Cats inherit prey killing skills but they are refined with learning (infographic)

Image in the public domain.

You might, in an idle moment, ask yourself if domestic cats inherit their ability to kill prey or whether they learn the skill from their mother. Fair question and the answer can been seen in the infographic below which I prepared based on my own knowledge refined with information from Dr Desmond Morris who I believe is still the world's best cat behaviour. He was the first to apply his considerable skills to writing a book - a bestseller the world over - 'Catwatching' about cat behaviour. He explains cat behavior so elegantly and logically. All subsequent books on cat behaviour follow his.

Is actually killing prey a learned behavior for cats? by Michael Broad

The domestic cat is a killing machine. Their anatomy has evolved over eons to be hight tuned up for killing prey animals. Hunting is the raison d'etre of cats. As kittens when they play they are practicing their hunting skills. All play for cats is based on hunting and killing.

I have argued that the inherited hunting prowess of the domestic cat stands in the way for many people of a good relationship. Think of their claws for instance. Some people hate them and ask their vet to remove them. A cruel act as far as I am concerned because claws are an important and integral part of the sophisticated anatomy of the cat. Without them their behaviour is affected and many declaw ops are botched horribly.

Cats are very quick. Their reflexes are faster than those of snakes. They can avoid being bitten by a snake as they can back of extremely rapidly in reaction to a lunge by a snake. Just one more example of the super-refinement of the domestic cat making them a wonderful hunter.

If the domestic cat was not such a refined hunter they would be better pets! We love the cat but we put up with their constant desire to hunt and the refined skills that accompany it.

The desire to hunt can be squashed out of a cat by keeping them indoors full-time long enough. They give up trying to express their natural desires and curl up and go to sleep. For me, this is a failure in our relationship. It is unfair. Humans fight for their basic rights. Yet millions of humans deny their cat some basic rights.

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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.

Why your cat likes to knock things off surfaces

Why do cats like to knock things off shelves or tables or kitchen counters and watch the object fall to the ground, bounce around and perhaps sometimes break? It looks a bit destructive. A little like the actions of a naughty child. I'm sure some cat caregivers react to this feline behaviour as if they were reacting to their child misbehaving. They shouldn't of course because the motivation is completely different.

On the internet, there are millions of articles on this topic. It is a highly competitive area for the search engines. That's the reason why I am writing this again because I have the same title on another website but that page has died over time and so I am trying to revive this content.

Some ideas on the reasons

There are several reasons why domestic cats knock things over and often watch them fall to the ground as described. These are my thoughts.

Boredom: a lot of indoor cats become bored. They want to try and recreate the kind of mental stimulation that they would enjoy outside. They can achieve that goal temporarily and very artificially by knocking an object off a table. The object moves. It temporarily (and using a lot of imagination) becomes a prey animal which they can then jump after and sniff. That is sometimes the response of the cat after they've knocked the object off the mantelpiece. The owner should not be annoyed with their cat as they need to look to themselves for the solution. 💕😉

Playfulness: it's another attempt at trying to entertain themselves. And once again it engages their minds. And in doing it they are physically active in a very minor way. It is therefore a form of play in the same way that when cats are genuinely playing they bat things around. I've just written an article on the four basic themes of kitten play in which I have an Infographic. You might like to read that by clicking on this link.

Attention seeking: this is quite a good reason. Once again it almost emanates from boredom. Boredom that their owner is not interacting with them and stimulating them so they create a scenario which attracts the attention of their owner and they therefore have this interaction afterwards which is better than nothing. It might not be a particularly pleasant interaction, however 🙄! Especially if the object that was knocked over was a precious vase.

Hunting behaviour: this is an extension of the other items above. You knock something over and it moves and they can believe that it is an animal and hunt it. As mentioned it requires imagination. But kittens and cats are very good at playing with objects as if those dead objects are living animals. That's why, by the way, it is best that cat toys are soft and can be destroyed because they then replicate a living animal. Hard plastic toys manufactured commercially sometimes can become boring to a cat because they can't sink their teeth into it and claw the object to death!

Checking if the object is living! Once again an extension of the above. Cats do like to prod and poke animals they have killed to try and reanimate them to allow them to continue entertaining themselves. Prodding an inanimate object may be a similar form of behaviour and if it falls off a high surface so much the better.

Territorial marking: some say this is also a form of territorial marking because they have scent glands in their paws and that scent is deposited on the object. I'm not so sure about this but it's worth including in the list.

