RESEARCH - Cats Prefer Humans Over Food

Dog owners like to say their pets are much friendlier and more dependant on them than cats, but new research says otherwise.

The study concludes the majority of cats will choose human contact over food.

The researchers, from Oregon State University, took 50 cats from people’s homes and shelters and deprived them of human contact, scent, food and toys for several hours.

Then they introduced them to stimuli from these four categories and observed what the cats chose.

Most cats picked human contact over the other choices, with food coming in second.

"While it has been suggested that cat sociality exists on a continuum, perhaps skewed toward independency, we have found that 50% of cats tested preferred interaction with the social stimulus even though they had a direct choice between social interaction with a human and their other most preferred stimuli from the three other stimulus categories," researchers Kristyn Vitale Shreve, Lindsay Mehrkam and Monique Udell wrote.

This is similar to recent research reported in InfoStream showing dogs prefer praise from their humans over food - maybe cats and dogs are more similar than one might think.

RESEARCH - DNA Shows Cats Lived With Vikings and the First Farmers

Humans know very little about the domestication of cats - especially when compared to domestication of dogs.

(pexels.com)

Some people even question if the independent, often stubborn felines are domesticated at all as they run to do their cat’s bidding.

Scientists debate their domestication because there is so little information, it’s unclear whether a cat’s behaviour and anatomy are clearly distinct from those of wild relatives.

A new study of the DNA of 209 cats found at 30 archaeological sites across Europe, the Middle East and Africa has provided some clues to the domestication and global spread of house cats.

Eva-Maria Geigl, an evolutionary geneticist at the Institut Jacques Monod in Paris, and her team presented the study at the 7th International Symposium on Biomolecular Archaeology in Oxford, UK.

According to the researchers, cats may have lived among ancient farmers, mariners and even Vikings.

Some DNA samples were from up to 15,000 years ago which puts them in the Mesolithic period when humans lived as hunter gatherers - before agriculturalization.

Researchers found:

• In the Middle East, wild cats of a particular mitochondrial lineage grew with the first farming communities, stretching to the eastern Mediterranean.
• A mitochondrial lineage common among Egyptian cat mummies from the 4th century BC to the 4th century AD eventually spread to reach Bulgaria, Turkey, and sub-Saharan Africa.
• The lineage of the Egyptian cat mummies was also found at a Viking site from roughly the 8th – 11th century in northern Germany.

The researchers suggest cats grew in two waves.

The Middle Eastern wild cats were attracted to the grain piles of early farming communities which attracted rodents, and the farmers were happy for the rodent control and may have begun to tame the cats.

Thousands of years later, cats descended from those in Egypt rapidly spread around Africa and Eurasia.

“There are so many interesting observations” in the study, Pontus Skoglund, a population geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts told Nature. “I didn’t even know there were Viking cats.”

Geigl’s study focused on mitochondrial DNA which traces a single maternal lineage.

Skoglund believes that more can be learned if a study was done on nuclear DNA which provides even more information about an individual’s ancestors.

Geigl’s team did look at nuclear DNA - they analyzed nuclear DNA sequences known to give tabby cats striped or blotched coats, and found that the mutation responsible did not appear until the Medieval period.

After such fascinating results from mitochondrial DNA, Geigl hopes to sequence more nuclear DNA from ancient cats. Her biggest challenge is funding for the new study.

RESEARCH - Cats Are Healthier When They Work for Their Food

A recent study out of the University of California Berkeley showed that food puzzles, which take advantage of the feline hunting instinct and make them work for their food, result in happier and healthier cats.

Published in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, the study states that foraging for food makes cats more active, they experience reduced levels of stress, and become less demanding of their owners.

The researchers describe over 30 case studies within their own practice where food puzzles positively impacted a variety of issues including aggressive behaviour, antisocial behaviour, obesity, inappropriate urination, anxiety or depression when left alone, and even stalking the household guinea pigs.

One sixteen-year-old obese cat lost 32% of her body weight in 18 months and began to interact and forage with the new kittens in the home after being fearful and antisocial.

A three-year-old British short hair who had been biting the owner with no warning when anticipating meals or not getting attention, completely stopped this behaviour after six months of using mobile and stationary food puzzles.

There are a variety of food puzzles on the market for cats.

In July, InfoStream featured the innovative NoBowl system which is made to look like mice. The NoBowl is an example of a mobile puzzle which requires cats to push, roll or manipulate the puzzle.

With a stationary puzzle Felines learn to navigate a board. Most often they have to fish food out of the puzzle with their paws.

Owners can even make their own puzzles if they are the DIY types.

