We know that outdoor cats live shorter lives subject to disease and injury, yet many cat owners believe that their cats cannot be happy unless they go outside. I think one of the reasons people believe this is that many cats suffer from environmentally deprived environments without their owners even knowing they could be doing more for their cats. The added benefit is that spraying/marking, aggressive behaviors, excessively rough play and scratching of furniture and walls which are common complaints from owners of indoor cats can be helped or eliminated by following our recommendations.  Try some of these  ideas and see if they don’t make you and your cat happier:

Climbing/Viewing: If you live in a multi-cat household, providing vertical territory is especially important. Providing climbing opportunities can help alleviate cat/cat aggression and spraying/marking problems. Cat window perches, towers and condos allow your cat to jump and climb, which is especially appreciated near a window.  If you shop around, you might be surprised, cat trees have come a long way. For fashion conscious owners, we recommend installing floating shelves in a stair step pattern. Shelves can be purchased to match any decor. When you bring a new cat tree into the house or install shelves, spray them with Feliway to help your cat relax around the new item. You can further encourage your cat’s use of trees or shelves with catnip or treats.

Exercise: Cats thrive on engaging their predatory instincts.  Toys that mimic small prey (mice, bugs, birds) via their material or movement patterns encourage running, pouncing, stalking, appropriate scratching and climbing. Most cats love fishing pole toys with feathers or a fuzzy toy at the end of the line.

Clicker Training: Cats respond very well to positive reinforcement and can be trained to sit, lay-down, wave, etc. just like dogs! If you’re interested in getting started with clicker training your cat, search for ‘clicker training cat’ on YouTube and you’ll get results that will keep you viewing for days.

Working for Food: Teach your cat to hunt for his meals by hiding food around the house or use “Work to Eat” toys, see some of our suggestions here. You don’t have to buy work to eat toys, you can make your own. Check out our article Work It Kitty for home made work to eat toys and video.

Scratching Items:  Scratching products indulge your cat’s need to stretch, scent and groom their claws. Made from natural (sisal, cardboard) and synthetic (carpet) materials, vertical posts, towers, door-hanging or flat floor designs are widely available.  Place in high traffic areas, and particularly near prohibited scratching objects such as your furniture!

“Play Alone” Toys: Toys such as the ‘Fling-ama-string’ offer animated movement to encourage play while you’re unavailable to assist. An internet search on ‘motorized cat toys’ will give you plenty of options for toys your cat can chase and interact with.

Bringing the Outdoors Inside:  Consider providing your feline with ‘cat-grass’ or catnip.  Cat-grass is sprouted oat or wheat grass, which you may grow or purchase pre-potted at a pet/health-food store.  Cat-grass inexpensively provides chewing, dietary fiber, and nutrients and may discourage houseplant eating.  The natural plant chemicals in Catnip produce excitable rolling and play behaviors in some cats. Many individuals are highly attracted to its scent. Many cats love running water so what better addition than a fountain? You can purchase a fountain or why not get creative and make your own? Search on ‘diy cat fountains’ and you’ll find instructional videos and plans.

Outdoor Options For the Indoor Cat:  An internet search search on ‘cat enclosures’ produces an array of outdoor cat-habitats of various sizes, complexities and costs.  These may be home-built or purchased, so long as they are secure.  Inclusion of a variety of safely attached toys, tree branches, scratching posts and non-toxic plants provides mental and physical exercise.  One of our favorite sites to purchase enclosures is Canada Cat Enclosures. If you’re the DIY type, we found Catio Designs which sells plans for different types of enclosures.

Going For a Walk: Purchase a harness made specifically for cats. We like the Come With Me cat harness made by Premier. Go slowly and allow the cat to sniff the harness. You can then start pairing the harness with treats. Once your cat is wearing the harness, attach the leash and let your cat walk around the house until the cat is comfortable (don’t forget the treats). When you’re ready to go outside for the first time, go at your cat’s pace. Remember, this experience is totally new for your cat so give them time to acclimate and move forward when they’re ready. You can try luring your cat into a walk with treats. Walking your cat is good for you, good for your cat and you’re sure to get smiles and waves from passersby.

