Happy Pets

A cat’s sunning spots or favourite indoor resting places are high on the list of those to which it claims an inalienable right. However, with the demands of other cats in a multi-cat household, or of many close neighbours outdoors, it may not be able to establish an exclusive claim and has to accept that its rights are on a time-share basis, valid only at certain hours.

An animal’s territorial claims are closely related to its food requirements — the hunter must have a wide enough range to provide it with sufficient prey. Both farm cats and ferals in cities usually need a fairly large territory, although their diet may be topped up with snacks from friendly humans or by scavenging in dustbins. Most domestic cats, however, are not dependent upon the prey they catch having to hunt no further than their dish — and so frequently may have a comparatively restricted range. But there is a lower limit to this. Laboratory animals develop neuroses and belligerence when crowded together in too small a space (a condition that may also affect many of us who live in cities), and cats will always try to maintain their distance from one another, much as we do when standing in line waiting for a bus.

However, you will often see cats curled up together. They will almost certainly be cats of the same family, whether actual blood relations, members of a human-centred household, or feral cats belonging to a colony, which are frequently actual close relations.

In very heavily built-up areas such as city centres, free-ranging household cats have to fit in with these feral ranges, although their core area is in the home where they are fed. But pets in the suburbs, where the houses have individual self-contained gardens, tend to share their ranges to a much smaller extent. Indeed, the range may not extend much beyond the garden, with catless household gardens being divided between neighbouring claimaints. A newly arrived cat in such circumstances may have some difficulty in establishing its claim to its own backyard, if this has already been parcelled out, unless you give it help by chasing other cats away. A new unneutered tom will almost certainly have to do battle with established toms to decide his place in the local hierarchy, but once that is fixed may not have to battle again unless he later challenges a more dominant cat for its place, is himself challenged, or joins in the fights when another new cat arrives. Cats are not usually active in defence of their whole range, but they will be much more possessive about the more restricted core territory, and even females and neuters will defend it, though some housecats appear to see the dominant humans as doing this for them.

Ranges and territories should not be thought of as concentric areas around a particular spot. They may be most irregular shapes (though frequently making use of the pattern of man-made features, such as walls, paths, hedges and flower beds). They may utilize the top of a wall, or even the branches of a tree, without laying any claim to the areas on either side or below. They may claim their own backyard and that of the catless house next door, and then run across the road to include the front garden of a house several yards down on the other side. Such patterns make use of the spacing, but not the divisions, of human arrangements. On the other hand, family use of an area does appear to have some effect on what a female housecat recognizes as her natural, i.e., family, territory. If you rarely use the front garden except to walk up to the door, then the area might seem more reasonably to belong to the window- cleaner; though if you mow the grass or clip the hedge you have established a claim. Cats do not look at the details of your lease or bill of sale, they follow physical usage.

A cat’s territory does not remain constant. Changes in the local cat population will change the pressure on space. An aggressive tom may be allowed much greater intrusion than would be permitted to a female or neuter. Careful and continuous study would be necessary to establish how individual claims operate. It seems likely that a trespassing cat which does not offer any challenge may sometimes be tolerated provided it acknowledges the rightful claimant. When a housecat spends much of its time indoors or is allowed out only at certain times this will affect the pattern. Joint rights of way will be accepted, perhaps right across a territory even though a fringe path is rigorously defended. Remember, therefore, that if you notice a strange-looking man — with camera, binoculars and notebook to hand — surveying your garden you are not necessarily about to be burgled. The visitor may be a scientist engaged upon a study of territorial behaviour in the urban cat - or so he will say when the police arrive.

Cats of the same household may lay claim to very limited areas, and according to a strict pattern. Two cats, for instance, may both sleep on the owner’s bed but one of them claims the right to sole occupancy for the first half hour. Cats may follow a strict timetable for favourite locations.

Free-ranging cats in a neighbourhood frequently share a neutral meeting place outside all individual territories, where they gather at night to socialize. This probably helps to establish a group identity that reduces conflicts. Human parallels are not easy to draw: there are certainly plenty of neutral meeting places in most neighbourhoods - they are called bars - but they do not guarantee a lack of conflict, especially late at night.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
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• The Cat's Social Life, Communication, Relationship, Boundaries/ Territory
• Preparing for pussy
• Butterfly Fishes and Angelfishes
• Labyrinth Fishes/Family Anabantid

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 12:15 am and is filed under Cats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.