Basic course cat language
Thanks to scents and body language, a cat receives more about the world than by means of sounds. Because sound is the main communication tool for us, it seems that animals that receive and process information in other ways are sometimes slow-witted to us.
But another way of communicating is not so surprising for an animal that lives mostly solitary: who would a cat speak to, except for its kittens? A cat communicates remotely with congeners with odour signals and visual messages. Cats have very good observation ability.
They know immediately whether a congener is friendly or hostile by looking at the posture, long before a "meow" would be heard or before it results in physical contact.
This is how cats greet each other
As two friendly minded cats meet, they greet each other with a “nose kiss”. This greeting may ultimately determine whether they like each other, because despite the good start either one of them can decide that in the end, it doesn’t like the other that much.Most other males go out of the way of a dominant male. They recognize his territory by his scent marks that he sprays everywhere around him and rarely let it come to a confrontation. If that does happen, they sneak with fierce threatening signals towards each other, with stuffed hair, flattened ears, a high back, blowing and grunting, before they attack each other biting and scratching until one of them runs off.
In heat but criticalA female cat (in heat) that’s prepared to pair, will stand in doubt when she stands in front of a strange potent male for her. She just decides at the last moment whether she responds kindly of recalcitrant, and sometimes she just ignores the tomcat. He doesn’t give up of course, and when she didn’t already lose all interest, she thaws and gradually gets friendly. The two sniff each other's bottom and rub against each other’s head and sides. It takes a while before he goes one step further, and then the actual mating happens.
On the back is no submission
Territory fights among tomcats usually don’t go to extremes. The injuries they cause to each other, are rarely life threatening. For cats living together, most disputes remain limited to an eye battle. The least dominant animal gives in. Submission looks different in cats than in dogs. The defeated animal crouches, looks away and leaves. The gesture of surrender in dogs, lying on their backs, means rather the opposite in cats. A cat lying on his back is very defensible. He can bite and strike at once with four legs. Whoever has ever seen how powerful the hind legs can kick in on a toy, knows how careful you must be with a cat lying on his back. Moreover, most cats don’t like their abdomen is touched.
Potent and dominantAn unpleasant feature of potent cats is that they place odour flags on important locations. If cats feel threatened in their territory by a congener, they increase the number of odour flags, unfortunately even indoors. They spray urine or deposit faeces on the carpet rather than to bury them. Moreover, our room tigers demonstrate their dominance by scratching strongly and a lot. If a male is castrated then, he loses not only his potence but usually also the urge to manifest himself as a boss. Both male as well as female cats usually don’t place any odour flags anymore after the castration.
Meow
Although 'meowing' isn’t the main communication tool of cats, every child knows which animal it belongs to. Incidentally, it sounds much more like 'me', `meo' or 'muf' than the classic ‘meow’. Because cats quickly learn that people react better to sound than to eye or scent signals, they communicate more varied vocally with people than with conspecifics. Some breeds 'talk' more than others. Anyone who has a Siamese cat hears stories every day. Some Siamese comment on everything the boss does, which can actually start working on your nerves. It is not known why some breeds bring forth such "chatterboxes", nor what significance all this chatter has for the cat itself.
Misconduct and protestSometimes a cat emphatically indicates that you've done something wrong. In his way, he informs us that he is unwell, that he objects the living conditions or certain changes. He protested by impurity, high anxiety, reticence, or other abnormal behaviour. The correct meaning can hardly be learned from a book: you mostly need a lot of empathy and love for cats and cat psychology for it. In any case, rigor and violence will lead to nothing with a cat. A painful slap only means for a cat: "Go away and never come back." If he gets the chance, he will surely do this then too, or at least avoid people as much as possible. A too rigorous approach can forever spoil the friendship with a cat. Cats don’t easily forget and forgive!
Friend or foe?
- A cat that stares at another cat is dominant or hostile.
- There is no likely risk if a cat compliantly goes on the side. If cats come walking along with tail held high, they are in a friendly mood.
- Crouching slowly, coming sneaking along, usually doesn’t mean anything good.