Jim Ha, PhD, CAAB
Cats are a mystery to many of their owners, perhaps more so than dogs. Dogs are social, like we primates, and so we can often understand their need for attention, the reward of social contact and praise, and even, at a deeper evolutionary level, perhaps a lot of their signals and communication. But cats – symbols of the unknown, the dark worlds, the places where humans feared to tread – why do cats mystify us so?
One answer is probably their lack of sociality. Modern domestic cats are descended from relatively solitary species of wild cat (all cats but the lion are considered far to the solitary extreme of the sociality continuum). So cats do not respond to social signals or rewards in the same way that we do, or our oh-so-social dogs do. When we are faced with behavior problems in our pet cats, we have to interpret them and deal with them in different ways from similar-appearing issues in dogs. In this essay, I will review the potential behavior issues in cats, and in later essays, I will explore both the evolution and the diagnosis and treatment of some of these issues in more detail.
Cat behavior issues fall into a few basic categories, each with some subtle nuances of their own, some specific to cats. But most of these are common to dogs as well: aggression, urination and defecation, fear and anxiety, overactivity, ingestive issues, and scratching and licking issues.
Aggression issues are quite similar to those in dogs; for example, fear aggression, play aggression, pain-elicited aggression, and redirected aggression. Some are more common in cats, like territorial aggression and inter-male aggression, and finally there are a couple of very rare categories, equally rare in dogs as well: predation and “undiagnosed severe aggressive attacks.”
Urination and defecation issues (“housebreaking”) are usually worse in cats, especially in cats kept indoors (as all cats should be). While housebreaking is usually a fairly simple task in dogs, cats can be quite finicky about elimination in the house, with strong preferences for litter box styles and litter substrate types. In addition, there is the issue of spraying and marking in males (and not uncommonly, in females), as opposed to inappropriate urination.
Fear and anxiety (separation anxiety) issues are very similar to those in dogs, and are treated in similar ways. Cats tend to be prone to similar overactivity issues, like play and attention-seeking, but can also be more prone than dogs to rare disorders categorized as hyperkinesis. Cats are prone, perhaps more so than dogs, to ingestive issues like anorexia, grass eating, and a mysterious syndrome called pica, in which cats eat nonnutritive objects. Finally, cats, like dogs, can develop repetitive licking and object-scratching behaviors.
All of these issues require very specialized diagnosis and treatment by a behavior specialist/veterinarian team. They can all be treated by the correct combination of positive behavior modification techniques applied by a qualified professional, modification of the environment (for example, litter), or use of the correct medications by a licensed veterinarian.
I read your article but I still need help in what to do. I have three cats and have a litter box that I change daily. However they still urinate all over my house. They scratch all my furniture up. They get on my stove and urinate, on my countertops. They are destroying my house and I don’t know what to do. Can you help me please. I love my cats and want to keep them but they are destroying my house.
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I’ve had my cat about 8 or 9 years now. She has always been an indoor/outdoor cat until about a year ago. That’s when we got a new puppy as a companion for our 2 year old mastiff. Before the puppy came the cat would go outside whenever she wanted and the dog never bothered her. Once the puppy came it’s like the 2 year old wanted to show off for the puppy and kept barking and lunging at her. This continued until she would no longer go out because she was afraid. I know she misses it. The problem, which began right after this, is that she will not keep her butt clean. The vet said she thought it was because she was too fat and couldn’t get to it. She’s not that fat. I think maybe it’s a depression. Is there anything I can do to get her to clean her butt? She cleans the rest of her body.
My cat is eating or something with my pepper plants. She has her own grasss and how can i keeo her out of my plants with no harm to either. Citus doewnt work tgk you
My cat which we have had for 4 years is not using the cat litter box to go poop, she does use it to urinate in,she goes poop on the floor in the next to the cat box, front room, hallway of the house and she has poop on the kitchen floor. What can I do to help her go back to using the cat box. I hve two cat box’s and I keep both o them clean since I have two cat’s.
What you can do to get your cat pooping in the litter box depends on what the problem is. You say you have more than one cat, do they get along? Where are your litter boxes placed? When your cat urinates in the litter box, does she a lot of time in there scratching around? Are your litter boxes covered or uncovered?
My one and a half year old cat is a mixed bread. Her strange daily behaviour is knocking down her water plate. Water gets all over the place, but I am sure she doesn’t drink. Any clues?
We need more information to understand your cat’s behavior Carlos. Does your cat knock down her water plate when she’s alone or does she only do it when you’re there? Does she engage in this behavior at the same time of day or at various times of the day? Does she do this every day or only on certain days? What do you do when your cat does this? Do you have other cats in the house? dogs? people? What is your family compliment?
My cat has recently started clawing our window curtains. He is 8 years old aand has never done this before.
We have a four month old kitten that has chicken legs and shows a higher degree of separation anxiety than I have ever seen in another animal. We left her for Thanksgiving and when we got home the house was covered in poop. Two days later she will still not poop in the litter box. If we put her in the bathroom she cries and cries and poops everywhere but where she is supposed to. If we let her out, she doesn’t poop as often, but still will not find a litter box. We have three small children and just do not have the extra energy to try to figure this out. But despite her apparent neurosis, she is very sweet. Can you help us? We can’t do this for very many more days.