Common thread: I think you might see a common thread to the above. It comes back ultimately to mental stimulation; to find something which at least very temporarily stimulates the mind. It looks naughty but it's just trying to create something out of nothing. Which leads me nicely to the next item:  enriching the environment. Vital in the cat's world when stuck inside the home (understandable in today's world).

In a truly enriched environment you will find that domestic cats don't engage in this "naughty" behaviour. You've got to provide plenty of toys and activities to keep your cat engaged. You've got to play with your cat on a regular basis if you have the time. You've got to provide high places and climbing poles and runs et cetera. They can be within the home and outside the home in a cat proof enclosure or a catio. I'm afraid that very few people enrich their home environment enough to the point where the cat will never knock things off a mantelpiece!

Hope this helps a little. Hope it gets seen! As I said it is a very competitive area of cat behaviour in terms of online articles.

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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 Chekhov's uncle made his cat frightened of mice!

Anto Chekov in 1889. Image: Wikipedia.

Anton Chekov (1860-1904) wrote a story about his uncle and how inadvertently his uncle trained his cat to become frightened of mice when he was trying to train them to catch mice. At the time the cat was a kitten. Each time a mouse was caught in a trap, uncle Pyotr grabbed his kitten and pushed his/her face towards the mouse. When the mouse was released, the by then terrified kitten ran away.

I think it was the whole experience of being pushed into the mouse. Perhaps the kitten associated the mouse with the handling they'd received from uncle Pyotr. It was a form of negative reinforcement. The opposite to the classic positive reinforcement training model.

It is strange that the 'training' completely upturned the cat's natural predatory drive to catch mice. That said another factor would be that kittens might be cautious around mice as they might believe that they could be harmed. Mice are amazingly brave in the face of instant death in the jaws of a cat. They stand on their hind legs and scream at the top of their voice.

Chekov

Anton Chekhov, often spelled as Anton Chekov, was a prominent Russian playwright, short story writer, and physician. He was born on January 29, 1860, in Taganrog, a port city in southern Russia, and passed away on July 15, 1904, in Badenweiler, Germany. Chekhov is considered one of the greatest playwrights and short story writers in world literature.

He is renowned for his unique style that combined naturalism and symbolism, portraying the complexities of human nature and the subtleties of everyday life. Chekhov's works are characterized by their deep psychological insight, realistic dialogue, and the exploration of the human condition.

Some of his most notable works include plays such as "The Seagull," "Uncle Vanya," "Three Sisters," and "The Cherry Orchard." These plays often depict the struggles and disillusionments of the Russian middle class during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In addition to his plays, Chekhov wrote numerous short stories, often with a focus on the lives of ordinary people and their struggles. His short stories are celebrated for their concise yet powerful narratives and exploration of the human psyche.

Chekhov's contributions to literature have had a lasting impact, and his works continue to be widely studied, performed, and appreciated worldwide.

Why do cats have whiskers? It is cruel to trim them.

A domestic cat's whiskers (and the same, of course, applies to feral and stray cats) are remarkable items of feline anatomy. Most people think of them as serving a single purpose: to measure the width of gaps to tell the cat if she can get through it but they do a lot more than that.

They are very sensitive as at their base there is a mass of nerve endings. This makes cats' whiskers so sensitive they can feel air currents wafting around solid objects which the cat can't see clearly in the dark depths of night even with their super-sensitive eyes.

Vital cat's whiskers. Image: MikeB

Night hunting

Whiskers are particularly important when a cat hunts at night. Dr. Desmond Morris in his seminal book Cat Watching tells us that we know whiskers are vital to a cat when hunting at night because if they are damaged, they cannot make a perfectly clean kill in the dark but when they are in perfect condition, they can kill cleaning in the depths of night. 

Feelers

They achieve this because these supersensitive appendages a.k.a. vibrissae can feel the neck of the mouse or bird that the cat has caught and armed with the information that whiskers pass back to their brain they are able to visualise the neck and the position of the vertebrae within the neck and deliver their killing nape of the neck bite to split the vertebrae and kill the prey animal.

In this example, the whiskers are acting like feelers and they become the eyes of the domestic cat in the dark. They have a split-second ability to check the body outline of the victim. Dr. Morris believes that the tips of the whiskers "must read off the details of the shape of the prey, like a blind man reading Braille, and in an instant tell the cat how to react".

