The skin of a cat is not tightly attached to the muscle below

This is about how small cats - the wild cats and the domestic cat - are able to better protect themselves in the event of a fight with another cat over territory thanks to their anatomy.

Small wild cats and the domestic cat are able to protect themselves thanks to their anatomy. Image: MikeB

Small cats try and avoid physical fights to avoid harm which, in turn, ensures that they remain as fit as possible to be the excellent predator that they are. Injuries can blunt their predation and even lead to starvation. 

They avoid other cats by marking territory with scratch marks, urine and faeces. Also they can sometimes scream loudly at their neighbours to tell them not to encroach on their home range.

In short a range of methods are employed to achieve a result without actually fighting.

When there is physical confrontation between small cats over their home range, they will try to avoid fighting by sumo-style standoff signalling using sounds and body language postures. If effective the weaker cat slinks off very slowly. Job done.

The last resort is an actual fight and under these extreme circumstances the small cat has an anatomy which helps to protect them.

RELATED: ChatGPT on animal welfare, sentience, cat anatomy, declawing, speciesism and more.

Here are some aspects of the small cat anatomy adaptations to inter-species fighting.

1. The skin of the small cat is not tightly attached to the muscle below.
2. The cat's body is very loosely enclosed within their skin.
3. The muscles move and slip within the skin.
4. Small cats seem to be able to rotate their body with their skin allowing the cat to often squirm free.
5. The cat's fur protects them.
6. The cat's fur seems to slide when grasped.
7. A combatant's teeth and claws might penetrate fur and skin but they a less likely to penetrate muscle.

These aspects of the small cat anatomy helps to thwart the grip of a combatant. The odds are that a couple of small cats fighting over territory will come out of a fight without serious injury. You see ears mangled sometimes for example but that won't hinder survival.

They often return to their home ranges and continue to patrol it diligently as before.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

How to minimise your cat wandering too far from the cat-flap

Wandering cat. Image: SVEN HERSELMAN.

I can think of two ways to minimise the distance that your domestic cat companion travels away from your home if they are indoor/outdoor cats. These are my tips:

1. Feed your cat well with high quality wet cat food and some dry cat food for grazing at night. It has been found and indeed suggested by a very well-known cat behaviourist, Dr. Jon Bradshaw, that when domestic cats are fed well and regularly, they have less inclination to patrol over large areas. Domestic cat will inherently patrol their territory if they are allowed outside because this is instinctive wild cat behaviour. But when well fed it dampens that desire. It shrinks their home range because one reason for having a home range is to have a territory within which they can hunt. The hunting desire is somewhat dampened when well fed although not eliminated because the desire to hunt is not directly linked to feeling hungry. This is also inherited from the wildcat ancestor.
2. Secondly, among the wild cat species of all kinds, you will find that the female's home range is considerably smaller than the male's. In fact, for the tiger, female home ranges are often encompassed by a single male home range. It's a kind of male harem. But the point is this: adopting a female cat should mean that they travel less distance from the cat flap.

RELATED: The misogynistic world of tiger property rights!

The above two points have, clearly, distinct advantages to the cat caregiver such as:

• Less desire to hunt native species which should please conservationists and indeed the owner.
• Less desire to roam widely. They might roam no more than 50 yards from the cat flap or even stay within the back yard.
• Improved relationships with neighbours potentially because there will be less desire to roam onto neighbours' backyards or back gardens.
• Less risk of injury through wandering onto roads and being hit by vehicles.
• Less risk of injury generally as there is less opportunity to encounter hazards.
• Less risk of being lost.

Help! 5-year-old black cat sibling marking all over the house. Possible reasons.

 This is the Reddit.com post supporting the title. What to do?

He has 3000 sq ft of house and attic to roam and play. Has a brother from same litter and both are very socialized. They sleep w us every night in our bed. He has a massive outdoor catio jungle in my backyard (50ft x 80 ft) with a 100ft tunnel that runs under Palms and leads to his lizard hunting paradise. 3 litter boxes scattered throughout the house that are always clean w fresh litter. I’ve tried just about everything… still always cleaning up cat piss from walls, carpets, couch. It’s a nightmare 😱 need advice??!!

My answer would be three possibilities on the basis that the cat has been neutered which is the default situation.

The picture is here to illustrate the page only. This is not the cat in question. Image in the public domain.