Chasing: Toys that move in unpredictable ways (either with your help, or by motor/magnets) allow your cat to run and perform seek-and-catch behaviors. Ping pong balls are inexpensive and fun.

Homemade Cat Toy Ideas:  To inexpensively expand your cat’s toy collection, consider creating enticing objects from items around your house.  Your cat might enjoy:

• Hidden Objects:  Stash a small, safe object or favorite toy underneath an overturned cardboard box.  Cut holes in the box just large enough for your cat to peer and/or reach inside.  Favorite toys often become more enticing when obscured by a sheet of noisy, dig-able newspaper.
• Cat Caves: Overturned boxes or paper shopping bags (without handles) provide a crinkly, dark place for your ever-clever cat to hide within.  Drag a toy past “his door” for even more excitement.
• Prey: Create ‘mice’ by filling a sock-toe with catnip or crinkly material, and tying it off.

Providing environmental enrichment can be as fun for us as it is for our cats. What things do your cats enjoy? Does your cat have an “unusual” toy or activity they enjoy?

Wally was a nine-year-old male Persian.  His owner was dismayed because he had recently begun urinating in the house.  He was destroying her carpeting.  Wally had not only missed the litter box several times, but had urinated on the owner’s bedspread, her clean clothes in the laundry basket and the rug in front of the sofa.  Wally was about to get a one-way ticket to dreamland.

House soiling is an unacceptable behavior.  It is one of the most common reasons for owners seeking behavioral advice.  So, what should we do?  Confine him to a room with a vinyl floor and a litter box? Put him on meds for a marking behavior?   Catch him in the act and squirt him with a spray bottle?

All of these things have been suggested for cats with inappropriate urination.  Some of them might make a difference.  The trouble here is that we do not yet have a diagnosis.  A behavior is a sign, not a diagnosis.  We cannot know what to recommend until we have more information.

A behavioral analysis would consist of asking questions to differentiate between a marking behavior and an elimination problem.  What is the volume of the spots?  Smaller spots could indicate a marking behavior.  Larger puddles could mean he was voiding his bladder and thus indicate an elimination problem.  We could go further and ask about time of day, litter box habits and whether he was declawed, but none of these questions would get us very far with Wally.

The key question we need to ask is whether this is a new behavior.  Has he been using his litter box consistently until recently?  The red flag for me is his age.  He is an adult cat.  And either this is a new behavior or the owner has put up with it for seven or eight years.

Any adult animal with a new behavior is a reason for a veterinary visit.

Shall I say that again? Any adult animal with a new behavior is a reason for a veterinary visit.  All the behavior modification in the world won’t help a pet with a physical problem.

A visit to the vet was mandatory for Wally.  The next step was to obtain a sample of his urine.  But, “Here, Wally, pee in this cup” wasn’t going to work.  How does one get a urine sample from a cat?  It can be a tricky procedure to do at home.  One way is to replace the litter in the box with something that will not absorb liquid.

Then, after the cat has used the box, pour the urine into a clean container and refrigerate it if you can’t get it to the vet immediately.  This may be hard to do if the cat is not using the box.  And the sample will not be sterile, so your veterinarian may want to have you bring the cat in to the clinic for a full exam and to obtain a sterile sample.

When we got a urine sample on Wally, it gave us all the information we needed.  Wally had diabetes.  Many signs of diabetes are easy to miss.  Increases in appetite and water consumption are hard to gauge if there is food and water out all the time.  Weight loss can be hard to see on a furry animal.  But inappropriate urination is hard to ignore.  And a simple urinalysis can let us know whether we are dealing with a medical cause of Ruined Carpet Syndrome.