Figure 1

Homemade mobile (a), homemade stationary (b), purchased stationary (c) and purchased mobile (d) food puzzles. Courtesy of Mikel Delgado (a,c), Leticia Dantas (b) and Ingrid Johnson (d)

Cats can be particular about which type of puzzle they prefer - as they can be particular about many other aspects of their lives - so trial and error may be necessary to find the best puzzle.

Some cats may also like variety so alternating between different puzzles can keep them happy and interested.

Food puzzles were originally created to provide enrichment for captive zoo and laboratory animals. It’s interesting they are now being used to benefit the health of domesticated cats and dogs as pet owners strive to make their pets’ lives as positive and fulfilling as possible.

INNOVATION - Feeding the Cat Just Got More Interesting

Bringing all the goodness of the great outdoors inside will help ensure domestic cats are getting the best when it comes to meal time.

(NoBowl)

That's the thinking behind the NoBowl creation – an indoor hunting system for cats - by veterinarian, Liz Bales.

The Philadelphia vet hopes mimicking cats' natural feeding habits outdoors will mean less indoor issues for owners to deal with, especially the so-called scarf-and-barf syndrome.

“They need portion control. They need regular exercise. They really should be in charge of their own feeding schedule,” Bales told the New York Times. “All these factors boil down to cats should not be eating from bowls.”

Bales says NoBowl isn't just about trying to eliminate the icky need for owners to contend with cat puke but about the health of felines especially at a time when research shows nearly 60% of cats are overweight or obese.

While most would-be fixes have focused on lower-calorie food or portion control, Bales says the solution isn't about making meal time play time but instead should be a return to the wild ways which kept felines in fine form.

Indoor living, touted by many as the most responsible way to keep a cat and offer it a longer life than it would have if permitted to go outdoors, suppresses cats' natural hunting instincts, Bales explained to the New York Times.

In their natural environment, cats eat about a dozen times a day, dining on delicacies like mice and birds and the NoBowl Feeding System is designed to simulate cats' natural feeding habits.

“When cats are fed from a bowl, they are denied the ability to fulfill (the hunting) instinct,” the NoBowl website states.

“Their bodies are often over nourished while their instincts are starved. A cat's frustrated hunting instincts are commonly redirected into negative behaviours like obesity, vomiting, destructive behaviour, inter-cat aggression and maybe even urinating outside the litter box. While veterinarians have known this for a long time, there has been no safe and effective way to help cats hunt inside of the home.”

Cat owners opting for the system ditch the traditional bowl and instead put small portions of dry food into five plastic containers (wrapped in stretchy, grey fabric and made to look like a mouse,) and hide them for the cat.

So rather than strolling to the big, ol' bowl, the kitty has to work for its dinner.

That puts puss on the hunt for food and when they find it requires them to bat the pouch around in order for food to fall out.

“Some cats just roll it,” Bales says “But with other cats, it’s a full-on rodeo.”

The feeding option is already getting props from professionals.

Dr. Carlo Siracuse with the Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, says the real world doesn't see cats have their meals rolled out on the red carpet and it does see them toss about their prey as part of the meal-time process.

“The behaviour pattern is written in the genes of the animal, which means that this is a behavioural need,” Siracusa told the Times. “Paying attention to not just the amount of food, but to the feeding behaviour is a very new concept for veterinary medicine.”

So impressed with the simple but cutting-edge concept, Siracusa joined the NoBowl advisory board.

While some might find the process of stuffing the containers with food and then hiding them somewhat cumbersome, there seem to be many willing to put in the extra work if it means improving their cat's health - with about 3,500 NoBowl customers, so far.

There have been interactive feeding tools for dogs for a while - Kong Wobbler, Starmark Chew Ball, Buster Food Cube, Pet Safe Busy Buddy to name a few.

And if such novel feeding systems are a way to improve pets' health, that is a welcome advantage given the plight of pets these days.

A 2015 Association for Pet Obesity Prevention survey found 58% of cats and 53% of dogs were overweight – yet 90 % of cat owners and 95% of pooch owners incorrectly identified their pet as being in the normal weight category.

The NoBowl retails for $60.

By Nadia Moharib

Nadia is an animal lover who has adopted everything from birds to hamsters, salamanders, rabbits, fish and felines. She has written about all-things-pets for years and was a long-time editor of a pet magazine in a daily newspaper which featured a Q & A column, Ask Whit, penned by her pooch (ghost written, of course.) The serial dog owner lives in Calgary, Alberta and most days can be found at a dog park picking up after her rescue pooch, Scoots.

