How do you know if your cats are playing or fighting — and if that’s a problem

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Two cats are playing
Zoom in / A new study finds that kittens engage in mutual wrestling (“play fighting”) more frequently than adult cats.

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Anyone who has more than one cat in the home knows that the occasional scuffle or outright cat fight will happen. But sometimes it can be difficult to determine whether the cats are fighting or just playing rough, because the interaction can be characterized by the trademark behaviors of both, according to The last paper Published in Scientific Reports. It’s very difficult to tell whether the fighting is just a fight or a sign that cats simply can’t get along, which leads to difficult decisions about how to separate the cats—or even whether to keep the cat at bay. Question.

In 2021, co-author Noema Gajdoš‑Kmecová, a veterinarian at the University of Veterinary Medicine and Pharmacy in Košice, Slovakia, and several colleagues published a report review paper Proposing the development of a common terminology and more of a “biopsychological” approach to the study of cat behavior – particularly when it comes to play behaviour. Previous studies have focused on a cat’s play activity, such as whether it is playing with a toy or another cat. But such an observation gives little insight into the function of this play and, by extension, the cat’s motives or emotional state.

“When one cat engages with another as an object or prey, this activity is about the previous cat seeking recognition of its own skills in relation to the manipulation of its physical environment (prey is not considered to be part of complex social relationships and thus the social environment of the individual),” they wrote in that paper. “However, when interaction between cats is reciprocal, it may serve to facilitate social learning and may be better described as reciprocal social play.” Because such interactions are dynamic, they argued that any functional classification system must be flexible enough to account for these nuances.

This new paper focuses on categorizing the alert behaviors of cats associated with play and fighting to better distinguish between the two. First, the team browsed YouTube for videos showing cats playing, cats fighting, cats fighting, and similar search terms. They also advertise on Facebook, asking users to submit videos of their cats engaging in play and/or fighting, or a combination thereof. The authors stress that this was only a pilot study, so they did not collect any additional information about the cats that appeared in those videos or the humans who filmed them. However, owners who submitted videos were asked not to provoke their cats into engaging in play or camera-aggressive behavior.

hostile confrontation.
Zoom in / hostile confrontation.

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After reviewing and selecting the videos based on various exclusion criteria, the authors considered 105 videos showing 210 cats interacting appropriately for further analysis. The behavior has been broken down into six general categories that will be familiar to cat owners everywhere: inactive body positions (squatting, sitting, or standing); wrestling with “harmless” chops, kicks, and kicks; chasing, with one cat chasing the other as if the other cat were prey, and/or a cat fleeing from a pursuing cat; other interactions (grooming, belly showing, sniffing, chasing, pouncing, etc.); non-interactive activities such as self-grooming, playing alone with a cat toy, drinking, or “zooming,” for example; and vocalization (growls, hisses, snarls, spits, squeals, and meows).

Once the analysis is complete, Gajdoš‑Kmecová et al. She identified three distinct types of cat interactions: playful, “biting,” and the intermediate category with a mixture of behaviors from the other two categories—playful wrestling is usually accompanied by vocalizations such as growling and hissing, and/or one cat chasing another cat to run away. More than half of the cats (56.2%) engaged in playful interactions, compared to 28.6% whose interactions were clearly hostile. Another 15.2 percent engaged in promiscuous behaviour.

The authors note that the playful category included an unusually high percentage of cats engaging in wrestling behavior (a common form of play for cats). Wrestling is less common among hostile adult cats, as they tend to avoid direct contact. There were some adult cats in the study that engaged in prolonged wrestling that was considered inherently playful, mainly because the behavior was reciprocal. The same was true of stalking behaviour, which tended to fall under hostile behaviour, unless there was a reciprocal element suggesting play—especially if there were no hostile sounds or ear or tail movements.

Brothers Ariel and Caliban have squabbles - which fall under the category of mixed play that can sometimes turn into fighting - but the mutual love is real.
Zoom in / Brothers Ariel and Caliban have squabbles – which fall under the category of mixed play that can sometimes turn into fighting – but the mutual love is real.

Sean Carroll

As for the middle class, Gajdoš‑Kmecová et al. She points out that this type of promiscuous behavior is more likely an indication of a temporary rift, rather than a true breakdown in feline relationships. For example, cats may start to engage in a playful interaction, but then one of them wants to stop playing and the other doesn’t. This is common in our house. Without human intervention, the situation could escalate into genuinely hostile behavior on the part of the cat (Ariel) who doesn’t want to continue playing – growling, hissing, running away – with the other cat (Caliban) in hot pursuit, thinking that’s all still part. from their game. The worst fights can end in defensive blows of the claws and lead to a scratch on the nose.

If these occasional squabbles are offset by mutual affectionate behavior, the cats’ long-term relationship is likely healthy, the authors calculate—that is, if they still sleep close to each other, caress each other, greet each other with erect ears, all signs that They consider them all part of the same social group or “tribe”. (Sometimes Ariel just needs her space.) “Our findings provide valuable practical evidence that can be used to help owners detect signs of feline stress in its early stages,” the authors conclude, which in turn can help “prevent major problems that may lead to abandonment of … one or both cats.”

DOI: Scientific Reports, 2023. 10.1038 / s41598-022-26121-1 (About DOIs).

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