Having fun or are your cats fighting? Here are some ways to tell

Are your cats fighting or real fur?

It turns out that certain behaviors in domestic cats can be telltale signs of being friendly, ferocious or something in between, researchers report on January 26. Scientific reports.

“We hear that a lot from cat owners,” says cat behavior expert Mikel Delgado of Feline Minds, a cat behavior consulting company in Sacramento, Calif., who was not involved in the study. “So I’m excited to see what researchers are doing at this point.”

Scientists have studied cats’ social relationships — with other cats and people — but it can be confusing whether two cats are playing or fighting, says veterinarian and cat behavior researcher Noema Gajdoš-Kmecová of the University of Veterinary Medicine and Pharmacy in Košice, Slovakia (SN: 9/23/19).

Sometimes cat owners miss the signs of relationship time because they think their pets are just playing, which can lead to stress and illness in their animals, she says. Sometimes, owners bring their cats back after fighting with bad care.

To assess and categorize the interactions, Gajdoš-Kmecová and colleagues watched approximately 100 different cats in pairs competing with each other. Gajdoš-Kmecová looks at six different types of behavior, struggling and staying still, about a third of the film. She then watched all the videos and noted how often each cat exhibited one of the specified behaviors, and for how long. By running statistical analyzes on behavior, he identified three types of interactions between pairs of puppies: playful, aggressive, and average.

To confirm the outcome, other members of the team also watched the videos and reported the interactions between the cats.

A number of obvious connections have emerged. Quietly wrestling, as suggested by sport, while chasing and vocalizations, such as grunts, hisses, or screeches, imply aggressive fights.

Intermediate interactions had elements of both playful and aggressive contests, but primarily included long-term action from one cat to another, such as asking for a cat or a groom. This could indicate that during bouts one cat wants to keep playing while the other doesn’t, with the more playful cat slowly nodding to see if its partner wants to continue, the authors say.

This work provides initial insights into cat interactions, Gajdoš-Kmecová says, but it’s just the beginning. In the future, he plans to study more subtle behaviors, such as ear twitching and tail wagging. Both Gajdoš-Kmecová and Delgado also stress that a contentious meeting does not necessarily mean a cat-astrophic relationship.

“This is not just about one transaction,” says Gajdoš-Kmecová. Owners “really have to look at the different, complex interactions at multiple stages of a cat’s life and put it in context.”