Do you have a cantankerous cat and don't know what to do? In this article on our site we will teach you what would be the necessary advice to tame and tame a cantankerous cat.
Cats are generally very independent and solitary pets, although there is great individual variability. They also enjoy an "unfair" reputation, being considered as having unexpected reactions or directly as treacherous.
Unfortunately, these reactions are common in cats, but rather than being unexpected, most of the time they are misunderstood or even misunderstood, and can be provoked by their owners. Discover some tips to tame a cantankerous cat and start enjoying feline coexistence:
What is a cat's behavior like?
A cat is a solitary and territorial predator Its territory is the house or the place where it lives and shares it with some animal and with some human (not all, so some human member can be considered "non grata"). It tolerates the presence of other cats relatively well, although always with hierarchical tensions, because it does not develop a linear type (it would be the one that once it is defined who is the dominant, this is for everything).
This means that one cat may be dominant for access to food and the other for approaching its owner. The establishment of the hierarchy by resources is always done more or less aggressively, with stares or directly with aggression.
They like to sleep a lot and have short periods of activity and play (as they become more adults, they play less). They are not like dogs, which constantly seek the caress and play of their master. They will only do so at certain times and when they choose.
From the way normal cat behavior is being described it seems that they are all cantankerous. They compete for each of the resources more or less aggressively, he chooses the moments to share with the owner and is also lonely. However, there are very sociable cats, but there are also very aggressive ones, until now the behavior of an average cat has been described.
What triggers the cat's “unexpectedly aggressive” reactions?
Aggression after caress is common. That is, the owner comes to his house (for the cat it is his territory) and the cat runs to him. In principle, the body language of the cat indicates that it is friendly (tail straight up). The cat entertains itself by sniffing the owner's legs and begins to rub, from head to tail. At the sign of "love" the owner grabs the cat and it turns around and tries to run away, but the owner insists on loving him and the cat responds aggressively. Actually the cat is not welcoming us, he is marking us with his scent and canceling out the scent that may be brought in from the street or from other feline territories.
The Stares are also common triggers for this type of reaction. The stare between 2 cats indicates challenge and tension, which can trigger (both in a flight and in a fight. Humans like to stare at the face of another human, it is a sign of communication, we even smile (we show our teeth), for a cat this is a sign of threat.
The constant caress on his head and back goes from being a pleasant sensation to being unbearable in tenths of seconds (he has a large number of scent-generating glands in this area, as well as nerve receptors sensitive to touch and pressure). The cat usually withdraws when the caress begins to bother him, so you have to let him go.
How to make a cat not be so cantankerous?
The first thing is to know your natural behavior. A cat has never behaved like a dog and therefore the same responses cannot be expected from them; On the other hand, it must be taken into account that although it has lived with humans for thousands of years, it has not been domesticated like a dog. The cat can manage very well on its own, without depending on the owner, because it still retains its hunting instinct (a hunter has to be aggressive) and that quality is the that has been selected for thousands of years (hunting mice and rats, thus protecting human homes and crops).
Until barely 70 years ago, there were very few cat breeds, selection criteria based on beauty and behavior are relatively recent.
The second thing is to be aware that by being territorial, you mark and defend your territory. He doesn't urinate out of his drawer to bother, is expressing a behavior of saying what the border of his territory is or he is expressing stress. This behavior can be reduced or eliminated, but it can never be misunderstood.
The third thing is to use the immediate reward method for a behavior that you want to reinforce (operant conditioning with positive reinforcement). In cats (and in general in any animal) punishment is never advisable after performing a behavior that humans consider inappropriate.
You may also be interested in…
- Teaching your cat to use the scratching post
- Cat Training
- Tame a wild cat
