Surprisingly or not, Mertens concluded that most of the interactions where not very long and interactions in general were not that frequent. People approached the cat more often than the cat approached the person. However, when the cat did approach the two stayed within one meter of each other for longer than if the person had approached the cat. Note: my thought on that is that when a cat approaches we probably feel that our cat is asking for something and we respond by providing it.
A notable conclusion was that cat/human interactions were affected by the age and sex of the person:
- Adult people spoke to their cat earlier and for longer in the interaction than did children.
- Women had more interaction than men because in part and in general they spent more time in the home.
- 11-15 year old people had the least amount of interaction and were less likely to be near the cat (within one meter of the cat).
- Cats in multiple cat households had less social play with owners that cats in single cat households.
- When the human family was smaller the cat received more attention in the form of being close to the cat and being stroked.
Both the cat and the person made adjustments for the partnership to work. Heidenberger studied the cat to human interaction in 1997. Amongst other things he found that "neutered females were perceived most often as exhibiting problem behavior". Also it seems that the more interaction you have with your cat the fewer cat behavior problems you have.
The difficulty here is that "cat behavior problems" are often not cat behavior problems but human dislikes and likes.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your comments are always welcome.