Clearly, if the cat is not neutered then there is a much higher chance that they will mark territory. But as mentioned on the presumption that the cat is neutered one possible reason is that the brothers no longer get along. 

Siblings become independent

This may well happen because when siblings in the wild grow up they become independent. They leave the natal home range and go in search of their own home range. Their sibling then becomes just another individual occupying their territory. They are independent cats. They are solitary, essentially. The fact that they are siblings no longer helps to ensure that they get along.

So, this particular individual might feel stressed by the presence of his sibling and is marking territory to send a message to his brother that this is his home range and he is unwanted. Marking territory helps to calm him down because he creates his little home which smells like him.

Although siblings can get along it is not a certainty. The idea that adopting two siblings automatically gives you two cats who will keep each company and get along all their lives is a fallacy.

Separation anxiety?

Another possibility is that the owner is not around enough which is creating separation anxiety in one cat. This is happening despite the fact that the person has created a very nice cat environment with lots of things to do and to stimulate them mentally. That is irrelevant in terms of the particular problem clearly otherwise the problem would not exist.

Medical

A third possibility is that the cat who is said to be spraying is not actually spraying urine but is depositing small spots of bloody urine around the home due to cystitis. This is also heavily linked to stress. Dry cat food may exacerbate the problem.

These are three possibilities. When a cat is spraying inside the home it is invariably to do with a mental issue triggered by stress of some sort. That needs to be addressed. The source of stress needs to be found, isolated and then removed.

For cats, cat cafés are like an innocent human being banged up in prison and beaten up

Ben the Vet on TikTok has an interesting take on cat cafés. He thinks they are unsuitable for cats. He seems to disagree with the entire concept. I think he'd get rid of them if he had the power to do so. The point he is making is that in cat cafés, a rather large number of cats are confined to a rather small space and this creates pressure on them territorially.

At a fundamental level domestic cats have the character of the African wildcat which is solitary. Domestic cats have learned to be social creatures over the nine thousand years of domestication but their solitariness is ever present and beyond a certain point being confined with many other cats can put too much pressure on some of them.

They become stressed and a fight can break out as seen in the video. This is why I disagree with multi-cat homes. Normally people who want to own many cats and keep then locked in their home are pretty insensitive to their cats' needs.

RELATED: Are cat cafés ethical?

For me they are ego-centric. They want a lot of cats for personal reasons. How the cats feel is secondary. It should be the other way around.

I think Ben has exaggerated the problem a bit with his analogy but it's an interesting one and it got me thinking which is why, I think, he said it.

And he mentions cystitis being caused exclusively by stress. He's suggesting that cats in cat cafes are going to be predisposed to contracting cystitis. And possibly get a bite and cat bites can be serious because of the bacterial infection injected under the skin. They wound will need to be washed out and the puss removed and the cat put on a course of antibiotics.

Squabbling cats at a cat cafe. Screenshot.

Sand cat may be more endangered than people think

The popular sand cat may be more endangered than people think. A study completed fairly recently in southern Morocco discovered that sand cats have much larger home ranges than previously thought. And they travel far greater distances during the night than previously believed.

For example, one male cat that they tracked over a year covered 232.4 km². In all, the study radio tracked 22 individuals.

One individual travelled over 1758 km² (679 mi²) in just over six months. The sand cat's home range is similar if not greater than those of the big cats such as the jaguar and leopard. And certainly, they travel the most of any small cat and have the largest home ranges of all the small cats.

Image: MikeB (copyright protected).

Implications for conservation

What does this mean in terms of conservation? Well, the people in charge of assessing the vulnerability of flora and fauna including the small wild cat species, estimate the population sizes of these cats. They have to estimate them because they're very hard to count. This particularly applies to the sand cat for the reason as stated that they are spread out over a very large area and are secretive.

And one way they can estimate numbers is to estimate their density in a certain area. This means that they estimate how many cats there are in a certain area within their distribution. If that estimate is incorrect and they, for example, believe that there are more cats than there really are over a set area, they will then have an incorrect estimation of the entire population size of that species.

And this recent research indicates that they are spread out, as mentioned, far more than they thought and therefore their density is far lower than they thought. This should lead to a re-evaluation of the population size of the sand cat across the planet and in turn this may lead to a re-evaluation of their vulnerability to extinction in the wild by the IUCN Red List experts who I have difficult trusting!

