing - this leaves a smell as well - have you heard of pheromones? Well, someone clever has put cat pheromones in a can! Feliway + Felifriend. The oils from the glands on the cat's head and chin are sticky and they rub them on everything and everyone that they like and want to be part of their group, like a Uniform only a smell. So that is question 1 answered. With the other message markers just think of the cat as being a great conservationist - they conserve energy by sleeping 18 - 20 hours a day so that answers question 6, and they recycle their elimination products as messages!

Now, with urine especially, can you see that what we owners might call a behaviour problem, is really just something the cat is doing to try to communicate with us when they think we are just like other cats? By the way, urine does actually smell worse the longer it is outside of the cat's bladder. As it oxidises the sulphur molecules become smellier, and then decay over a fairly constant period of time so it really is useful as a crude time clock.

TO ANSWER QUESTIONS 2 and 3, LETS LOOK AT WHAT CATS ARE BUILT TO EAT.

Cats in most parts of the world live on small rodents like rats and mice. That is why the ancient Egyptians looked after cats so well - because the cats protected all the grain that the Egyptians grew from being turned into mouse food! Interestingly, even today, something like 20% of Australia's grain crop goes into rodents rather than bread! Rabbits are another main source of food for feral cats, but they mainly eat the babies. And a small aside about birds. Remember, cats hunt anything small that moves and chirps, and if there are no mice, what else is small and chirps? In fact, most cats do not learn how to hunt birds, it is a bit of a specialist skill to jump upwards instead of pounce downwards. In cities, the birds are mostly the non native species like sparrows and starlings and things which destroy the habitats of the native birds anyway. However, the big problem for birds in Sydney is nowhere to nest because there aren't enough native trees and bushes in back yards, and too many driveways and roads where they can be hit by cars and not just caught by cats! However in some parts of Sydney now, the native trees have grown and birds like Kookaburras are making a return. And fish - this isn't normal food for cats as only the Javanese fishing cat catches fish regularly but they do like the taste because it has salt and is high in protein. In fact, cats do not even have the gene that encodes for the sweet taste in tastebuds. They can, however, taste different amino acids which are the building blocks for meat, and they can taste water. So when your cat eats your belgian chocolates, they are enjoying the fat creaminess of them not the sweet taste. Their very specialised diet of mouse and rat has meant they discarded the ability to digest and process a lot of plant products so that many more things are poisonous to cats than other animals. The most important in the modern world are the painkillers such as aspirin, paracetemol and nurofen - these all are pretty good at killing cats as well as killing pain.

So for a cat, hunting is the same as you shopping for or preparing dinner or a snack. Everyone is programmed to get food whatever way they have to! Look at the noise a baby makes when it wants food! At least cats are quiet about it unless it is the fridge door they are hunting and a meow makes it open! This is actually the key to question 7. Very basic learning tools involve giving an animal a piece of food after it performs an activity or behaviour that you want it to repeat. Unfortunately, most people think that giving a yowling cat something to eat is going to make it quiet because you have satisfied its hunger. Now, we know that a cat will hunt when it is not hungry, so giving food to a yowling cat that is not hungry has just rewarded it for yowling. So the cat thinks that you want it to yowl for your entertainment! So it tries the trick again and gets food so now it knows that you want it to yowl. Oh dear. Kitty Blackmail in full swing. With this behaviour remember 2 things - cats do not usually use sound to communicate between each other (remember cats used to keep a big distance so ordinary sound is not useful) and everyone learns to do whatever comes before a bit of food so you are rewarding a yowl is doing just that - teaching the cat to yowl. Cats have quite an extensive range of sounds they can make, and they readily learn what noise gets what action from their human - cats are actually really good at timing and observation so they easily train their humans. Each cat will develop a dialect for an intimate conversation with their owner. Other cats have no idea what it is saying and use a different sound to get their human to do the same trick!

So how does a cat catch a rat or mouse? Have you ever tried? It's not easy is it? Even pet mice and rats can be fast and slippery and bite hard if they don't want to be caught don't they? And when are rodents active? At night, so they can't be seen so well, isn't it? So, cats have to find their fast, slippery, bitey, angry food in the dark and find 10 mice a night to live on! So they see better in the dark than we do, and hear better, and smell better, and can feel the tiny vibrations a mouse makes through the ground with their whiskers. Did you know even a blind cat can catch a mouse? Anyway, they have to wait till the mouse comes out of its hiding place, also looking for food, wait till it's far enough away from the hole so it can't run back, then up and onto it, then disable it and kill it quickly. So cats have VERY FAST REFLEXES - the quickest of all mammals on the land. They have to don't they? But what if the cat isn't hungry? Well, this is pretty unusual in the wild, because it takes a bit of time to catch a mouse, and by then all the others have run away so the cat has to start again somewhere else. But even if they aren't hungry they still kill things - why? Well in the wild, a bit extra is always worth having. How many of you have eaten a bit more dinner than you need? or a bit more cake at a party? It is hard for a cat to turn off that feeling that tomorrow's dinner might not come.

