On social media a new cat owner has just adopted a young cat and is concerned as she hides away and does not move. She is in the bathroom where she was placed. Below is the picture provided.
It is a very classic, common situation as strange surroundings and sounds concern cats. They love familiarity, routines and rhythms. My response below is also typical, but it is always useful to spread the word. The keyword for the human is PATIENCE. Everything should proceed at the kitten's pace and things should never be forced by the human.
New, frightened kitten concerns her owner as she won't move. Image: u/UnluckyTie6534
My response on social media is as follows (what would yours be?):
You'll need a lot of patience. Give her all the time she needs to feel more at home. Perhaps provide her with a hiding place which is better than the one in the picture ✔️😎. And provide her with a really good food treat. With respect, the dry cat food you have provided looks to be poor/average quality. Provide high quality wet cat food. You'll get to know what treats she likes but slightly warmed up prawns might do it. Placed a little away from her may encourage her to move.
And try and play with her when she feels confident enough to venture forth as when a human plays with their cat, they lose themselves in play and allow the human to be close and interact but never force interactions. She'll choose. One day she'll jump on your lap and look at you in a way that melts your heart. She will come around at her own speed. Well done and it was good of you to ask.
The Times newspaper has a headline which interests me: "Why anxious cats and dogs are pushing up the price of pet insurance". They refer to a guy, Sean Feast, who had to work from home during the pandemic lockdown. Until then he was unsure why he is cat, Marble, a four-year-old tabby, was difficult. She was hard to control and "bitey".
Marble and Sean Feast. Photo: The Times. Great newspaper. Highly recommended!
In other words, Marble tended to bite people even though they were kind to her. She was always aggressive towards people. He discovered why while he was at home durning the extensive lockdown. A neighbouring Bengal cat frequently came through the cat flap for a visit. This dramatically disturbed Marble's life. It was a massive intrusion onto her territory which made her anxious. It would seem that the Bengal cat was quite dominant and that Marble is quite timid by comparison. She had no outlet for her anxiety. It would come out in aggressivity towards people who wanted to be kind to her.
This is called redirected aggression in the cat world. Sometimes people think that their cat is simply aggressive and nasty. There is always a good reason why a cat demonstrates apparent unprovoked aggression. And redirected aggression is not uncommon.
But the purpose of this short article is in the title. I'm concerned that there are more anxious cats than people are aware of. I believe that cat caregivers should be alert to anxiety in their cat. I believe that it is not that far from the surface. Domestic cats are inherently very alert to what is going on around them and it does not take a lot to energise them. I believe that this predisposes them to anxiety. It is inherent as part of their survival strategy. And as they live in the human world, a land of giants, a slightly timid cat may suffer an almost continual level of slight anxiety.
Certainly, Covid, and the long lockdowns followed by the caregiver going back to the office has disturbed the routines and rhythms upon which the domestic cat relies so heavily. This, too, is likely to heighten anxiety levels. There is, if we are honest, a great problem with cat owners who have to be away from home all day, sometimes for long hours.
Under these circumstances cats will often become anxious. It'll be a form of separation anxiety. This can be manifest in health issues such as cystitis and behavioural issues brought about by isolation and boredom if they are confined to the home. And of course cat owners who are away all the time are not able to observe their cat to notice the kind of pressures that they might be under from neighbouring cats if they are allowed outside.
I believe that it is beholden upon cat owners to prioritise the confidence levels in their cat. They should do all they can to boost their domestic cat companion's confidence to make them feel as calm and relaxed as possible. This means plenty of routines in their life which makes them feel more secure. It also means being around as much as possible and creating a calm environment in which they are allowed to express natural behaviour which at heart is wild cat behaviour.
This is the raw cat as Jackson Galaxy calls it. The raw cat within - the wildcat within. If you meet the demands of the wildcat they feel whole. If you add to that a friendly and predictable environment they feel whole and content.
I wasn't able to read The Times article but I suspect that the increased insurance premiums arise out of the fact that with feline anxiety you get health problems. The classic one is cystitis commonly called idiopathic cystitis. This causes inappropriate elimination. But there will be other perhaps more insidious health issues.
Your cat is skittish. You want to help. He or she is probably skittish for three main reasons (1) he is timid and shy or (2) he is in a new home and has not settled down properly or (2) the home is unsettled in terms of ambience.