Underestimates as to vulnerability

Incidentally, on a separate topic, I have always thought that the IUCN Red List underestimate, in general terms, the vulnerability of the wild cat species. And I have wondered whether they are being lobbied by the sport hunters for this reason. That is highly speculative but a reasonable suggestion. 

There is in fact some evidence that they are being pressured by people whose interest is against the conservation of animals because they want the freedom to use and abuse those animals and if they are big enough and interesting enough to shoot them for pleasure (sport hunting).

And there is a lot of money in sport hunting. It is normally the wealthy who engage in it and they can apply pressure to conservationists in various ways through their associations and clubs.

At the moment the sand cat is classified as Least Concern by the IUCN Red List people. As the classification suggests, the conservationists are unconcerned about this small cat species becoming extinct. 

They don't regard the species as vulnerable in the wild. But they could be wrong. 

Finally, the sand cat does very badly in captivity because they become ill very quickly. Therefore, humankind cannot fall back on zoo sand cats in order to save the species if things get very bad.

Cats bring back prey because they know they can play with it without being attacked by predators

A form of feline behaviour which all cat owners are aware of and which the experts have spoken of is bringing prey animals back into their caregiver's home where they either eat the mouse if it's dead or they 'play' with it until it dies and then perhaps eat it.

Cat bringing prey home. Image in public domain.

Normal explanation

The normal theory for this form of cat behaviour is that domestic cats are bring their prey back to their natal den within their natal range because they have the mental state of a kitten and they are kept in that state by their human care givers who provide for them completely. They are bringing prey back to their mother in the den as she teaches them how to hunt (and see below - role reveral).

That is my preferred theory. 

New theory

A new theory has been proposed by Celia Haddon in conjunction with Dr. Daniel Mills FRCVS in their book Being Your Cat: What's Really Going on in Your Feline's Mind.

They say that domestic cats bring their prey to their owner's home because they want to play with it without being attacked by a predator. I have thought about this and these are my thoughts if you are interested.

Their suggestion indicates that the domestic cat makes a positive rational decision to bring prey back into the security of their owner's home to avoid predators and where they will have time to be cruel (in the eyes of humans) to the prey animal by playing with it.

Reasoning

Cats don't make rational decisions like that. They make instinctive decisions based on indoctrination. And their answer begs the question as to why domestic cats "play" with prey? The classic answer to that is that cats are not deliberately playing with a mouse to be cruel. 

Because they normally have little opportunity to exercise their natural desires to hunt, they want to extend the hunt by not killing the mouse immediately.

Secondly, they want to play safe by battering the mouse and killing it in a safe way rather than placing their mouth up to it and getting a bite which may harm them.

These are the classic responses to that scenario and I prefer them. The one aspect of Celia Haddon and Dr. Daniel Mills' response which is correct is that domestic cats will go back to the security of their home but this is for a general reason of security and to bring the prey animal back to their owner who is their surrogate mother.

Role reversal

Sometimes domestic cats kill the prey animal in a role reversal. In the wild, the mother teaches her offspring how to kill animals in the den. And in the classic domestic cat-to-human relationship, the cat is the kitten and the human is the mother.

But when an adult cat brings prey back home, they become the mother and the human becomes the kitten. The position in which the domestic cat is placed in the human home can be confusing to them. 

For example, it is automatically confusing for them to be constantly provided for as if they are kittens. They never grow up and have the opportunity to adopt the mentality of an adult cat except when they are allowed outside and suddenly within seconds, they become a wildcat until they return home again where they flick the switch and within about 15 minutes become a tame human companion. 

At that point in time, they are adults as they've just left the wild. When cats are outside, they become adult wildcats. Back inside the home and they adopt the characteristics of a tame kitten.

How important is available space in multi-cat homes in terms of cat welfare?

A study concluded that increasing the area for a group of cats confined to a specific area resulted in the cats playing more and being more active. They concluded that this indicated that they were more content and that extra space resulted in improved cat welfare. Note: the capitalised letters have been added for emphasis.

"In this study we examined the social and spatial behaviour in large groups of cats, as well as stress related body postures (using the Cat-Stress-Score) and if there were any changes within a stable group of 15 cats kept at different floor areas of 1 square meter, 2 square meters and 4 square meters PER CAT. Based on our results we conclude that increasing the area for group housed cats promote more play and general activity. Play can be an indicator of positive welfare for the cats."

They collected cats from shelters and used a fixed space in a research facility where the cats had varying amounts of space to themselves: one square metre, 2 m² and 4 m². The greater the space the more content they were is my interpretation of the summary of this research project.