And in some photographs of cats that have caught prey the whiskers are almost wrapped around the animal's body passing back vital information to the cat's brain about the slightest movement if the prey is still alive.

Nocturnal hunter

And we know that the domestic cat is a primarily nocturnal hunter although they are diurnal meaning they hunt at night and day but they favour dawn and dusk i.e. they are crepuscular. This is because that is the time when prey animals are more active. Because of this whiskers are particularly vital in their success rate in killing prey.

Anatomy

Anatomically speaking, the whiskers are greatly enlarged and stiffened hairs as you no doubt know. They are twice the thickness of ordinary hairs. And as you also might know they are embedded in the tissue of the cat's upper lip to a depth of three times that of other hairs. That last bit you probably didn't realise and deep under the skin they are supplied with a mass of nerve endings as I've mentioned above.

Normally, a cat has 24 whiskers, 12 on each side of the nose. They are arranged in horizontal rows.  The length of whiskers varies enormously between cats. Here for example are the amazing whiskers on a female cat:

Amazing whiskers on a cute female cat. Image in public domain.

Moveable

They can move forwards when the cat wants to check things out with their whiskers. If you put a cat tease in front of a cat's face you might be lucky enough to see their whiskers dart forwards as if to touch the feathers of the tease.

And they can move backwards when the cat needs to protect them as part of a defensive action. And they can move backwards when for example the cat has their head in a food or a water bowl. This brings up another issue which is "whiskers stress". 

Whisker stress

Many people believe that some cat bowls are the wrong shape i.e. they are too deep and too narrow. Cat food bowl should be quite wide and flattish. This allows the whiskers to avoid the sides of the bowl which avoids whiskers stress which is a form of irritation to the cat and it might be so bad as to encourage the cat to not feed. I don't think that happens an awful lot but it may happen in certain individual cats.

Also, the top two rows of whiskers can be moved independently of the bottom two. The strongest whiskers are in rows two and three according to Dr. Morris.

Non-facial whiskers

You will also see whiskers in other parts of the body. For example, there are a few on the cheeks, over the eyes and on the chin.  Surprisingly, you might also see some at the back of the front legs. They are all sensitive detectors.

The cat's whiskers

When we say that something is "the cat's whiskers" we mean that it is very good. It is an apt expression because whiskers are indeed very good. They are a very special piece of feline anatomy.

Trimming

For this reason, they should never be trimmed or cut in anyway shape or form. Some people ask whether they can trim a cat's whiskers. The answer quite positively is no as you can understand from the long description above. 

Image: MikeB

My now deceased sister cut off the whiskers of our family cat when she was a girl. To this day I have no idea why she did it. It was a cruel act.

Hairless cats

Some purebred cats have crinkly whiskers or no whiskers due to a genetic mutation. I am referring to the hairless cats; the Sphynx and Don Sphynx. 

Hairless cat showing poor quality whiskers. Image: Pixels by Pixabay.

This is an example of how breeding a purebred cat based on a genetic mutation which creates a defect (no hair and poor whiskers) can be cruel to the cat. A hairless cat cannot rely on their whiskers as described above.

2 reasons why domestic cats 'play' with prey (and it is not because they are psychopathic)

You might know the 2 reasons why your domestic cat - if she is allowed to go outside - 'plays' with the mouse she catches but I'd like to play with the topic for a while. Sorry about the pun. 

2 reasons why domestic cats 'play' with prey (and it is not because they are psychopathic). Image: MikeB.

The first reason is that most domestic cats don't really get enough hunting time. Hunting is in their DNA, and they need to express this desire. For indoor cats it is in the form of play-hunting. When a cat is able to successfully catch a mouse, they want to extend the fun as long as possible and so they toy with the poor animal both before they die and after death. It looks horrible, callous and psychopathic to some humans, but we can't measure cats by reference to human characteristics. 

Cats are insensitive to the pain they cause. They are insensitive to the emotions of the prey animals that they terrorise. We must avoid anthropomorphising cats. So, the first reason why cats play with prey is to extend the excitement of the hunt and the kill because they don't get enough of it. 

Hunting becomes more than an act of survival. It is playing out the hunting instinct and as you know cats hunt when they are not hungry.

The second, instinctive, reason is linked to the first. Many domestic cats get a little bit out of practice on their innate hunting skills and want to make sure that they don't suffer a nasty bite from a highly defensive and athletic little mouse. And so, they bat, slap and toss around the poor creature using their paws thereby avoiding getting their head near the animal, which exhausts the mouse and makes them less of a threat in terms of acquiring an injury. 

