Showing posts with label routines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label routines. Show all posts

Thursday, 15 February 2024

Routine is important for both kids and cats

There is a similarity between kids and cats in one aspect of their desired lifestyle: routine. Cats love the reassurance of routine. They can sleep better. They have less anxiety. They enjoy life more. Life becomes more predictable. This is important because the wildcat is just below the surface of the domestic cat and they live in the human world. They are out of place in many ways despite almost 10,000 years of domestication.


And so routine is important to cats. I don't know of a study to support this but it is probably fair to say that cats who live a life of routines and rhythms live longer in general than those who live a disjointed and fragmented lifestyle with uncertainties.

Today, in The Times, there is a report on research carried out at Colorado State University in which they enrolled 94 children aged between five and nine from a wide range of economic backgrounds. They concluded that routine was "key to a healthy, wealthy and wise child". The underlying reason for this huge benefit was that they slept better.

The lead author of the study, Emily Merz, said: "Shorter sleep duration was significantly associated with reduced cortical thickness in frontal, temporal and parietal regions and smaller volume of the amygdala (a brain region key to emotion processing)."

I'm not saying that when cats have a life of routines and rhythms that they necessarily sleep better but they probably do because they will be less anxious. Because of the reassurances that routine and rhythms bring them, they are better able to sleep soundly.

I see a great similarity between kids and cats and interestingly we keep our cats as 'feline kids' because we look after them all the time and so emotionally and mentally they behave like kittens despite being adults. This is another similarity to the results of this study.

Children need dependable schedules as cats do. The best cat caregivers live a life of routines and rhythms themselves and their domestic cat companion fits in with them. Both parties are content with this lifestyle and relationship.

The routines of the children included whether they did the same thing each morning when they woke and whether their parents had a regular playtime after coming home from work. And further whether the parents read or told stories to their children regularly and whether the children went to bed at the same time and so on and so forth.

Routine is good particularly for the more vulnerable of us and the more timid or anxious of us. I would argue that domestic cats are inherently going to be a little anxious because, as mentioned, they live in the human world, a land of giants and of human activities which are essentially alien to them. I believe that cat caregivers need to be aware of this and do all they can to reassure their cat companions.
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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, 13 January 2022

Cats can make a demand in a meow even though they do not want anything

You may have met with this somewhat baffling feline behaviour. I'll describe what my cat does. In fact, he did it about an hour ago when I came in from buying a newspaper. My cat and I have set up a routine. When I come in the front door he expects me to give him some prawns - a treat. 

Cats can make a demand in a meow even though they do not want anything
Cats can make a demand in a meow even though they do not want anything. Image: MikeB

And over the years this has created habitual behaviour; a pattern of behaviour which includes a request by my cat in the form of a meow for prawns. The point is though that he will still meow and ask for prawns even though he does not want them.

I can put them in a bowl and he can go up to them and licked them but he won't eat because he is not hungry enough to eat them. His meows are simply part of the scenario that both my cat and myself have created. Part of that interaction is that he meows for food. It can be a 'hollow' meaningless meow for food when he is not hungry and has no desire to eat it.

This is an example of where habits and routines outstrip reality. The players, humans and cats, create a situation in which the players do certain things and it no longer matters that the objective of the routine is unviable. The routine is the objective not the goal. 

The end result is that I have to put the prawns back in the box and put the box back in the fridge. I will bring them out at another time when I think that his demands are genuine. Although of course it is almost impossible to make an accurate decision about that.

It is a classic case of informal positive reinforcement training. The instigating action is my arrival at home. My cat gets an urge to eat prawns as it has been positively reinforced in him to do that. He has been rewarded for asking for prawns. He gets them which reinforces further his behaviour.

Saturday, 21 August 2021

From kitten to adult this cat has his favorite spot under his human's chin

You can see why this TikTok video is popular with 24 million views. We all love these comparison videos where we see a kitten doing something and then the same thing as an adult. In this instance it does remind us that cats are creatures of habit as are humans. 

Ginger tabby has his favorite spot
Ginger tabby has his favorite spot. Screenshot.

And a cat's habits form part of their routines and routines are part of the rhythms in the human caretaker's life. In the best cat households, the human's rhythms and the cat rhythms merge to become one.

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.


The cat's name is Henry and the woman is Kir. He is a ginger tabby. I have just written about a magnificent Maine Coon ginger tabby which you might like to admire - click here. I also discussed briefly a bit more about the ginger tabby cat which is a favourite of many people. And because people say that the ginger tabby has a certain character you also might to read about the link between coat type and character by clicking here.

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