Cats demand personal space like people. Photo in public domain.

There has to be a commonsense appraisal of this because the result doesn't surprise me at all. This is because an individual male domestic cat probably would naturally require an area up to around 50 acres. It will vary and it might be a smaller at about 10 acres and for female cats it will be smaller still but the space that they naturally require is going to be much larger than that they are allowed if they are full-time indoor cats. And even if they are allowed outside into a garden enclosure it is still unnaturally small.

In the study they were confined to a much smaller area and when allowed to expand into a larger area they became more content which, as mentioned, was predictable.

The point of this very brief discussion is that the amount of space allowed to a domestic cat can have an impact upon their stress levels and therefore their contentment and as a result their general welfare and health.

This is a point that needs to be remembered by people who desire to look after several cats in perhaps a small house or even an apartment.

Of course, domestic cats are adaptable and they will adapt to the smaller area and it depends on the relationship between the cats but it is better that they don't need to adapt as there is always this underlying instinct to live within an area of up to around 50 acres. This figure of up to 50 acres comes from other research studies. There have been many on this topic.

RELATED: Domestic cat territory – home ranges vary widely.

The study referred to: The effect of space on behaviour in large groups of domestic cats kept indoors - Sept 2016.

Cats fight over territory on slippery roof with unforeseen consequences

The location is Sula, Cortes, Honduras and this is a slippery roof.  It is early morning by the looks of it (crepuscular activity). I guess the roof is deliberately slippery to allow rain water to run off efficiently. The cats are unaware of this technical point obviously. The black one is patrolling his territory or has he entered the territory of the ginger cat? They meet and of course fight but are unable do so on the slippery surface. 

Two cats encounter each other on a Honduran roof. Screenshot.

One of the cats slides off the roof and drops to the ground; a fall of about 10 feet which is okay for a cat. He appears to have been unharmed and is likely to be unharmed. The video was caught on CCTV. It is just another day in the life of free-roaming cats. Millions of them do the same thing every day.

The roofing material interests me as much as the cats 😃! I'm going to guess and say that Honduras is quite wet in the rainy season. They don't have roof tiles like they have in the UK which are quite complicated to put up and it means that you have thousands of parts onto the roof. In this roof you have this great slab of material which is treated to be slippery so that the rainwater runs off very quickly. 

Personally, I prefer the Honduras method to the UK method. It looks far more durable to me and far more sensible. And a lot cheaper to install. I could go on for hours about builders in the UK and the building methods which I question.

Another thing worth mentioning about the cats is that they are, expectedly, on a roof. A lot of their time is spent high up off the ground. They prefer to be up there where it is safer. Until they meet each other and feel compelled to fight over their overlapping home ranges. The must be quite a few stray or free-roaming domestic cat in Honduras and I suspect that the home ranges of male cats overlap because of the high population which leads to encounters like this one.

Note: This is a video from another website which is embedded here. 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.

Do cat siblings get along?

Do cat siblings get along? It is an important question. On the face of it, if a person adopts two siblings from the same litter when they first adopt a cat they give each cat an instant companion for life. This can take a load of responsibilities away from the cats' owner because they can entertain themselves. 

Domestic cats are social creatures despite what you read on the Internet about them being independent and solitary. Over 10,000 years of evolution in domestication they had developed into far more social creatures which means they need companionship which in turn means that their human guardian should be around. Sometimes they can't be around because of work commitments which is when a cat companion steps up to the plate.

Lykoi cat siblings. Photo: Brittney Gobble.

So the question as to whether cat siblings get along can be vitally important. And the answer is yes and no. When they are kittens and sub-adults they do get along. They entertain each other and play-fight with each other. The world is perfect if they are in the right home. But when they grow up and become individuals with better developed characters they can start to dislike each other. They may be incompatible. The relationship cools and they drift apart. Sounds familiar?

I do not have statistics on the percentage of siblings who are compatible or incompatible. But there is quite a good chance that they will be incompatible so you can't bank on adopting siblings in the expectation that they will get along for the rest of their lives. This means the policy of a double adoption of kittens from a shelter might not work.

That does not mean you can't adopt two rescue cats from a shelter who are adults. In fact there is an advantage to adopting two adult cats that need to get along because you know that they get along. The shelter staff will be able to assess this and tell you. The cats have been tried and tested. Their characters have matured so if they do get along it will likely be permanent.