Cats want to kill mice with a bite to the head but that exposes them to a bite from mice. The safer way to kill is to exhaust them and this has the added advantage of taking longer. As there is no need to eat the mouse taking longer over the kill is not a problem. In the wild, the domestic cat's ancestor would not mess around so much. They get on with killing and eating.

Rats certainly can harm cats. You don't see domestic cats playing with birds so much or hardly at all because they are harder to catch and less of a danger to the cat. Also, when birds are caught by a cat they don't respond in the same exciting way as mice. 

They just try and fly off. Mice gallop along the skirting board and hide. Cats love that. They love to prod and poke their paws into tight places where the mouse has found sanctuary. And one cat hunting strategy is to sit and wait by a burrow. When a mouse hides under the sideboard it is the same thing to a cat.

The whole hunting process for a domestic cat is like a play - another awful pun.

Indoor/outdoor cat becomes very hungry in the winter

On social media, a cat owner tells us that she has lived with her cat for about a year.  During the summer months, her cat is very much an indoor/outdoor cat. She spends all day, every day outside and prefers to sleep outside under a certain plant in her back garden. She says that "during summer she was out all day barely eating her food". She's not sure but she says "maybe she was catching mice".

Indoor/outdoor cat. This is not the cat referred to in the article. Image: by Sa Ka from Pixabay.

RELATED: Are indoor or indoor/outdoor cats healthier?

Since the weather has turned and become much less agreeable for an indoor/outdoor cat she's become more "homely". She does not like the rain very much. And "she is suddenly so hungry!"

Whatever she feeds her, she demands more. She says that "some days I break and give her another tiny bit of biscuits or another day one of the kids got excited and fed her another packet".

Well, the woman is providing her cat with only dry cat food and not enough of it, it seems to me. The received wisdom of cat experts is that this is incorrect. Good quality wet cat food is better than dry cat food as it contains more water (70% compared to around 10%). Domestic cats do not drink enough water to compensate for the lack of water in dry cat food. This leads them to being mildly dehydrated. Therefore, cats must be provided with wet cat food.

As to the fact that she is suddenly very hungry this must be because she is a great hunter and during the summer months, she obtains most of her food through hunting, probably mice, near where she lives. And clearly, she does not bring her food back into the home. Not all cats do this. And/or she was being fed by a neighbour but the hunting theory is almost certainly the correct one.

A lot of domestic cat hunting takes place out of sight and out of mind of their owners. This applies to all domestic cats allowed outside. Although, we know too, that many cats like to bring their 'kills' inside the home, extend the hunt inside the home and then finally kill and eat their prey in a quiet corner of their "den".

The question on the social media site (mumsnet.com) regarding this cat is that she is a "very hungry cat". That's a question because she is asking "why is my cat suddenly very hungry?". The answer is she's not hunting any more in the winter months and therefore requires feeding. And she is not being fed enough and the wrong food by the sound of it.

REALATED: 16 tips on cat worms and deworming.

A side issue is that she should be dewormed regularly to get rid of endoparasites that she is ingesting with the mice. It is almost certain that she has worms after summer months of mice hunting.

Should we genetically engineer cats to curb their urge to kill?

Not long ago I proposed genetically engineering feral cats to make them infertile as an alternative to TNR programs which includes spaying and neutering. But it might be a better idea to genetically engineer feral cats. That would seem to be a more elegant way to control the feral cat population. I don't know whether it's been discussed but what is also being discussed is genetically engineering cats to modify their behaviour, to stop their urge to kill.

Photo: Pixabay

That would mean altering the most fundamental aspect of a cat's behaviour which is to hunt, stalk, attack, kill and eat prey animals. In the case of domestic cats that usually means small mammals such as voles, mice and even rats occasionally (plus reptiles, birds and insects). I'm not sure if it is viable. I'm not a good enough scientist to decide how you'd go about doing that.

The obvious initial downside is animal testing. I can see animal testing taking place which would be cruel. I could not justify it. I don't believe that any animl testing is ethically and justifiable today. It is time to stop it.

You can achieve character changes to a certain extent by selective breeding. This is breeding through artificial selection so you only select those cats which are very passive and mild mannered with a known trait of a disinterest in hunting. That might be hard to believe but some domestic cat hardly hunt at all whereas others are obsessed with it such as my cat!