INTERVIEW - Cat Tracker Researcher, Brandon McDonald

There is no shortage of animal tracking devices that can help you keep track of your cat or dog when you’re not looking. But scientists in both the U.S. and South Australia are taking this interest in roving felines further with the Cat Tracker project – which seeks to observe the habits of outdoor cats and determine how these cats impact their natural environments.

The U.S. project is a partnership between the Your Wildlife team and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and has expanded to South Australia.

The U.S. division has broadened their research to include the ‘Cat Personality Test’ and the ‘Cat Diet Test’. Like Cat Tracker, all these projects are reliant on the participation of cat owners.

InfoStream caught up with Brandon McDonald, an undergraduate student in Zoology at North Carolina State University, who has become heavily involved with the project this year and is also working on the personality survey and the diet study.

InfoStream (IS): What is Cat Tracker?

Brandon McDonald (BM): Cat Tracker is a citizen science project designed to allow us to see where outdoor cats are going, and then using that information to ask and answer questions about how they are affecting natural environments.

It was initially developed due to a friendly bet actually, Dr. Kays had leftover GPS units from a separate project where ocelots had been tracked, and he asked a colleague, Dr. Rob Dunn, how far his cat, Chicha, went. Dr. Dunn didn’t think she went far at all, sticking around his own and his immediate neighbor’s yards, while Dr. Kays thought it would be much farther than that.

So they hooked her up in a harness with the GPS unit and ran it for about a week. During that period Dr. Dunn and his wife left for the weekend while a neighbor watched over their cat, which still had access to the outdoors through a cat door.

When looking at the data afterwards, they noticed that Chicha had traveled a pretty far distance, which they initially thought was a GPS error. When they looked a little more closely though, they realized that she had visited their old house while they were gone. It was about a mile from where they were currently living.

Seeing this sparked more interest about how other cats might be traveling and they created the project. The intention of the project was to determine what factors affected cat movement, as there were only a few similar studies at the time, most of which had tracked only a few cats.

IS: Who is the audience for Cat Tracker?

BM: We want to be accessible to a wide range of people. Our primary audiences are cat owners and other scientists, though we hope that many people will take an interest in what we are doing.

IS: What is the end goal for Cat Tracker and what purpose could it serve?

BM: Our end goal is to understand the factors affecting cat movements, and use the information we obtain from looking at the ranges, diets, and personalities of individual cats to determine ecological consequences.

For example, a cat who has both been tracked, and participated in the diet study can give us information on what native species may be at risk from predation. We can use the tracking map to get an idea of what types of habitat the cat is venturing into, and then compare isotope information on the species we expect to find in those habitats to the results from the cat we obtain in the diet study.

Using the personality data as well, we can try to find patterns between what types of cats are more likely to go farther or hunt more, which could be an excellent predictor of impact.

Altogether, the information we obtain can be used to inform both pet owners and potentially policy makers on how best to manage cats.

IS: Are there any significant findings you could share with us?

BM: What we’ve discovered so far is that about 90% of cats tend to stick within a less than five hectare (12.35 acre) home range. Most cats also stick to suburban areas, rather than venturing far into neighboring forested tracts.

The remaining 10% of cats we call “rogue cats.” They have home ranges greater than, sometimes much greater than five hectares.

So far we haven’t seen much of a difference in sex, age or location. However, we haven’t tracked many rural cats, nor have we tracked a large number of cats outside of the eastern US.

The diet and personality studies are relatively new right now, so I’m afraid we haven’t started analyzing our findings yet. We’re trying to push both studies right now.

© Cat Tracker

© Cat Tracker

© Cat Tracker

By Lindsay Seewalt

Lindsay is an experienced journalist and mother of three whose heart and home is always open to a four-legged friend. With her Corgi, Angie, as household editor-in-chief, Lindsay gives back to the animal planet through the written word on anything and all ado about pets. She is passionate about topics regarding animal welfare and responsible pet ownership, which she aims to instill in both her readers and children to be compassionate animal lovers who are conscious and considerate that furry friends around the globe deserve a voice.

RESEARCH - Cats Understand Simple Physics

A recent study in Tokyo, Japan that finds cats have the ability to understand simple physics and the principle of cause and effect lends new meaning to the idea that cats always land on their feet.

Experiments run out of Kyoto University suggest that cats may be able to predict the presence of an object through sound. 

Researchers shook boxes in front of cats, some with an accompanying rattling sound and some without; cats stared longer at the boxes that produced sound and also at the boxes that produced an unexpected result once flipped.

"Cats use a causal-logical understanding of noise or sounds to predict the appearance of invisible objects," lead researcher Saho Takagi explained in a news release.