That said, it is also important to remember that patterns of urination and defecation are based on learned habits.  Even if a cat or dog is treated medically for inappropriate elimination, the pet may have learned that it is much nicer to pee inside where it is warm and dry than outside in the rain.  Or he may have developed a preference for nice soft material rather than hard, prickly litter.

I learned this on a very personal level when I lived in a cabin in the woods for two years.  We had an outhouse, which was decorated with pictures and even had a heart shaped seat.  Not too bad.  I liked communing with the birds in the morning.

I realized the power of habits when I visited my parent’s house.  After dinner, I went to answer the call of nature and found myself heading not to the bathroom, but to the front door.  Even though I had eighteen years of experience using that bathroom for that purpose, it only took a few months to alter the habits that led me to automatically head for the outdoors.

So once the medical problem is addressed, be aware that there may be some retraining needed to reestablish good litter box habits.  Let me say here that sticking their nose in their mistake or squirting them with water teaches them nothing about where they are supposed to eliminate.   Make sure their box is in a peasant place and is filled with something they like to dig in.  Maybe even give them some pictures or a heart shaped seat.

If you neglect this, all I can say is “Urine Trouble”.

National Adopt a Cat Month means that many of us will either be introducing a new cat to our home or at least contemplating whether adopting a cat is a good idea. Cats are very different from dogs in that regardless of whether you’ve socialized your cat well as a kitten with other cats/dogs, not all cats adapt well to a new feline family member. The good news though is that most cats learn to adapt and even enjoy one another if introduced properly and over a long enough period of time. Here are the tips we give owners for increasing the chances of a successful cat adoption:

Kittens

What is cuter than a kitten? One that gets off on the right paw! Set up a management area for your new kitten which contains food, litter box, hiding places and toys. Do not let your kitten have free access to your home since it’s easy for a young kitten to get lost and forget where their litter box is located. Over a few weeks, slowly increase the range of your home you make available to your kitten. As you expand the area of your home, add additional litter boxes. There should be at least one litter box per cat, per floor. If you catch your kitten using the litter box or scratching at their scratching post, give them a treat or a play session with you when they’re finished. Reward the behavior you want and you’ll get more of it!

Cat/Cat Introductions

Set up a safe area for the new cat which contains food, litter box, hiding places and toys. Give the new cat a few days to acclimate and realize they’re safe in their new home. Make time to play with your new kitty. If you have existing cats in the house, wipe a damp cloth over your existing kitties’ heads and bodies and leave that cloth in your new cat’s area. We want the new cat to get used to the scents of the other cat(s) in the home. After a few days, it’s time to give the cat a tiny bit more access to the other cats in the home by feeding the cats extra tasty wet food or treats on opposite sides of a closed door. After a week of this, you can try replacing the door with an extra tall baby gate or netting. We want the cats to see one another but not allow them to have access to one another just yet. Now you can feed them on opposite sides of the netting or gate for a few days but only a few days. If the cats have visual access to one another but can’t physically get to one another, you risk one of the cats spraying/marking at the barrier.

You’ve decided things are proceeding smoothly so it’s time to give the cats physical access to one another. Here are some tips for keeping initial introductions positive:

• Make sure there are plenty of escape routes including cat trees, cat condos and perches for a quick escape (no confined spaces or closing the cats into an area).
• Keep the interactions short at first (a few minutes the first time).
• If you see either cat beginning to stiffen or posture, separate the cats and try again the next day (if possible, never let a fight break out).
• Keep the cats’ interactions positive using toys and treats.
• Only leave the cats out together unsupervised when they’ve been interacting positively for several weeks.
• Keep the environmental enrichment high (lots of interactive toys, work to eat puzzles, scratching posts, etc).

