They are using behavior that they would use toward their mother-all the behavior they show toward us is derived in some way from the mother-kitten relationship. They know if is prone to get up at 4 a.m. They're much smarter than we give them credit for: They learn what works with what person. Why do some cats treat one human member of the household differently? (Learn about National Geographic's Little Kitties for Big Cats initiative.) So if the cat thinks, 'I want to get my owner from the other room,' it works to vocalize.
First, why might a cat yowl when it's by itself in a room?Ĭats learn specifically how their owners react when they make particular noises. I have a few questions from cat owners on Facebook. two cats that live at opposite ends of the house.
#Why is my cat obsessed with me full
One solution is to examine the cat's social lifestyle, instead of pumping it full of drugs. , inflammation of the bladder wall is linked to stress hormones in the blood. dermatitis and cystitis and it's becoming abundantly clear that these medical problems are made worse by psychological stress. Other than routine visits, the most common reason cats are taken to vets is because of a wound sustained in a fight with another cat. Cats don't get on with other cats, how much that can stress them out. How stressed a lot of pet cats can be without their owners realizing it, and how much it affects the quality of their mental lives and their health. What has been most surprising to you in your research? not wild animals, so ecologists, 'Well they're not really animals at all.' not an area that's received sufficient attention. (See " Cats Use 'Irresistible' Purr-Whine to Get Their Way.")Ĭan we discover what cats really think about us? They do think we're clumsy: Not many cats trip over people, but we trip over cats.īut I don't think they think of us as being dumb and stupid, since cats don't rub on another cat that's inferior to them. In the book that cats behave toward us in a way that's indistinguishable from they would act toward other cats. I've read articles where you've said cats think of us as big, stupid cats. (Also see " How Cats and People Grew to Love Each Other.") Putting their tails up in the air, rubbing around our legs, and sitting beside us and grooming us are exactly what cats do to each other.
They obviously know we're bigger than them, but they don't seem to have adapted their social behavior much. We've yet to discover anything about cat behavior that suggests they have a separate box they put us in when they're socializing with us. The way a dog plays with a human is completely different from with a dog. become very clear that dogs perceive us as being different than themselves: As soon as they see a human, they change their behavior. There's been a lot of research with dogs and how dogs interact with people. Why did you conclude that cats don't "get us" the way dogs do? relationships with owners, interviewing them and giving them questionnaires to find out how they perceive their cats. I've also done slightly more manipulative things, such as studying the way cats play with toys, or testing cat at different times of the day. cats in colonies that are free-ranging, and in animal shelters where quite a number will be housed together-you get interesting dynamics. I very quickly became fascinated with cats, and what their idea of the world is compared to the one we have.Ī lot of observation-watching groups of cats to see how they interact with one another and deducing their social structure. So in the early 1980s I started working on dog behavior. I've always been fascinated by this other world that animals live in-primarily of odor, which is dogs' primary sense. After observing pet cats for several years, he's come to an intriguing conclusion: They don't really understand us the way dogs do.īradshaw recently shared some of his insights with National Geographic.įor the first 20 years of my career I studied olfactory behavior in invertebrates. John Bradshaw is a cat-behavior expert at the University of Bristol and the author of the new book Cat Sense. (Watch a video about the secret lives of cats.) Yet there's still a lot we don't know about our feline friends-including what they think of their owners. homes, with an estimated three cats for every dog on the planet. Today more than 80 million cats reside in U.S.
Since cats first got their adorable claws into us about 9,500 years ago, humans have had a love affair with felines.