The precursor to this researcher conducted by this team concluded that cats were able to predict the presence of an invisible object based on sound.

This ability of a cat – to be able to infer presence based on sound – is linked to their innate hunting capabilities, likely because they are nocturnal creatures that stake out prey in locations with poor visibility.

Further research includes establishing what it is cats see in their minds when they hear noises and what they interpret about the pending object (size, quantity).

By Lindsay Seewalt

Lindsay is an experienced journalist and mother of three whose heart and home is always open to a four-legged friend. With her Corgi, Angie, as household editor-in-chief, Lindsay gives back to the animal planet through the written word on anything and all ado about pets. She is passionate about topics regarding animal welfare and responsible pet ownership, which she aims to instill in both her readers and children to be compassionate animal lovers who are conscious and considerate that furry friends around the globe deserve a voice.

Extraordinary Cat Predicts and Comforts the Dying

The plaque on the wall of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island reads, “For his compassionate hospice care, this plaque is awarded to Oscar the Cat.”

Since staff adopted Oscar as a kitten, he’s shown an uncanny ability to know when residents are going to die.

If physicians or nursing home staff see him lying on a patient’s bed, they believe it’s an almost absolute indicator of impending death and allows them the time to notify family members.

Oscar has also provided companionship to those who might have otherwise died alone.

Dr. David Dosa, a geriatrician who works with Oscar, wrote an essay called ‘A Day in the Life of Oscar the Cat’ in the New England Journal of Medicine.

He surveys Mrs. T. She is clearly in the terminal phase of illness, and her breathing is labored. Oscar's examination is interrupted by a nurse, who walks in to ask the daughter whether Mrs. T. is uncomfortable and needs more morphine. The daughter shakes her head, and the nurse retreats. Oscar returns to his work. He sniffs the air, gives Mrs. T. one final look, then jumps off the bed and quickly leaves the room. Not today.

Making his way back up the hallway, Oscar arrives at Room 313. The door is open, and he proceeds inside. Mrs. K. is resting peacefully in her bed, her breathing steady but shallow. She is surrounded by photographs of her grandchildren and one from her wedding day. Despite these keepsakes, she is alone. Oscar jumps onto her bed and again sniffs the air. He pauses to consider the situation, and then turns around twice before curling up beside Mrs. K.

One hour passes. Oscar waits. A nurse walks into the room to check on her patient. She pauses to note Oscar's presence. Concerned, she hurriedly leaves the room and returns to her desk. She grabs Mrs. K.'s chart off the medical-records rack and begins to make phone calls.

Within a half hour the family starts to arrive. Chairs are brought into the room, where the relatives begin their vigil. The priest is called to deliver last rites. And still, Oscar has not budged, instead purring and gently nuzzling Mrs. K. A young grandson asks his mother, “What is the cat doing here?” The mother, fighting back tears, tells him, “He is here to help Grandma get to heaven.” Thirty minutes later, Mrs. K. takes her last earthly breath. With this, Oscar sits up, looks around, then departs the room so quietly that the grieving family barely notices.

This essay was published in 2007 and at that time Oscar had presided over the deaths of more than 25 residents in two years.

He continues his work at the Steere House and Dr. Dosa has gone on to write a book about him - Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat.

How to Communicate With Your Feline Friends

(Cheryl Wallach)

You might be right in expecting to communicate with your cat but feline experts suggest they are less vocal than your average dog.

Instead, cats are more apt to read body language and communicate by what they show not what they say.

Communicating with the cat, albeit entirely plausible, is “not as easy as learning to speak dog,” John Bradshaw, author of Cat Sense and co-author of an upcoming book on feline training told Atlas Obscura.

Cats come by non-verbal communication quite naturally – from day one the mother-kitten relationship is almost entirely based on body language and odours.

Some studies show “meowing is basically unheard of in feral cat colonies,” and is deemed to be a ruse they created to get the attention of humans, Atlas Obscura reports.

Humans, typically, are verbal when it comes to communication and also rely on tone and facial expression to convey and read messages. It works to some extent with dogs but with cats, who have very few facial muscles, it isn't so easy.

Bradshaw says you might want to rethink a chat with the cat. “Actually, people do meow at their cats, that's quite harmless, but I don't think it does much for the cat,” he says.

Bradshaw says while meowing won't make much sense in any attempted conversation between a cat and its human, a soft “vocalization ... like a little bird noise or chirrup, brrrrip” which mimics a way of cat-to-cat greeting might be enough to do some bonding.

Much research shows with the cat, the tail is where it is at – a number of messages are conveyed via tail movements.