Cat/Dog Introductions

Is your dog a good candidate to have a feline housemate? Does your dog have any experience living with cats? Does your existing dog sometimes chase your cat(s)? Most often, dogs are curious about cats and if they run, the game is on (toys that move)! If this is your dog, try to brush up on your dog’s training. Useful commands to brush up on are: leave it, go to mat and stay. Increase your dog’s daily exercise and environmental enrichment: work to eat toys, chews, etc.

If your dog has high prey drive (they’ve proven it by bringing you a mole, bunny or other small creature), trying to add a cat to your household will be anywhere from extremely difficult to impossible depending on your level of management and commitment to training. Remember, a behavior with a high genetic component is the most difficult to change. I’ve seen dogs with high prey drive learn the difference between a furry family member versus prey but I always worry about instinctual drift. This can happen if the cat becomes startled, runs or gets cornered. Your dog can go from family pet to predator in a split second.

Troubleshooting

Litter Box Problems: If one or more of your cats stops using the litter box, look at the placement of your boxes. Most owners like to put litter boxes in out of the way areas. After all, we like privacy, don’t our cats? Not if the litter box can allow them to be trapped in a dead end hallway or inside a laundry room.

Spraying/Marking: Most owners assume this is territorial behavior and it is but it can be started or exacerbated by anxiety. Increase environmental enrichment and encourage positive interactions between the cats. Make interactions positive with play and/or treats. Increase environmental enrichment opportunities.

Aggression: If aggression breaks out, we recommend early intervention by a qualified animal behavior specialist. Aggression rarely resolves itself and is likely to escalate.

Are you planning to adopt a cat or kitten this season? What have your experiences been integrating pets into your household? Do you have tips for cat adoption success? We’d love you to share them!

The work-to-eat movement has grown steadily in zoos and is really starting to take hold for companion animal owners as well.  For those who are not familiar with work-to-eat, the theory behind it is that cats and dogs evolved as predators and predator/scavengers respectively and should not eat food in a bowl that is handed to them.  Instead, they should indulge their instincts to search, pounce, scratch, grab, manipulate and bite “prey” and/or receive food during training sessions.  Therefore, a number of products have sprung up commercially for dogs and cats to work for their food.  However, it seems like dog owners are more familiar with this concept.  Stuffed Kongs, Bob-O-Lots, Tug-A-Jugs and Tricky Treat Balls have really started to catch on for dog owners, which is fantastic.  But did you know that cats greatly benefit from work-to-eat too, especially indoor cats!

Here are some signs that your cat is bored and could use more environmental enrichment:

• Shredding toilet paper or paper towels.
• Stalking and playfully attacking you or another cat in the house frequently.
• Dropping toys in his/her water dish (this is an interesting behavior that ethologists think means the cat is trying to get more stimulation from the toy).

The benefits of environmental enrichment include:

1. Fighting boredom by stimulating the mind and “wearing out” a hyper cat or kitten.
2. Slowing down the eating rate of a cat that likes to gobble up his/her food too fast, often making them sick.
3. Making overweight/obese cats start to lose weight by moving around and spreading out their food delivery.
4. Allowing your cat to indulge predatory instincts to toy with and manipulate “prey”.
5. Multiple work-to-eat toys can keep a food aggressive cat from stealing food from another cat.  If there are enough toys in various rooms throughout the house, the food aggressive cat cannot play with all the toys at once, allowing other cats access to toys with food.
6. Distracting a particularly rambunctious cat from pouncing on and harassing another family cat.
7. If you go out of town for a day or two, you can leave food puzzles that are easy combined with hard food puzzles.  This will space out the cat’s eating so they do not gobble down all the food you left them at once.
8. It distracts a cat that is constantly under foot or walking across your keyboard (like mine is right now!)

