Creating a healthy feline environment includes an understanding of the conditions most important to cats and how to enrich their home environment. Happy, healthy cats are far less likely to exhibit negative behaviors.
Provide a safe place for your cat. When too much life happens, cats seek refuge, not confrontation. Cardboard boxes and open carriers can be hideouts. Also closet shelves, wall shelves, any high perch can offer escape from daily stressors and scary stuff. Another safe space is a kitty cove under a bed fortified with storage bins and bulky items. In multi-cat households, particularly where individuals prefer not to hide together, multiple refuges may be necessary.
Provide separate spaces for feeding, litter boxes, resting and playing. Multi-cat households require multiples of everything including suitable numbers of things to scratch. Your cat’s needs should be easily accessible at all times without challenge from feline housemates or other pets in the home. Providing more options eliminates the stress of where to go to the bathroom, for example, when two feline housemates feel they each deserve first dibs on the only freshly scooped litter box. Or the distress of going hungry because the dog — again! — inhaled the cat’s food when no one was looking.
Provide opportunities for play and predatory behavior. Your cat is a small predator that really, really likes to hunt. Cats practice the search, stalk, pounce, bite sequence on each other, dogs, prey, and (maybe) you. Redirecting some of that drive with puzzle feeders, scattering food on the floor, or hiding food inside crumpled paper balls are a few ideas. Introducing feather or fur wand toys that mimic flying or ground running prey is a fun bonding activity and an effective feline stress reliever. Allow the cat to catch the prey and reward with treats (or a meal) for good hunting.
Be positive, consistent, and predictable. Let the cat initiate interaction with you. Speak calmly, rub their head and cheeks, and allow the cat to control the pace. Be consistent in your pet care routine and positive in your behavior. Cats love routine. Being predictable builds trust giving cats a sense of control over their world.
It’s all about smell. Cats lay claim to territory, objects, and you with pheromones from scent glands on their bodies. These scent glands are on the chin, lips, cheeks, forehead, lower ears, base of tail, top of tail, rear end, and paw pads. Luckily these pheromones are undetectable to the relatively primitive human nose, freeing you to enjoy endless opportunities for unselfconscious expressions of affection while indulging your cat’s olfactory need for a sense of security and belonging.
On the flip side, the cat’s use of scent to maintain social equilibrium can cause problems in the human-feline relationship. With paws stretched wide, claws extended, scratching releases pheromones that give off a strong scent that reassures cats their environment is safe. Usually not a problem until this innate drive is directed at your furniture. Redirect the urge by placing an alternative (acceptable to you and the cat) next to the target furniture. Pull an article of clothing from the hamper, stroke your cat with it, then use it to scent the new scratch station.
Another way cats scent mark, most memorably and unpleasantly, is with their urine. Eliminating outside the box is usually triggered by social conflict between feline housemates, or a litter box issue, or an intruder cat viewed through a window, or a new object in the home. Or something else. Cats will urinate outside the box to communicate they feel stressed or under threat. And cannot make it better without your help.
THE MORE YOU KNOW
Cat owners should try to avoid using strong cleaners and detergents on the pet’s bedding and other washables. And choose unscented litter for your cat’s box. The feline sense of smell is 14x better than ours, which means the scented litter you prefer could be 14 times more disgusting to the cat. Baking soda is the perfect odor-eater for a cat’s litter box. A fantastic all-natural cleaning agent that absorbs odors, it is edible, biodegradable, non-toxic, preservative-free, water-soluble, and odorless.
Wiping a cloth on your cat’s face and cheeks, then using it to scent a new object, or a new pet, or a current pet returning from the vet’s office, can help cats cope with the stress of change.
Save those strong, scented detergents and cleaners for places and spaces you want to discourage feline walk-ons, like kitchen counters and dining tables. Allow surfaces to dry thoroughly to avoid accidental ingestion during grooming.
By encouraging normal behavior, you are gifting cats the opportunity to be cats in a human world without judgment or punishment. Meow-za, what a concept! Good luck.