Background animosity between humans and cats can make a cat skittish through anxiety. Image: MikeB
The last factor I think is a key one. It is now common knowledge that domestic cats like to live in a calm environment with solid routines and rhythms which are integrated with their human caregiver. If you add into that a home which is adapted, at least to a certain extent, to a cat's behaviour plus plenty of play a cat should not be skittish for environmental reasons. It would be hard to shake skittishness due to timidity which is inherited. The best you can do there is to once again create a very calm, friendly environment to enable a skittish cat to feel calmer and become more confident in their environment.
Skittishness is a product of anxiety or fear. This, as mentioned, can emanate from an inherently shy character. But if the cat is not inherently shy but is still skittish it's going to be environmental factors which cause this. In a multi-cat home, there may be bullying by a dominant cat or a cat might not get along that well with the other cats. It is said that at behavioural problems most often start in multi-cat homes where domestic cats are brought together in a confined space. This is especially true if they are all full-time indoor cats which is probably going to be common for the simple reason you can't let a lot of cats outside to roam freely.
The kind of person who keeps a lot of cats as pets is also the kind of person who keeps their cats indoors all the time. This can build up some anxieties in some cats if they lack confidence. It would be hard to beat this problem. What I mean is if a cat is skittish because they feel unsettled due to the other cats around them, there is no cure for that other than separating the cat from the other cats which is not going to be practical.
Play is a great way to bring a shy cat out of their shell. They forget where they are when they are playing because their instinct takes over and they chase and hunt a cat toy. It also helps to create a stronger bond between person and cat. With a stronger bond a cat is likely to feel more settled and therefore less skittish.
It all comes down to the environment. At one end of the spectrum, you might have a retired person like myself living with one cat. If that cat has a normal character i.e. neither nervous or overconfident, then they will be calm and they will not be skittish. It may occur temporarily for some extraordinary reason but in general they will be calm. At the other end of the spectrum, you might have a home where people come and go all the time, which is noisy, and where there is more than one cat. This sort of home opens up the door to a lot of potential conflicts or situations which could unnerve a domestic cat even one who is not inherently skittish.
It may be impossible to make that noisy, active and unsettled home into one which is calm and quiet for practical or functional reasons. In which case the cat will not lose their skittishness unless they are able to adapt to it. Domestic cats are very adaptable and they can get used to some extraordinary situations. I have seen a community cat in Asia sleeping at the top of an underground railway escalator at the exact point where the passengers leave the escalator. Clearly that cat is completely adapted to a noisy and active environment.
One big problem for domestic cats is ensuring that they have enough space i.e. their home-range. If they are able to enjoy their home range, which they feel they can control, it does help to calm them. And skittishness overlaps with aggression. Domestic cats who suffer intrusions into their home range can become defensively aggressive which may be perceived as agitated or even skittish by some observers. Once again it is down to the environment.
The last resort in dealing with a skittish kitty is to consider drug treatment. I'm talking about tranquilizers for domestic cats. It does happen but I think you have to be quite desperate to take this route. All the other normal steps must take place first because drugs simply mask the symptoms whereas what I discussed on this page gets to the root of the problem.
As an afterthought, if the problem is the other cats in the home, then creating a room or rooms which are for the exclusive use of the skittish kitty and their human caregiver will certainly help the cat to recover some confidence.
And it might be easy to forget about the skittish kitty because he or she is hiding some of the time. Out of sight out of mind is the motto and this can happen with domestic cats. People are too busy and they take it for granted that cats are "independent" when they are not in truth. But leaving an anxious kitty alone without plenty of human interaction of the right kind will make her condition worse.
And of course, it goes without saying, that patience is a vital ingredient in getting a wallflower to bloom. Jackson Galaxy calls timid cats 'wallflowers' but you can get them to bloom. They have to believe that the place where they live is not hostile but is very friendly. If you achieve that he will be relaxed and come to you.
To conclude, the key to helping a skittish cat to feel calmer is to ensure that the environment is as suited as best as possible to a feline character. In the words of Jackson Galaxy, the owner needs to tap into the raw cat beneath the domestic cat to find out what makes them tick. This will allow them to find their mojo which means to behave normally in a balanced way.