What work-to-eat toys are out there for cats?  Many work-to-eat cat toys are some kind of ball or container with a hole in it and they greatly range in price.  The Slim Cat kibble ball is a great start but were eventually too easy for my cats.  The Pavlov’s Cat Scratch Feeder is a great enrichment toy that doubles as a scratching post and the Stimulo Cat Feeding Station is fun.  Many dog work-to-eat toys also work well for cats.  Small Tricky Treat Balls work well for cats.  If you feed your cat wet food (which many vets encourage to help with hydration and other health issues), you can stuff a smaller size Kong with wet food.  If your cat eats it too fast, you can freeze the Kong stuffed with food.  This will make it take longer for the cat to lick out the food.

But my personal favorite is a homemade device, inspired by my friend who cat sat for us once and said that our work-to-eat toys were too easy for our clever felines.

Here’s how you do it.  Take a yogurt container and cut holes in it that are just big enough for one piece of your cats kibble to fall out.  The more holes you cut and the bigger the holes, the easier it will be for your cat to get the food.  I would start out with a lot of big holes, so your cat gets rewarded frequently for playing with the container.  Then as your cat gets better and better at getting the food out, make it harder by making new containers with smaller and fewer holes.  You want it just easy enough that your cat won’t completely give up on it and just hard enough that your cat cannot get all the food out really fast. You can also make any work-to-eat toy harder by wrapping it in a paper bag or hiding it in a box or under a laundry basket.  Be creative!  My cats get a combination of raw food and kibble.  All of their kibble comes from one of these toys or a tricky treat ball usually wrapped in a paper bag.

What are your favorite tricks for making your cats work it?!

Eva came to us at 3 months after being a “stray at large” in Lynnwood, WA.  She was sweet, extremely social, fun to play with and of course had a healthy obsession of watching birds out the window making that amusing chatter noise.  Her litter box habits for the most part were good.  We had her using a flushable litter made from plant material.  I liked that it wasn’t clay based and flushing made it convenient.  However, occasionally Eva would poop outside her box if we left a towel on the floor or there was a particularly fuzzy rug, but these instances were rare and she was young so I didn’t think much of it.  Then, when she was about one year old, she started pooping outside the box pretty regularly, but never peeing outside the box.

A subleter had recently moved in, and for some reason Eva kept pooping in his room. Some people suggested that she was “upset” that a new person moved in and was trying to make a point. I often hear this rationale that cats are eliminating in places because they are “mad” or to get back at someone.  There is something about cats that makes humans think that they are spiteful, but many times if a cat changes their litter box behavior, it is a health issue.  Through research, I had learned this so I took Eva to the vet to have her checked out.  She was perfectly healthy so in this case, health was not the problem.

No, this was a behavior issue of some kind so it was both frustrating and intriguing to me at the same time.  Growing up with cats, I had never had a cat with this issue.  Usually the cat is spraying or peeing outside the litter box.  So I started experimenting.  I had read that sometimes cats like to pee in one box and poop in another so sometimes you need two litter boxes per cat.  So I put another litter box in the area of the room she was pooping in.  Nope, she just pooped next to it.  I tried a bigger box, a covered box, three boxes.  I tried putting a carpet upside down so the rough underside would be aversive with the litter box on top.  This somewhat worked but the aversive carpet wasn’t big enough to cover the whole room so eventually she found an uncovered spot to go.

A break through came when my boyfriend and I went on vacation, and left Eva with a friend for about a week.  The whole time we were gone I worried Eva would be “mad” that we left her and poop all over their house.  But to my surprise, Eva used the litter box at this strange place no problem!  But, when she came home to us, she started the inappropriate pooping again.  In a state of desperation, I called the friend who she had stayed with.  “What litter do you use?”  She said she used clumping litter from the bulk box at the pet store.  Then a light bulb went off.  I decided that instead of making Eva use a certain litter or box, I would let her tell me what she liked.  So I got four different boxes and three different types of litter and put them all out in the same area as her litter box at the time.  Every few days I would vary which litter was in each type of box.  It quickly became apparent that Eva exclusively used whichever box had the clumping litter.  After months of frustration and worry and more frustration, problem solved.  Eva is picky about the texture of her litter.

