Cats Herd You

Could a little bit of advice from a feline behaviorist during kittenhood make the difference between a cat’s life with their family and a return to a shelter? A recent study by the department of veterinary science at the University of Pisa tried to find out. The study, The prevention of undesirable behaviors in cats: Effectiveness of veterinary behaviorists’ advice given to kitten owners, tested to see how much better-behaved cats were when their families received feline behavioral advice for kittens.

For the study, 45 families with new kittens received 25 minutes of standardized advice about cat care. Then, the cats whose families received behavioral advice were compared to a control group of 46 cats whose families had not received any advice when the cats were a little more than a year old.

Of the group who received behavioral advice, only 2 families asked for additional advice about their kitten’s behavior between the time they initially received the advice and the cat’s first birthday. That’s a bit contrast with nearly half of the families who didn’t receive behavioral advice, who asked for behavioral advice or help before their cat’s one-year-old vet visit. Proactively giving this behavioral information appears to have allowed these families to not have to seek the information on their own.

Families who had been given behavioral advice about their cats during kittenhood were much less likely to have complaints about their cat’s behavior later, too. Only 4% of the group who received the advice had at least one complaint about the behavior of their 1-year-old cat, but 46% of the families who did not receive advice had behavioral complaints.

A surprising contrast between the advice and no-advice groups was how the cats were fed. 39% of the families whose families had not received behavioral advice reported they fed their cats any time they asked for food, while 30% of those families fed the cat twice a day. Families who were advised that their kittens would benefit from smaller, more frequent meals appeared to have put this information to action, with 71.1% feeding their cat three or more scheduled times a day.

The early advice seemed to have helped families teach their cats that climbing was not acceptable on some furniture. 62.8% of the cats whose families had no advice climbed on all of the furniture in the house, while only 35.1% of the cats did so. The advice seemed to extend to climbing curtains, too, with only 8.9% of the cats whose families had early advice climbing the curtains, while 23.9% of the cats in the control group scaled the curtains.

Cats whose owners had early advice also seemed less likely to have inter-cat conflicts in the household or to maintain poor relations with the family dog. They were also more willing to allow members of the family to touch any part of their bodies and less likely to show aggression toward humans.

Probably most striking was the fact that some families in the study who didn’t receive behavioral advice relinquished their cat before their first yearly vaccination booster. All of the cats in the study whose family received advice were still in their homes at the end of a year. A little bit of advice may have made the difference between cats staying in their homes or ending up homeless!

Overall, the results of the study show that families understanding why their cat behaves the way they do and having instructions on how to manage or embrace their cat’s behavior can make a difference in their cat’s welfare. If a short talk from a behaviorist can keep cats in their homes with a strong bond with their families, it seems  like a valuable use of the adoptive family’s time. Perhaps this could someday be included along with kitten vaccinations, since it can have such an impact on the long-term well-being of the cats.

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Reference

Journal of Veterinary Behavior, The prevention of undesirable behaviors in cats: Effectiveness of veterinary behaviorists’ advice given to kitten owners

Image credits

Depositphotos/Andrey_Kusmin
depositphotos/oskun70