Like a child sucking their thumb for comfort, this domestic cat does the same thing except that it appears to be their paw pad. Sometimes when cats suck objects it will be their thumb just like babies. It is akin to wool sucking and human ear lobe sucking. These are behavioral issues brought about by being weaned too early. It is a shame. It is not great to see. Cats do it to calm themselves. It makes them feel better. It is probably a sign of underlying anxiety.
I fostered a tabby cat who was obsessed with sucking my hand or arm. He was a cute and nice cat but this was an unwanted behavioral problem which I think went against him as the adopter relinquished him after quite a short time.
— Cats of Instagram (@catsofinstagram) July 31, 2021
Note: This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.
There is a popular video on YouTube and on the website Rumble with the title "Cat remarkably startled by harmless object."
But if you know a little bit about domestic cats, you have to come to the conclusion that the title is plain wrong. The person who wrote the title doesn't know domestic cat behaviour. This is one of those classic cucumber-and-cat videos. It's quite a good example although a bit dingy because the lighting is so bad.
Harmless objects might NOT seem harmless to a domestic cat. Screenshot.
And once again the person who made the video had to scare their cat to make it which I don't like. But putting that moral issue to one side for a second, a cucumber placed behind a cat which the cat then turns and sees does not seem harmless to that cat. The cat does not know what the hell it is! It is a new, unknown object and it might be a threat. In order to play safe they jump out of the way. It's common sense. Note: the cucumber looks as if it could be an animal to a cat. It is a plausible analysis.
Note: This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.
People do this all the time. Many people are fearful of so many things and they avoid them. The Covid pandemic is a good example. People have been avoiding each other for 16 months. Even when they've been double vaccinated, they still go around wearing a mask in the open air or in their car. Animals and humans are alike in this respect; in general fearful of the unknown.
We should not, therefore, be surprised when a cat behaves like this. But people are surprised and amused at the same time period and we should not be amused either. This is neither surprising nor amusing behaviour. It is normal behaviour and an abuse of the domestic cat. But I'm becoming far too serious no doubt for the vast majority of people.
But people should be aware that all these funny cat videos are at a price. And the price is the emotional welfare of the cats in the videos. A study found that a significant percentage of these cats are stressed and anxious because the person who made the video put their cats through a stressful situation in order to create something funny. And it is funny (strange) why people find frightened cats and cats put into difficult situations as amusing.
I would like to see a slightly higher standard of animal welfare and an attitude which reflects that if that is at all possible, please.
A visitor to the website stated that their parents' cat, Luna, has been raised in the family since she was a kitten and is now eight years old. Luna loves the person's mother, is ambivalent about the father but positively hates the person asking the question i.e. the child of the parents who we've not named.
The cat hisses and scratches at this person who thinks Luna hates her. But I think this is a bad attitude because domestic cats don't hate certain people for no reason. There would have to be a genuine and identifiable reason. Rather than 'hate' it is far more likely to be 'fear'. Luna is fearful of this person and become defensively aggressive.
I think there are two possible reasons. The first one is that Luna is perhaps not that well socialised because judging by the description of Luna she is not entirely friendly because she doesn't care about "my dad" but she's not that bad with "my mum" and she hisses and scratches the child who appears to be an adult child by the way. So, Luna is not great within the family anyway.
Secondly, cats can get very used to one or two people and it is possible that the person asking the question is not always at home and therefore the cat is not too familiar with that person and treats them somewhat as a stranger and is therefore fractious with them and slightly defensive which results in scratching and hissing.
To expand on that idea: sometimes cats do form an attachment to a person and they have difficulty interacting with or bonding with anybody else. That may be a factor in this instance. The person mentioned that Luna was raised since she was a kitten in the same home. Luna may be attached to the person who was most involved in that process. That particular person might not be around anymore leaving Luna in effect in an alien home which would be stressful leading to defensive aggression and the odd swipe in his as described.
The point though is that all domestic cats who are defensively aggressive can be eased into a state which is much calmer through allowing the cat to become familiarised with you. I'm suggesting that you can socialise yourself to this cat very gradually and the best way to achieve that is to play with the cat gently and for quite a long time and to do this regularly and routinely. Gradually you will find Luna becoming less nervous and less defensive. Play is the best way to socialise a cat to a person if they are at the other end of the cat tease.
