Showing posts with label play-hunting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label play-hunting. Show all posts

Friday, 12 April 2024

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.

Thursday, 21 December 2023

The reason why kittens, adult domestic cats and small wild cats play

Playing for both the domestic adult cat and kitten and in general small wild cat cubs is about self-training and practising for improved predation for survival and to defend their home range.

Play is for honing motor skills in practice for predation
Play is for honing motor skills in practice for predation. Image: MikeB

I would argue that for the small wild cat species, as stated, it is normally only for cubs/kittens to play and who do it intensively in order to train themselves in terms of coordination and general motor skills to become better predators (and survivors) when they are adults. And it is fun.

For the domestic cat it is a little different as they are cared for by their human caregiver. The human caregiver is a surrogate mother and this tends to keep the adult cat in the mental state of being a kitten and therefore they tend to have a kitten attitude or personality which translates to kitten-like behaviour which in turn translates to playing as an important aspect of their lives even when adult. 

Domestic cats and kittens play a lot because it's instinctive but it doesn't stop when they become adults. That's the point I'm making.

Experts have observed small wild cat species playing with prey animals such as mice in the same way as domestic cats. Some people think that the domestic cat is torturing a mouse when they do this. And they criticise the domestic cat for it. It's not true. It's normally because they might be a little frightened of being bitten because they lack practice in predation or they are instinctively practising predation and killing as was observed in a Geoffroy's cat in a captive environment.

The point is that the underlying reason why the small cats which includes domestic and wild cats play is, in the words of Jim Sanderson PhD, "to develop their motor skills". That's the purpose behind it rather than simple entertainment.
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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.

Thursday, 10 November 2022

What type of cat behaviour is this?

Here is a video from social media and accompanying it is the question: What is this behaviour? And the answer which you probably know all too well is that this is feline play-hunting behaviour.

All domestic cat play is based on hunting, which inevitably means chasing, stalking, attacking, tearing to bits, killing an artificial prey animal. The toy should be made of a material which can be destroyed (killed) to keep them interested.

Cat play-hunting
Cat play-hunting. Screenshot.

In this video we have a cat hanging on to a bit of ribbon which looked like a cat tease. At the other end is the owner pulling on it. The cat resists because for her or him this is a prey animal trying to escape their grasp. 

From the cat's perspective she has caught the prey animal and now it is trying to escape. This is the tug on the ribbon which is being resisted by the cat.

That is the answer. And it is the reason why petting your cat can lead to your hand being scratched or bitten. Your cat may be stimulated into believing that your hand is a prey animal because you are petting a little bit too provocatively or too firmly or for too long. 

And your cat will suddenly pounce on your hand and trap it and then bite on it sometimes. Petting can become playing and playing is always about hunting and attacking and killing.

You never therefore play with a cat using your hand. Your cat will start to think your hand is a cat toy and whenever you wave your hand in front of your cat's face, she will grab it in her teeth or swat it. In fact, it is wise never to flick your finger in front of a cat's face because this mimics quick movement of birds and it might be attacked.

I always place the back of my hand towards a cat and do it slowly. That also protects my hand because if a cat does want to attack the back of the hand is more robust than the tips of the fingers. It hurts less!

Saturday, 8 October 2022

Domestic cat's instinctive desire to entertain themselves based on hunting

This charming, short, video of a ginger tabby cat playing on a loose flagstone and with water is novel in my opinion. It shows a domestic cat instinctively using his hunting skills to entertain himself through play. 

And he's observed that when he pounces onto a corner of the flagstone water is ejected. The pouncing behaviour is reminiscent of the hunting technique of the serval which often hunts for small prey animals such as rodents in long grass. 

Domestic cat's instinctive desire to entertain themselves based on hunting
Domestic cat's instinctive desire to entertain themselves based on hunting. Screenshot.

The serval picks up the sound of these rodents even though they can't see them and then leaps into the air and stuns the animal when they make contact with the ground.

This 'stunning technique' is very clear in this video. The cat is effectively hunting, and it is not clear to him why the water is being ejected upwards as the flagstone squashes it underneath, forcing it out and up.

It is a variation on play-hunting in using whatever is available as a "toy". It caught my eye but please note that this is an embedded video from the Reddit.com website which may well end up being converted to a link to that website or the video may disappear. If that happens, I'm sorry but I have no control over this.

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