Now, on average it takes a cat 3 or 4 tries to pounce and catch a mouse, and it needs 10 mice a day to survive. And recently we have discovered that cats are genetically programmed to pounce 30 times a day! We're a bit slow sometimes in the research department. But can you see that this means that a cat - especially a young and inexperienced cat - is going to have to spend a lot of time pouncing in order to feed itself. As they get more efficient they have to hunt less and can sleep more, however in the training stages they are going to be primed to pounce most of the time - hungry or not. If you have an indoor cat, what is the most reliable moving object in the house? The humans! And what is kind of small and wiggly? Toes! And what do owners think is funny to encourage kittens to play with? Wiggly fingers! So now, remembering that everything a cat learns in the first 5 months is what it is going to hunt the rest of its life, and you can see that maybe the 'hand hunt' is not such a good game. However, toys that redirect the pounce and are interactive with owners are a good game and a good way to get rid of those programmed pounces. 20 minutes twice a day for an adult cat. Or start out with two kittens and make your life much easier! Of course, if your cat can go outside it can entertain itself there - and take its chances on the risks in the Big Wide World - but indoor cats need an Entertainment Director.

So now you can see that what we humans might call another behaviour problem, such as biting toes and chasing ankles, is really just a cat trying to cope with natural living and expressing its natural urges. So that answers question 2.

If a cat mainly hunts at dusk and dawn, does it need to see in colour - which is question 9. Do we not even have a saying that' all cats are grey in the dark'? Cats eyes are excellent night vision glasses. They have a special reflective section called the tapetum that means they use the light twice as it passes through their eyes. They have fewer cone cells in their retina to detect colours with but they can see at least red. We currently think they may see a range of greens and yellows as well. However, their sight is best set up for seeing movement in the dark - a scurrying mouse - and their sight has specialised towards that. It is actually quite difficult to tell if a cat is blind, or even deaf, as they use so many other senses to compensate. So that is question 9 covered.

Who is a cat going to share its mouse with? Only its baby. Cats do not share food. They will share a bowl but they are not very good at that if food is restricted. Cats do not queue but they will stay out of each other's way when there is a group. Cats evolved from a solo cat in the desert - Felis lybica - and only started living in groups 5,000 years ago. We think the cat self-domesticated which means that those cats who could tolerate proximity to humans and other cats without stressing out were the ones who got enough to eat, and therefore reproduce and so their babies were happier around humans etc etc etc. Feral cats are not as human shy as the true wildcats because they descended from domestic cats, but they and their kittens are much less tameable even taken into a home while young. So there is a huge variation in what we call intercat sociability - some cats like to be around other cats, most do not. In stray and feral situations, if there is enough space and food, then quite large numbers of cats will group together but they usually form friendships only with one or two other cats - we call these preferred associates and it is usually a mother - daughter or sisterly pair. If cats have few choices about escape and distance, then there can be problems because in the wild, the unhappy cat just moves away - we call this migration, and 30% of the cats in stable colonies in the wild move out. Of course all the boys move out anyway. So how many cats can be happy together? In general, especially indoors, only a couple of cats. However, just as there are social and antisocial people, so there can be quite large groups of cats all in harmony. Statistically, groups of just females or just males are more stable and content but mixed groups can work, especially if the new cat is quite young. However, much more commonly, the resident cats will treat any newcomer as an undesirable hobo who should just continue on their way! It is a Primat Preconception, a human deisre, to live in groups. Just because you want another cat, do not think that your feline incumbent is going to approve at all. So there is no answer to question 3.