I think this is a lot to do with socialisation as much as it is to do with chemistry between a particular cat i.e. Luna and a particular person, the father. I would work on socialisation through patient play until the cat becomes entirely familiar with the person asking the question and for advice. That individual needs to be socialised to Luna in the fullest extent and I feel that would resolve the matter. This is of course presuming that all the boxes have been ticked regarding mental and physical health.
You can't have a calm and contented domestic cat companion if the owner, or to put that in a better way, the cat's guardian, is agitated and anxious. If the owner's mind is restless and incessantly worried it is very hard for that person to achieve a calm environment and an ambience within the home which is conducive to contentment in their domestic cat.
And that is not in any way to criticise anybody. I know, like anybody else, how easy it is to have a mind which is not restful but overly anxious and racing sometimes. Panic attacks are on the horizon.
John Butler. Photo: His website.
I do believe that many people have anxiety problems because of the pressures of life. Life has become more complicated with the Internet compared to the relatively innocent days of the 1970s. Life is speeding up with technology, particularly artificial intelligence. The world is more febrile, I feel, particularly so with Donald Trump.
It is calmer now under Biden but I sense that there is tension in the world, between on the one hand Russia and China and on the other hand America and her allies. A war is not unimaginable and it may be playing out already as a cyberwar.
The Covid-19 pandemic has made matters considerably worse for many. Job and financial problems have been exacerbated. We are not out of it and will have to learn to live with it and any other new virus,
This background undermines stability and a settled mind. A lot of people have panic attacks and their lives are quite difficult to manage. Many people simply don't cope and succumb to alcoholism or drug abuse. Once again, I fully understand and am highly sympathetic to their mental health problems. It almost seems like the world is driving people to these problems.
But, set against this background, cat owners need to do their best to maintain a calm and balanced mind which feeds through to the ambience in which both they and their cat lives. Quiet calmness and stability backed up by great routines between the human cat caretaker and their cat fosters, very strongly, a happy cat.
And it is the ultimate goal of all cat owners to ensure that their cat is happy. Of course, there are many aspects to achieving this goal such as ensuring the cat is in good health and safe from injury and in the worst-case premature death. That's why people keep their cats indoors full-time and why that mode of cat caretaking is becoming more popular. It is also a lifestyle which emphasises the need to make the home environment enriched and calm.
But in this article, I would like to focus on the calm cat owner and how to achieve it. Each person will have their own way and many of them are already calm enough but if you suffer from anxieties and it is manifested in your behaviour it's going to be felt by your cat and in the environment generally.
I do believe, too, that the default position for a domestic cat's state of mind tends towards being anxious for two reasons, (1) they are living in the human world which is inherently alien despite 10,000 years of domestication because the domestic cat is barely domesticated and (2) they have acute senses and are acutely aware of hostility and the need to survive which can ramp up the agitation levels.
The agitated cat owner is likely to have an agitated cat and in opposition to that the calm and balanced cat owner is likely to be living with a cat who feels the same way. Everyone can find their own way to calmness but it may be useful to take a look at this elderly man's YouTube channel to see whether you can glean one or two tips from his words.
Cat owners should aspire to creating a calm ambience for their cat packed with reassuring routines and interactions. John Butler's views may help.
Below are three rather obtuse quotes from him and below that is a video from his channel. Stay calm.
Butler's words of wisdom:
"Feel your feet on the ground-listen and look."
"In order to be what we are, we have to come out of what we are not."
"What is it like when a carrot is pulled from the ground? The ground is left behind. And the carrot is lifted into another realm. All the teaching is left behind."
P.S. It goes without saying that the human-to-human relationship can have a big impact on the home environment. Our relationships are vital to the wellbeing of our cat.
Note: This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.
Internet surfers should know by now that there are many videos on the Internet of cats been terrified and jumping out of their skin when they turn around and find a cucumber on the floor beside them. Their owners do this to make an interesting video. The videos have gone viral it is said and a lot of people find these videos amusing.
The same applies to these viral cucumber cat videos. People are relying on their cat to become very frightened in order to make an interesting video. Is that morally, correct? I do not want to sound high-handed and preaching but clearly it is immoral. Cat owners have a responsibility to create an environment in which their cat companion is content. Everything that cat guardians do should be designed to meet that objective. Putting a cucumber behind a cat to frighten them achieves the exact opposite.