I thought back to when she was a kitten.  She would occasionally poop in towels left on the floor or on soft rugs.  The subleters’ room was the only room with carpet in the house.  Eva would spend very little time digging in her box and would jump out quickly after she was finished and shake her paws off.  These were all signs that she did not like her litter.  Now, with the new litter, she spends a good five minutes digging around before and after she does anything.

Are cats spiteful? It’s questionable whether feline brains are even capable of complicated emotions like “spite”.  It seems a simpler explanation is that sometimes cats just go in places that feel good and/or safe to them.  Once I gave Eva choices, she showed me what she wanted.  So if you are having inappropriate elimination problems and you know it’s NOT a health issue, try putting out different kinds of litter boxes and litter combinations in various areas of the house and see if there is a pattern for what your cat likes peeing and pooping in separately (remember Eva had no problem peeing in the old litter).

What if you really want your cat to keep using a certain type of litter?  Another tactic is to put whatever your cat likes (a towel or soft carpet) in a litter box, then if the cat eliminates on the towel in the box, slowly introduce litter on top of the towel over time and eventually take the towel away.  This has been successful in some litter aversion situations so it could also be worth a try.

Last, you can up the ante for any litter box issues by being ready with treats when the cat successfully uses the box.  Eva’s litter box was located in the bathroom, so I kept some high value treats in the bathroom ready to go.  If I heard her using the box, I would sit and wait quietly with the treats ready in my hand.  After she used the box successfully and stepped out of the box, I would immediately give her a treat.  I think this sealed the deal for the princess.  Eva has now gone over a year with absolutely no inappropriate elimination of any kind!

I like to consider myself a fairly non-judgmental person.  People may do things to their pets that I think are horrible, but I cannot judge them, since, in the past, I have done most of those things myself.  We all grow and learn and change.

However, there are two things that get under my skin and make me want to slap folks upside the head.  Or at least sting them with my sarcasm.  All of my caring, nurturing and willingness to help simply fly out the window.  I end up jamming my fist down my throat so that I don’t say anything that I will regret.

Number one pet peeve.  “I’ve tried everything.”  Really.  Everything?  Well, I guess there’s nothing I can do now, is there?  No place to go from here.  Thanks for calling and have a nice life.  I suppose what they really mean to say is “I am desperate and need you to help me.”  Okay.  But do they think I wouldn’t help them unless they were desperate?  This is my profession.  I want to help.  Desperation merely gets in the way.

Maybe the underlying message is:  “I’ve tried everything I can think of.”  Better.  At least they give me a chance to think of something.  But it still does not give me much information.   What was tried?   How did the pet respond?  Even if medication was tried with no success, there are many reasons why that might be the case.  What was the dosage?  Too much or too little medication can have unsatisfactory results.  How long was the medication given?  Some medications require a month before full effects are seen.  How was the medication given?  Ear gels may not deliver the needed quantity of the medication to reach therapeutic blood levels.  There is the possibility that a different approach to medication may help.

So, my request is to please give me some information that I can process.  Let me know what has been tried.   Let me know the results.

Number two pet peeve.  “I think he is jealous.”  My first snarky impulse is to say, “Well then, I think you should stop catting around.”  But, I hold my tongue.  I take a deep breath and ask, “What is he doing?”

Jealousy is an emotion that we may or may not be able to ascribe to animals. We may be able to tell if a pet is feeling good or feeling bad, but to assign a nuanced emotion like jealousy is not really helpful.  Are we talking about bitterness or suspicion?   Possessiveness or demanding attention?  Even if I could get the cat or dog to lie down on the couch, I still can’t discuss with them any feelings of abandonment or inadequacy.  I can’t get them to understand that they don’t need to feel that way.  And even if I could somehow communicate that to them, it wouldn’t help.