I remember when I adopted my cat from an animal rescue centre, the organiser told me that cat siblings do not get along. She must have had a bad experience in adopting siblings herself. Or she had noticed that within the shelter siblings were fighting. She was partly right. Sometimes they don't, as mentioned, but they might and they often do. It's down to personalities.

But once they become adults they like to establish their home range. In the wild when kittens become adults and leave the natal nest they go out into the big wide world and establish their home range i.e. their territory. They want their piece of landscape and if they are in a home together they might be fighting over that territory. Or they might fight over some of the assets such as food and the litter tray.

And if they are incompatible they may urinate inappropriately, they may defecate inappropriately or they may spray urine and finally they may scratch furniture and walls to mark territory. So it will be a bad scene despite best intentions.

I think that the only surefire way of knowing if two cats will get along is by trying it out. That's why I think cat shelters should allow adopters to take a cat back to their home where there is a resident cat for a week to see what happens. They should be open to the possibility of the cat being returned. That should be part of the contract. It may be possible in some cat shelters. I don't know of any other way to deal with this very difficult question of multi-cat homes. Perhaps I'm being too negative because I know their are some very successful homes in which there are several cats.

And when you think about it in this instance domestic gas are being no different to human beings. How many dysfunctional families do you know? How many human siblings do you know who fight with each other because who dislike each other? It is very common for human siblings not to get on.

I myself don't get on very well with my brother and I never got along with my late sister. We were quite different characters. Hell, I didn't even get on with my parents that well either.

Requirements of Cats Kept in the Home

The requirements of cats kept in the home is important in America but less so in Britain for the obvious reason that a lot more cats are kept indoors permanently in America than in Britain. There is a definite culture difference with respect to cat caretaking between the countries. One reason may be that there are more purebred cats in the US and also going outdoors may be more hazardous with respect to predation by wild animals.

However, keeping cats indoors reduces the home range for the cats significantly. It also places individual cats in close proximity to each other. However studies indicate that neutered male and female domestic cats can be housed successfully indoors if there is enough space of sufficient quality and provided the cats have become used to these sorts of conditions from kittenhood. Cats require more space than we think and they need to be able to get away from each other and and out of sight of each other from time to time.

Harmonious group - Photo by Bibi

In one study¹ of 14 cats who had 10 square meters of space each, it was found that most of the cats had a favorite spot. Sometimes a spot was shared and sometimes a spot was unique to an individual cat. In sharing places cats lived peacefully together by time sharing these places and thereby avoiding each other.

Male cats have larger home ranges than female cats generally and this is demonstrated in respect of full-time indoor domestic cats. In this study males had ranges of 4-5 rooms while females had ranges of 3-3.6 rooms. Females are therefore slightly more suited to indoor life.

Another scientist² recommended two resting places for each cat; one on the floor enclosed on three sides (my comment: for a cat to hide and feel safe. What about protection from above?) and the other should be elevated with a good viewpoint (my comment: there is no doubt that cats like high vantage points and can spend long periods on perches). This recommendation is important in preventing behavioral problems in multi-cat households.

In addition, positioning scratching posts or a "scratching surface" (my comment for posts: large, heavy and tall) at places of exit and entry in the home and near sleeping places is helpful. Litter boxes should be in quiet areas. They should be cleaned daily.

Another species of companion animal such as a dog is beneficial provided the cats are socialised to dogs. Elisa, a regular contributor this this website has a dog, Dreyfuss who loves cats and the cats in her home often love him and rest on him. Elisa has a harmonious multi-cat home. Elisa's caring, cat orientated input contributes greatly.

Interactions with the human caretaker are important. Domestic cats are not "adapted to living in close proximity to each other". Moving away and dispersing to avoid aggression is harder for a full-time indoor cat. Cat behavior problems can be due to stressful environmental situations - "social factors". This is a reference to interactions between cats and cats to human.

Related cats are more likely to get on that unrelated cats. Four or more unrelated cats in a house are more likely to have behavioral problems than less cats that are related.

Cats introduced to a multi-cat household are chosen by the owner and these cats may not get on. They may not see each other as part of the same social group and be forced to live in close proximity to each other. This is likely to cause stress.

Associated:

1. The Multi-cat Household
2. Multi-cat Household

Reference:

1. Mertens and Schär 1988
2. Schroll 
3. Generally: The Welfare of Cats ISBN 978-1-4020-6143-1