There are many examples of Internet videos which rely on the same principle, namely to frighten or abuse the cat in some way in order to create an interesting video. It simply has to stop. Of course, it won't and I am pissing in the wind. I fully realise that. The competition to create interesting cat videos is immense because there is quite a lot of money to be made through Google advertising on YouTube videos. And some of the most successful videos feature domestic cats as we all know.
We should also know that the reason why domestic cats jump out of their skin when they see a cucumber is not because they are frightened of cucumbers per se but because the owner put the cucumber behind them and therefore when they turn around, they see a strange object which wasn't there previously.
Instinctively they defend themselves by jumping out of the way because they aren't sure whether this strange object is hostile and perhaps a predator. Cucumbers look somewhat like snakes which are dangerous to cats unless you are a sand cat. Sand cats attack and eat snakes even venomous ones!
Please, don't jump on the bandwagon and try and frighten your cat to make a funny cat video. It is not a good idea. Don't rely on your cat's anxiety and fear in order to benefit financially. It is inherently immoral and bad cat caretaking.
There is an interesting story in the news media (Kent Online) today about RSPCA employees reading to adult cats who had been neglected and therefore had lost some of their socialisation. Thirteen cats had been rescued from a house in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, UK. The cats had to fend for themselves because they had been abandoned. They were temporarily looked after at the Bluebell Ridge Cat Rehoming Centre in Hastings, East Sussex.
RSPCA employee reads to a rescue cat Babs who is the black and white long-haired cat. Photo: RSPCA.
They are described as "scaredy cats" for obvious reasons. They were nervous and five of them, Lily, Babs, Pickle, Nutmeg and Basil have been treated to a rare form of feline therapy although I have seen it before once, namely, being read to. So why does this work?
There are two aspects to reading to a fearful cat, one of which is that you are present with that cat. You are quite close to the cat. This is a very gentle form of passive socialisation. In addition, the sound of your voice projected towards a cat is also a form of socialisation. If a cat has been neglected, living alone for quite a long time they lose trust with humans; they revert to their solitary, independent nature and you have to reintroduce humans to them. Reading to them, I think, is a very good idea in achieving that goal because it is gentle.
I suspect that it was the beginning of a process of reintroducing people to the lives of these nervous cats. Myra Grove the Centre Manager at the Hastings branch of the RSPCA said that the owner of the cats had gone into hospital and nobody had looked after them for several weeks and so, "They've had a tough start in life. We been working hard to socialise these cats and had taken a hands-off approach which means we been sitting with them and reading to them so they can start to get used to human company."
Apparently Basil needs more time to learn to trust people. He has shown his gradual rehabilitation by settling down to sleep while an RSPCA employee gently sits with him. Nutmeg is also still a bit nervous and it will take time for her to learn to trust. She is a calico cat around four years old. Basil is a black-and-white male cat about one year old. Babs, Lily and Pickle are between two and four years old.
Babs appears to be progressing faster than the others as she enjoys being fussed over. The RSPCA say that if you are interested in adopting the new have to be patient and kind with them and you should contact the RSPCA Sussex East and Hastings Branch on 01424 752121.
On one website it says that scaring cats with cucumbers is the funniest thing you'll see today. I don't think it's particularly funny. Why should it be funny to scare a cat? It might look amusing to a person but it is still scaring an animal and, personally, I do not see any pleasure in doing that and I certainly don't see it being funny.
It seems to me that people find the reactions of cats to certain stimuli as funny when the reaction is extreme and strange. But this is natural behaviour for a cat. If the cat is frightened of a cucumber which is placed behind him then there's a good reason for his reaction. Perhaps the cat believes that the object might be a predator of some sort or a danger to him. Cats are not familiar with the appearance of a cucumber. Why should they be? If the cat is uncertain about what the object is then he initially will be anxious and in some cases scared. However, not all cats react in this way. It is about individual cat behavior. We should not imply that all cats are scared of the same things.
I'm just making a point in this short note. Lets be more sensible and stop thinking that it is funny to scare a cat even if the cat's behaviour might look amusing to a human. If a human thinks it is funny to scare a cat then the human has a problem in my opinion. Unfortunately, many humans have this sort of problem. It is human behavior born out of a sense of superiority over animals. Humans are not superior to animals.