You see, jealousy isn’t the problem.  It is the behavior that is the problem.  What is the pet doing that you don’t want them to do?   Urinating inappropriately?  Chewing things up?  Tearing things down?  Now those are behaviors that I can address.   Ultimately, it is the behavior we want to change.  And unless I know which behaviors are the problem, there isn’t much I can do.   I often deal with changing a pet’s emotions, but even then, I rely on body language to let me know how the pet is feeling.  Ear position, eye position, body posture and vocalizations are all reflections of emotions.  These are the things we can change.  Jealousy is not one of them.

Well, I gotta go.  I have to feed my cats, walk my dog and water my peeves.

Cats, like all mammals, are social creatures.  While cats are far less social than dogs, to think of cats as asocial is wrong.  The degree of social behavior and the ability of an individual to adapt to a changing social environment varies with species (certainly cats are less social than dogs), breed (Bengal cats are less social than domestic short-hairs), and individual personality.  Even individual personality is dependent on factors like genetics (or what we often call temperament) and learning or socialization.  So genetics play a big role, at the species, breed, and then individual level.

A recent study looked at how young cats reacted to familiar and unfamiliar people and to a novel object, and showed that the social personality of the father (genetics) as well as the degree of early socialization (learning) influenced the later degree of social stress in human interactions, but only the genetics influenced the (nonsocial) response to a novel object.  This is a nice example of the interaction between genetics and learning.  And of course, this is true of all mammals.

So cats are less social than dogs… and some cats are genetically at the nonsocial end of the cat continuum.  This means that not all cats can be housed socially.  This is true of dogs as well, just much less common.  But there is that one important variable, learning and the environment, that gives us something that we can manipulate, or a tool to maximize the odds that a cat that we own will be sociable.

The next factor to understand is the concept of critical periods, again common in all mammals.  This is another process by which genetics and experience interact: critical periods are genetically-controlled time windows in the brain in which certain experiences are dramatically more likely to be remembered and to influence later behavior.  In kittens, the critical period for positive effects of social experience is approximately three to eight weeks of age (with some variability, 2-12 weeks to be sure).  Evolutionarily, in the wild, this is the period in which kittens learn who their parents and siblings are: these are “friendlies” with whom you can safely socialize.  These are also “not-mates” thus preventing inbreeding issues.

So cats will generally only socialize well with siblings (who they experienced at 3-8 weeks old), and even this is true only in females… males become entirely nonsocial, except for brief periods for mating.  In captivity, it is VERY difficult to have more than one male in a household, even if they are castrated, unless they were socialized with a lot of other cats in the 3-8 week window.  And remember, this behavior and response is all on a continuum: there are plenty of examples of social male cats but of course, there are many examples of big problems as well.

So given that there is a critical period for socialization at 3-8 weeks, what does this mean for our companion cats?  A common issue is a kitten adopted from its litter prior to 12 weeks and who is wonderful with humans (who handled it in the socialization window), but attacks any other cat.  Or a young cat that was part of a feral litter, who is socialized only with its littermates and has a very hard time socializing with humans, whom it only encountered well after the socialization critical window, or other cats, with whom it was not socialized and perhaps has even had some negative, competitive interactions.

We have been talking about positive social experiences: how about negative or traumatic experiences?  The same effect works in this case: traumatic or unstable social experiences in the 3-8 week window have a much stronger, more lasting effect than the same experiences at other times.  A recent study, for instance, showed that poorly socialized cats exhibited higher levels of stress when housed in a social setting, whereas cats with a positive early history of socialization showed no differences in social stress in solitary or social housing situations.

So what does this tell us about introducing a new kitten into a household?  First, take into account the history.  In many cases, for instance in shelter adoptions, there is very little history, but if there is any information about the personalities of the parents, this may be important.  Then, what is known about the kitten’s early socialization?  Finally, how was the cat housed, and at what age, in the shelter, or even elsewhere?  All of this information will tell you something about how the cat will react to a social situation.