To answer question 4, we have to go back to the concept of preferred associates. When we watch feral or stray cat groups, we are assuming that the cats are performing meaningful behaviours and not just random acts, and we therefore infer the relevance or meanings of those activities. We will never know what the cats are actually doing because cats have not yet perfected the art of telepathy, although they come pretty close sometimes and seem to read us like an open book! Cats in these groups do, over a long period, indicate a preference for being in another cat's company. We define preferred associates as cats who will rest within half a meter of each other. That is close but not cuddly. Many cats will cuddle up, but usually not for long periods and usually just to help each other out with grooming. Again there is a huge range between individual cats on the closeness and amount of contact they ask for and accept. I used to think you could make any cat a lapcat, just by starting young and feeding them on your lap. However, cats have to grow up and become independent and hunt their own mouse, so this lap sitting thing is not every cat's cup of tea. We have selected for cats who like close contact and it is genetic to an extent. However, when I think about it, I never wanted to sit with my mother for hours on end, and certainly not have my hair stroked interminably. So it is a big ask to expect every cat to be happy to sit on a lap and be stroked. If you persist, then the cat will warn you - but you have to be alert to the warning - then bite or just run away. It often seems like they are just overstimulated and cannot take any more contact. If you can accept that just sitting with you is a sign of affection - and it is like it is for parents of teenagers, they will agree that even having them in the same room is pretty good! - then the cat will give you affection in their own way and you can be happy with that!

What about Question 8 and cats purring? How and why and where? Purring is still a mystery, even though the Purr Stimulation Centre of the brain was identified in 1936. Only domestic cats can purr with incoming and outgoing breaths, and the rate is similar between cats. We know they can purr even if their diaphragm is damaged, but it is part of the process and gives the purr power. We know there are vocal folds and false vocal folds involved and they vibrate cyclically. However, no one has reproduced a purr so the final details still elude us. We do know purring increases airflow so sick cats who purr may be helping to heal themselves. We do not really understand the why and when of cat purring. It starts as mother to kitten feeding communication, and then seems to get used to indicate both contentment and non-threatening intentions. Cats frequently purr during terminal illness. Some cats do an 'almost purr' for me at the clinic which seems to mean 'I am no threat, I will do what you want, purrhaps if I'm good you will disappear'. As far as I know, cats only purr when there is another living being in the room - perhaps they just do not sing to themselves! - and it is definitely a calming communication. My own cat can yowl and purr simultaneously, so I'm not too sure what that means!

In order to answer question 5, it is really more helpful to look at why a cat would use a litter tray in the first place and then look at what is missing or different that would stop them from using the tray. The key is to find out whether the cat is trying to tell you something!

Remember that cats use urine as a messaging system as well as a waste elimination system. In the desert where they evolved they would pee onto sand so we know they like to use highly reflective, well drained, smooth surfaces. Anyone with a sandpile for the builders out front will find very happy cats using it as a toilet as well. The other perfect spot is the bathtub. Cats are also stimulated to eliminate by the smell of freshly turned earth - they are not taught to dig, kittens at 3 weeks old automatically start looking for places to dig to urinate in. The den floor is not going to be the right place! Cats also do not like an audience while they use the toilet so dark, quiet and not watched by other cats or people are the preferred spots.

So if the cat is not using the litter tray, these are a few questions that need to be answered. Are you keeping the litter tray clean enough and have you put it somewhere quiet but not too far away. Does it have a nice feeling underfoot? Is the tray too close to the food dish (do you eat your dinner in the toilet?) Has the cat been upset when it was using the tray and now doesn't know where to go that might be safe? Or is there another big bad cat out there preventing comfortable access.

Then there is using the urine for a message, or to write over someone else's message. Are you using something in the house that smells bad to THE CAT (even if it smells nice to you!) Is the cat trying to make you smell like part of its family by peeing on your bed or clothes? Why is it so worried? These questions are harder to answer and you will often need the help of a behaviourist to answer them - usually the owner is too close to the problem to get to the bottom of it. After all, even psychiatrists see other psychiatrists. Here are the simple lessons cats would like us to learn Cats have to eat, and to eat they evolved to hunt. We only changed the rules about hunting and put food in their dish in the last 30 years and that is not NEARLY LONG ENOUGH for the cat to unevolve!

Cats have to play, and they play at what they have to learn to live by - hunting and fighting, so they turn to you to learn on and with. So they scratch and bite you - but they expect you to scratch and bite back too! But you can't! Your nails and teeth aren't long enough, so you have to play with toys that the cat can destroy instead.

Your cat is giving you information when it scratches the furniture - you just aren't reading it! You need to encourage good behaviour and give the cat something it can scratch on.

Cats have to keep their skin clean as they cannot have a bath in the wild. In fact, licking themselves releases endorphins in a cat's brain so they actually feel better when they groom. Most cats like grooming especially if it doesn't hurt them so you can substitute some of the playtime with a bonding session of grooming if you want. Some cats will even self groom against a comb if you it hold for them. Older cats might think you are nuts if you want them to play with toys for 20 minutes so grooming is a good alternative.

