I have a very unusual lifestyle for a house cat: I enjoy wearing dresses, I get excited when my human sets up lights and a camera for a video shoot. Cat shows are like a second home to me, and I’m friendly with just about any human who wants to pet me.
The one thing I’m not very good at is…relating to other cats. Or behaving like most other cats in general. I love boxes now, but at first I didn’t know what to do with them. I love to play with my human, but I don’t really know how to play with other cats.
I’ve spent so much time with humans that sometimes my own human wonders if I have forgotten how to Cat. So she looked into it, and here’s the truth about cats and cat behavior.
Most Basic Cat Behavior Is Instinctual and Not Learned
Many of the things cats do — the actions people identify as cat-like — come from instinct. Purring and kneading appear very early in kittenhood. We adapt to litter box use because of our natural behavior around elimination and digging. Scratching surfaces, our habit of perching on high surfaces, and our attraction to moving water also come from instinct.
Feline body language is species typical and not taught: the raised tail indicating familiarity, ears back signifying fear or irritation. Rubbing against items or other cats or people to leave scent markers. Yes, even airplane ears, that classic sign of discomfort, come from instinct!
The hunting instinct is another thing cats have from birth. But there’s more to hunting than just instinct.
When Instinct and Learned Behavior Combine
While cats instinctively stalk and hunt small prey, or in the case of most house cats, toys, hunting is also a skill, and not every cat is good at it.
Mother Cats Teach Their Kittens How to Hunt
In the wild, hunting means survival. So if a kitten is raised outside by a mother who has relied on her own wits, and not humans, to survive, they will learn first class hunting skills. A mother cat that has not had to hunt to survive still knows how to do it, but her skillset may not be as sharp, and it could affect her kittens’ hunting abilities. Maybe that’s why I’m such a lousy hunter — I never really learned from my pedigreed mother.
Social Skills: The Area Where Cats Really Can Forget How to Cat…Or Never Learn
While all cats are born with basic body language — tail postures, nose touching, mutual grooming (allogrooming), and cheek rubbing — other social skills are learned. It starts in kitten hood, and yes, skills can be forgotten over time.
I’m a prime example. Although I grew up with a mom and siblings, once I came home to my human, my focus was on her. I did live with two other cats, but they were much older than me. They had settled into a routine, and I wasn’t really a big part of their lives. Since I related more to humans than them, I really didn’t have a reason to practice my social skills.
Then, since they were much older, they passed away while I was still fairly young — 5 or 6 years old. So later on, when I met the peach kitty, a lot of times I didn’t know how to react to him. When he wanted to play, I didn’t understand. I had no idea how to respond to his signs of affection, so I did something that is actually the typically cat version of polite: I just sat there. I didn’t get upset or angry or smack him — because I liked him! It’s just that I didn’t know what to do.
When a Kitten Never Learns Social Skills
Many people who have worked in cat rescue for a while have encountered this situation. They wind up with a very, very young solo kitten that they have to raise without a mom. While the kitten has all the instincts of any cat, they don’t learn the social boundaries that would help them live with other cats.
Kittens come equipped with predatory behaviors such as stalking, pouncing and biting, but solo kittens don’t learn to organize those behaviors into actual hunting skill. This bleeds into playing and socializing. Learning how hard to bite during play is partly social. The reaction of littermates helps teach kittens when they’ve gone too far, and solo kittens don’t get that training.
A solo kitten may not know when they are playing too rough or when another cat wants to end a play session. Plus they could become overly dependent on the person raising them, unless the person knows to properly socialize a solo kitten.
A solo kitten, raised by a human from birth, may come the closest to not knowing how to cat. But they still have cat instincts, cat reflexes and body language. They will still have their catness, if you will.
All this comes down to one thing: no matter what a cat’s life is like, or who they are living with, or if they never interact with other cats, they will never really forget how to cat. Not even a cat like me, who dresses up, performs for the camera, and loves people more than other cats. I’m still very much a cat, and I know it. I’m just a little bit quirkier than your average cat.