Then, when introducing a new kitten into a feline social setting, the two big rules are: Go Slow and Keep It Positive.  Introductions should proceed slowly, only as fast as the participants want.  Keep cats separated by doors, windows, furniture, or baby gates, and introduce them to each other slowly.  Keep it positive, make everybody want to play the “meet the new cat” game.  Provide food rewards or attention to reward good social behavior: make it a party!  But don’t push strange cats together: each bad interaction, hiss, or fight provides a negative connotation to the interaction, and enough of these just teach the cats to avoid each other as much as possible.  Finally, encourage socialization as early as possible: the more a kitten is handled (gently and without trauma, of course) by as many humans as possible, and the more different cats it encounters (again, in a positive way), the greater the chances of later problem-free social behavior.

When I read the September edition of the Animal Behavior Associates newsletter, I found a statistic that was quite alarming. It was estimated that 36% of the 81 million cats in the United States did not see a vet in 2006. Why are so many cats not receiving regular healthcare? Regular checkups are key to preventing future health conditions and potential causes for behavioral problems. It is likely because many people find trips to the vet to be a nightmare. The whole occasion is simply too stressful for their cat and for themselves. Therefore, I thought I would outline some basic tips about making a trip to the vet less traumatic on your feline friend.

For your cat, a trip to the veterinarian involves dealing with one stressful situation after another. They are put in a carrier, loaded into a car, and driven away from their familiar surroundings. They then arrive to an unfamiliar building full of the smells, sounds, and sights of other animals… and all of this just to be handled and examined by strangers. All these unfamiliar factors cause some level of anxiety in your cat, and that anxiety tends to accumulate. They likely only occur in the context of going to the vet, so each event begins to predict that more stressful events are to come. It is then no surprise that after a couple of trips to the vet, you now have an extremely anxious cat as soon as you pull out the carrier. However, there are things that you can do to make this anxiety-ridden trip less stressful for your feline friend. Here are some helpful tips:

Work on getting your cat used to their carrier. Place comfortable bedding inside and leave it out for them to explore. Put favorite toys or special treats inside. As they become used to the carrier, you can also start feeding them inside. DO NOT rush your cat into the carrier, and just close the door. Let your cat dictate the speed of the exercise. Once they are comfortable entering the carrier on their own, start closing the door for progressively longer amounts of time, reinforcing your cat while he is inside.

Get your cat used to riding in the car. Once they are calm going into their carrier, start taking them out for short car rides. Be sure to give them special treats while they are in the car. You do not have to go anywhere in particular, but this will get them used to being driven around, and they will learn that going into the car does not always mean they are going to the vet.

However, do go to the vet occasionally, even if you do not have an appointment. People often recommend that dogs should be taken to the vet just to get weighed and greeted by the staff to make it a positive experience, so why not do this with cats. Take them in; have them sit in the lobby for a bit while you give them treats. Have staff members give them treats, and pet them. Then just go home. We want these casual visits to be very positive for your cat.

Have your cat become more accustomed to be handled by strangers. Recruit neighbors / friends to come over to handle your cat. Similar to the carrier work explained above, do not push your cat. Allow your cat to move at his or her own pace. Steps in handling should be gradual. Reward them for coming to people, and allowing them to pet them. Once they are comfortable around these people, have the person slowly increase the intensity of handling by touching the paws and tail, then holding the paws, and so on. Constantly reward the cat as progress is made. We want body handling to be an extremely positive experience.

Doing these exercises will create positive associations with these different stressful situations. Make sure to use reinforcers that are high value (wet food, tuna fish, anchovy paste, spray cheese) and particularly in the beginning, keep your rate of reinforcement high. Doing the work now will make future routine trips a breeze, and emergency trips less hectic.

Do you have tips for getting your cat to the veterinarian that you’re willing to share? Maybe you have a funny story about taking your cat to the vet. We love to hear from our cat owners, so feel free to share an idea or a story.

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.