Cats have to eliminate waste and they like their toilet to be clean (don't we all?) comfortable and accessible. What this means for one cat is not the same as for another cat. Particularly in this area, all cats are representative but no cat is average. All that means is what worked for one cat may not work for another. Above all things, the greatest sin is to compare one cat directly to another. I don't know of even genetically identical twin humans who do everything the same, never mind relatives and then what about strangers! The thing we love about cats is their independence; the thing we ignore is their individuality. What one cat prefers is really not an indicator of another cat's preferences.

And yet more about food to answer Question 10. A mouse is still the ideal food for a cat. It is made up of meat, minerals, fibre, fat and water. Humans and dogs can process carbohydrates easily, but a percentage of cats turn carbohydrates straight to fat and need a large amount of protein to access the fat again. Cats really do need the Atkins diet, so we call it the Catkins diet! Most of the high quality foods these days address these needs. The problem is that all dried food has carbohydrate (something has to cook to hold it all together!) and most tinned food has something called Animal Digest in it which is basically the leftovers ground up and added to increase the calculated protein levels. However, it is more a chemical improvement than an actual improvement in the quality of the product. Cats need meat and meat is expensive. Plant proteins are fairly indigestible for cats even though they analyse out chemically the same. Dog food won't give them everything they need, and cats can not be vegetarian. They go blind and have heart problems very early if you deprive them of meat. They can't live on meat alone either - they need bone for calcium for their own bones, and fat for glossy coats. So the better the food you give them, the better your cat will look. Interestingly, more city cats are becoming diabetic, just like us humans. Getting too fat and eating junk food upsets their metabolism too! So feed your cat good and proper cat food, and things to chew on for their teeth as well.

SO, LETS COMPARE THE LIFESTYLES of DIFFERENT CAT GROUPS

What makes up a feral cat's existence? Hunting 10 or 15 times during dusk and dawn What if it doesn't find enough mice to eat? picking up messages (pee-mails..) What if a big cat is moving in? What about playing? Adult cats in the wild, even when food is short still find time to play, but most intense playtime is up until Mumcat stops feeding them Finding a safe sleeping spot sitting in the sun because all cats are solar-powered Communicating? sitting alone or with a couple of other cats it knows Mating? Fighting? What if it loses? What about infections? Anybody having babies? That is very hard work What about getting sick? Who feeds them when they've got flu? What makes an owned cat's life interesting? Eating - making us open the fridge, doesn't take very long Playing? who with? Hunting? what? Sleeping? not all the time, and mainly in the day Communicating? with who? Getting sick? At least there are humans to help if they do get sick or hurt themselves And for indoor cats the biggest problem is boredom! Well, that won't kill you will it? Whose mum said that when you were bored? What did she tell you to do - play with something? Maybe you and the kids and the cat can fix boredom problems for each other! So what kinds of games might a cat like to play? with computers? they have a mouse... but no, not usually. So think about imitating hunting. What about imitating climbing trees? tall scratching posts What about learning to fight another cat - just in case? how would you do that without getting hurt? where are your teeth and claws? what might you do to fight back without hurting the cat? What about just having a look out the window ? or going outside on a harness? And that is what is called Environmental Enrichment! So indoor living can be good for the cat, and it can be good for the owner. Why do you keep a pet? If your cat is indoors, you always know where it is so you can have a cuddle or a game. You know the most interesting thing about cats, is the more you learn about them, the more you understand Cat Language, the more you will get back in love and affection from your cat. Everybody wants to have someone they are close to don't they? Here are some other questions to ponder: How might a cat tell you it loves you? head buffs ('marking' you as theirs), cuddles, sitting on your lap or with you, cat kisses How might a cat tell you it doesn't like you? hissing, scratching, attacking, but what about just avoiding you? How might a cat tell you it's unhappy? stressed? had a scary day outside or a boring day inside? What can you do to help them?

If you think about what it takes for a cat to be a success in the wild, and understand that each cat IS the centre of its own universe, then you will be able to make more sense of the communications your cat shares with you by whatever means it chooses to.

So there you have it - cats are very interesting pets, they do all of the things we want them to do as pets, like love us and sit with us, keep your bed warm at night. If we do right by them, and expect only feline accomplishments, then they will do right by us.

And now for the results from a survey that I did 18 months ago. It gave us quite a few answers but really a lot more questions so we expanded it earlier this year. The new survey started in March this year, so if you have not completed this really big survey this year please help us out! There are copies here and I can email you the internet version if you give us your email address.

The first survey was to find out why people got their cats in the first place, and then we tacked on some behaviour questions. Well, the tacked on bit turned out to be the most interesting! It turned out that people got their cats for companionship, and very few people had trouble finding a cat. The biggest problems with owning cats in Australia were body corporate or landlords and boarding or holiday arrangements. There is a big niche for someone to run pet-sitting clubs in the same vein as baby-sitting clubs. In fact now that there is a mini baby boom on, someone clever might combine the two!