But that is, clearly, a one-sided conversation when the tail-less human is at the table. “The one thing we can't do is raising our tails vertically, which is probably the most important signal a cat can give to another cat,” says Bradshaw.

So, what happens when you mix non-chatty cats with very verbose humans?

Mikel Maria Delgado, who studies human/pet behaviour and specializes in cat behaviour, doesn't dismiss the fact cats might be gleaning information from humans' expressions.

In Atlas Obscura, she cites studies which show cats behave differently when their owner displays happy or angry emotional clues and that “extremes of behaviour” - be it angry or happy voice tones or exaggerated facial expressions - do resonate with some cats.

Still Delgado warns against reading too much into the findings.

Rather than it being bonafide communication, she suggests, it could be a cat “following a very basic associative pattern” and only caring about an owner's “emotions in so far as how those emotions have a predictable effect on the cat.”

“This could just be a learned history, associating angry voice with bad things and happy voice with good things,” she says.

When it comes to training, Delgado and Bradshaw concede it isn't nearly as easy with cats as it is with dogs. But anyone who owns a cat knows some can be trained (teaching kitty to use the toilet instead of the litter box is a common and prime example.)

A recent Washington Post article profiled a cat who was successfully 'clicker trained' (by the 'click' of her owner's tongue) to sit up on her lap and cuddle.

“It's sadly easy to teach a cat to sit,” Delgado says. “When you pick things they kind of do anyway, it only takes a few minutes.”

You can also train cats to respond to specific words like 'sit' and 'high five,' but save your breath because cats respond better to gestures than to words and would typically respond better to someone holding a hand up rather than saying a command.

And keep in mind felines have short attention spans so training sessions are best if brief. “You have to figure out when the cat is receptive, because 90 percent of the time they won’t be,” says Bradshaw.

Other studies show ways in which cats behaviour is meant to send a message.

They include; a cat rubbing against you to mark you as his/her property, playful heading-butting as a show of affection and rhythmically kneading with his or her paws, alternating between the right and left feet, as a sign of happiness, contentment, or playfulness.

Some suggest a cat licking you is the ultimate sign of trust and if your cat tries to eat your hair, she may be trying to "groom" you, say she really loves you and, perhaps, suspects you need a bath.

By Nadia Moharib

Nadia Moharib is an animal lover who has adopted everything from birds to hamsters, salamanders, rabbits, fish and felines. She has written about all-things-pets for years and was a long-time editor of a pet magazine in a daily newspaper which featured a Q & A column, Ask Whit, penned by her pooch (ghost written, of course.) The serial dog owner lives in Calgary, Alberta and most days can be found at a dog park picking up after her rescue pooch, Scoots.

When good pets go bad

Your once calm and quiet Golden Retriever has started barking and chewing the kids toys. Is it a change that has developed with age? Been learned from other dogs? Or is this new behaviour something you may have unknowingly introduced... 

InfoStream Guest Author Barbara Walmer provides strategies for behaviour reinforcement in pets. 

Your dog is a part of your family.  This is definitely the way most people feel about their pets.  Do you expect that a member of your family could display inappropriate or aggressive behaviour?  Many families handle both human and animal members of their families differently when they exhibit behaviour that we label as inappropriate or aggressive.  Ignoring, re-directing, punishing, and disassociating are all methods different people utilize. 

Behaviour is constantly changing, in both humans and animals.  We do what works for us, on both an emotional and practical level.  To keep behaviour strong it needs to be reinforced.  If an animal is not reinforced for a certain set of behaviours, they are likely to change strategies.  For example, a dog who lies quietly on its dog bed is ignored will change its behaviour to getting up and barking, in order to get attention. 

Remember dogs are social animals who want to be a part of the action, which includes verbal and physical interaction.  We often are passive when behaviour that is exhibited is “appropriate”, but react to behaviour that is “inappropriate”.  Often behaviour problems start with small behaviour changes that go unrecognized or ignored for a period of time until they become problematic.  At this point, an animal has practiced the behaviour sequence many times and been reinforced (by the environment or people).  This is typically when people come to seek guidance. 

The good news, is behaviour is constantly changing. The bad news is the animal is finding the current behaviour pattern reinforcing and effective.  We have to change this dynamic in many situations to allow the animal to find other behaviours (typically ones they did before) more reinforcing.

As humans, we can contribute to undesirable behaviour by not acknowledging it.  The sooner we recognize behaviour changes and seek help with an accredited trainer the better it is for all.  Behaviour continues to change.  Be aware!

- Barbara Walmer CPDT-KSA, CBCC-KA, KPA CTP, ACDBC