NATURAL
CAT BEHAVIOUR
The Cat's View
of Territory
Cats are territorial animals.
In the wild, a cat establishes an area where it sleeps and eats--its
home base--and where it hunts and mates--its home range. The territory
radiates from the home base and its size generally relates to the
availability of food. If food is plentiful, it does not need a large
home range, but if food is scarce, it does. The cat's territory
consists of a network of paths that are patrolled regularly on a
fairly fixed schedule. Cats mark their
territory by:
• Scratching (leaving
visual as well as a scent marks)
• Spraying
• Urine or feces deposits
• Rubbing
The spraying and urine and feces marking provides
other cats with information about the individual cat (eg., sex,
age, health) as well as when he was last there. Marking posts are
read like a newspaper and read frequently. The marking behavior
doesn't repel others, but it does result in temporal spacing in
the territory (time-sharing).Cats work hard to avoid chance encounters
with other cats which could lead to fighting and injury. As solitary
predators, they rely entirely on their own ability to catch prey.
If their hunting skills are impaired, they cannot survive. Marking
behaviors allow a number of cats to share the resources in a territory
without ever having to compete directly with one another. For example,
one cat may occupy a spot in the morning but leave it for another
cat to occupy in the afternoon.The cats in your home establish territories
just as their wild counterparts do. You might find it interesting
to note where each of your cats rests at different times of the
day and then check to see if this pattern holds true over a period
of a few days. It would also be interesting to see which cats time-share
with which other cats. A recent study of time-sharing in a house
of 14 neutered cats found that cats seem to choose their time-shared
spots with specific individuals of the same gender. (The exception
was mother cats who time-shared with their male kittens.)
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