30% of cat owners had children living at home. That leaves a lot of adults having a cat to themselves! Whatever the children are meant to learn from cats had either been learnt and the child had left, the departing child had taken the cat and was now an independent adult, or the cat did not need the excuse of a child to join the household. That means lots of sane, responsible adults have chosen to be subject to the demands of a Feline Human Resource Manager, and like it!

So much for human behaviour as answered in the survey. What did the owners tell us about their cats?

That their cats are family members. Well, I think most owners view dogs as children and cats as friends and equals. But definitely pets in Australia are family members. In other countries they are viewed as decorative and kept in cages to be admired but not handled, so it is a valid observation.

The survey asked owners to identify the colours of their cats, and to rank their temperament from 1 - 5 with one being ' very timid, likely to hide from new things and five being outgoing and confident and likely to explore new things'. After analysis it appears that there may be Colour coded temperaments. In the Colour versus Temperament rating of moggie cats, we showed that cats whose colouring includes 'and white' are more confident cats than solid colours. This result was also found by a veterinary behaviourist called Dr Houpt in a cat colour survey in Texas A & M University. The genetics of 'and white' are that the gene is neither dominant nor recessive - ss is no white, Ss is boots and bibs, SS is lots more white. Expression of the gene is variable, but SS has roughly twice as much white as Ss. Additionally, the analysis showed that Tabby/ torties tended to be more timid cats, which is actually what vets have thought for some time. This does not mean that ALL tortoiseshell cats are timid, nor that ALL cats with white boots and bibs are confident. It is just an average result. Remember once again that all cats are representative of felines but no cat is the average.

It also turns out that in the general pet cat population, the number of litter trays per cat in the household is not important to either urination nor defaecation outside of the tray. These results include cats who normally eliminate outdoors. 50% of indoor cats share their litter trays. The data also indicated that no particular litter type was more nor less likely to be involved in failure to use the litter tray. Additionally, the trend indicated that totally indoor cats were as likely to urinate outside the tray as cats who had access to the outdoors. This effect needs to be examined better, however. Behaviourists in the USA, where more cats are totally indoor, indicate that this population is over-represented in their consultation rooms, but this may indicate an owner bias rather than a cat bias. What this result really means is that cats are using their urine to signal us and other cats in their environment that something is wrong. It may not matter how many trays there are if you are going to pee on the windowsill because you've seen another cat outside. The problem is often about other cats either in the household or outside who are disturbing the piddling cat's emotional equilibrium, and not just a comment on litter tray cleanliness or etiquette. The actual problem may therefore be complex to solve. A key observation is that the piddling outside the tray is solving the problem for the cat. It has to be addressed if it is upsetting the owner, but for the cat the problem is solved by urinating or defaecating in the new spot outside the tray. Think pee-mail again. It would appear that many owners tolerate the occasional scent-based message if there are not too many reminders issued.

There was also an interesting result that turned up somewhat unexpectedly. It would appear that there is a percentage of cats who do not use their teeth on humans as a behaviour management tool. It appeared that about 30% of cats do not bite anyone, ever. In the USA, they have also found that cats who are declawed do not take up biting as a substitute correctional activity. It may be possible to breed cats who do not bite - at least as a first line of defence - although I'm not sure that that is a fair expectation to have of any cat. It also appeared that cats who are about to attack, will warn humans and other cats before they bite - by staring at them. The cats are giving a meaningful social cue prior to the aggression, which owners can be trained to become aware of, and hence be pre warned of difficulties with their pets. It indicates that most of the biting by cats, in their own environment, is done as a social strategy, especially distance-increasing type behaviour, rather than out of fear. If we can detect and deflect the feline attack, then we can probably keep feline households happier. Keep in mind though, that cats who are hunting their owners do not give any warning - well that would spoil the game! In those instances of biting and swiping, the solution lies in pre emptive hunting activity - back to those 30 pounces a day! Now I sound like a Puurrrsonal Trainer

No one can train any animal to do anything it doesn't do naturally - you can't make a dog climb a tree or a bird swim can you? However, with patience and persistence, an owner can get most animals to understand that they would like their pet to do a natural behaviour when they give a signal - the better trained the animal the more likely it is to perform that behaviour when given the signal. That is what training is all about. Just realise that cats find us humans very trainable - how quickly do you open the fridge door when your cat meows? And have you accidentally trained your cat to run to you when you open its tin of food - what does your cat do when it hears the food being opened? So, just remember that training is always a two way street! And now over to Steve and Batman for the finer details