The average domestic cat will certainly enjoy hunting to a certain extent but it would seem fair to suggest that we could select the least motivated hunters and selectively breed from them to the point where you only had domestic cats that were disinterested in what should be their primary activity: hunting.

Brief research tells me that that scientists genetically engineer animals by introducing a beneficial gene into their DNA. I suppose, therefore, it would mean scientist deciding which genes and on which chromosomes behavioural traits such as hunting are located. 

Then they could remove those genes and replace them with the genes of a cat with known traits including a disinterest in hunting. I'm guessing wildly at this point. But the concept of genetically engineering cats to modify their behaviour to eliminate hunting is fascinating but it seems to be a bridge too far at this stage. What do you think?

Are felines nocturnal?

The answer to the question depends upon the species of feline that you are referring to and the circumstances under which they are living. There is no simple black-and-white answer to the question. For example, the domestic cat tends to be nocturnal or a better description is crepuscular which means active at dawn and dusk when prey is about.

Tiger at night. This is not real because there are no white tigers in the wild. Photo: Pixabay.

But domestic cats are also active during the daytime sometimes. They just tend to be more active when daylight is subdued or it is dark. But the domestic cat is only one species of about 36 (the number of cat species is still contentious). I'm not going to go through every single wild cat species to tell you whether they are nocturnal or not but I'll mention one or two to give you an idea about what I'm talking about.

The American bobcat is distributed across America except for a 'hole' in the middle of it near the Great Lakes so it is a very well known wild cat. Bobcats are primarily crepuscular like the domestic cat. They are most active in the few hours before and after sunset and sunrise. There are exceptions

Some studies have found that bobcats are mainly nocturnal while other reports have found that they may be active at any time of the day or that they are arrhythmic (without any pattern or rhythm). In some places bobcats are more active during the daytime in winter because they must spend more time searching for food. In essence it would seem that a bobcat's activity coincides with the activity of the animals that it hunts. That makes sense. As I said the answer to the question the title has to be nuanced.

Canada lynx. Photo: Pixabay.

Taking another well-known medium-sized wild cat species living in North America, the Canada lynx, this cat is primarily nocturnal although they may be seen moving about at any time of the day. The animals that they mainly prey upon, snowshoe hares, are basically nocturnal which is why the Canada lynx is also mainly nocturnal. Once again you can see that the activity of the cat is dependent upon the activity of the prey.

The ocelot is a very well known small to medium-sized wildcat. Its coat has made the coats of many rich and famous people in the past. They are primarily nocturnal but they also hunt during the daytime especially when the weather is cloudy and rainy. They may be entirely nocturnal in areas where they are hunted by people. That sentence would apply to the past in America because as far as I'm aware they are no longer hunted by people because they are protected in North America if they are still extant on that continent.

The mountain lion lives in both North America and South America. They have a huge range in terms of distribution. These cats can be found hunting at any time of the day or night. In most areas the peak activity is reported to be around dawn and dusk i.e. crepuscular. They rest during the middle of the day. Once again their activity levels coincide with that of their major prey animals. Therefore it is seasonal and it depends upon where they live. For example, in the Idaho Primitive Area they are active during daytime to hunt ground squirrels. Where humans are more active such as where they are logging timber, mountain lions avoid them by being more active at night.

The concept of wild cats being more active at night to avoid people is also apparent with leopards. And you will find that lions also behave like this when necessary. They tend to avoid people by becoming nocturnal. Lions are apparently primarily nocturnal but there are no hard and fast rules as mentioned. It depends on the availability of prey animals to kill to eat and the type of habitat where they live which provides cover when stalking. Activity levels also depend upon the seasons and temperatures. And lastly it depends upon whether they are disturbed by people.

There have been reports of lions becoming nocturnal to avoid trophy hunters killing them. In the Serengeti there are two major peaks of activity, one of which is just after dark and the other between two and four in the morning.

Lastly, as I'm just giving you an idea as to whether cats are nocturnal or not, I will mention the tiger. Once again, in response to the activity of people, in certain parts of the world they have become totally nocturnal. If they are undisturbed by people they can be seen to hunt at any time of the day or night. Once again, also, their activity levels depend upon the activity of their prey animals. In other words it mirrors the activity patterns of the animals that they kill to eat. For example, in Chitwan National Park both male and female tigers mainly travelled at night for about 10 to 12 hours.

If you want to read more about the wild cat species and whether they are nocturnal or not then I would suggest that you search for those details on the main website which you can access by clicking here.