Feline Psychology and Communication

PetSpeak by the editors of "Pets: Part of the Family"

This book is full of interesting insights into pet behavior. With chapters on the different senses, you can better understand things like why your cat never seems to see that bird in the backyard you're pointing at but often seems to know just when you're about to get up from your chair. Learn more about your cat's body language, with sections on whiskers, eyes, ears, and tails. And numerous chapters on various behavior areas (finicky eating, fear of strangers, kneading and nursing, etc.) Oh yeah, there's lots of stuff on dogs too, but I skipped those parts.

Know Your Cat's Purr Points: The Art Of Cat Massage by Margaret Woodhouse 

I had trouble deciding whether to put this book in this category, or in with the Healthcare books, or maybe even in Humor. This is a tiny little book, but it's got some interesting ideas for giving your cat a massage. Some techniques are tried and true (my cat loves the "Interwhisker Side Step,"  with a Purrometer rating of V and Purr Register rating of 5—top ratings), but others can be downright dangerous (there's no way I can do "The Plunge" on Banzai, even if it does have high rankings—the tummy is off limits). The author does include cautions, or Claw Points, including, "Never attempt an antifurwise application unless otherwise instructed." Each technique is accompanied by cute drawings. Really, the point of massage or simple petting is to bond with your kitty. See the review of "A Cat Named Darwin" below for an eloquent way to put this. So if you try some new techniques that really work for you and your cat, you've added another way to share time and communicate with each other.

The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats: A Journey Into the Feline Heart by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

This is a new book from the author of Dogs Never Lie About Love and When Elephants Weep. His experience with cats leads him to believe that cats have nine primary emotions—narcissism, love, contentment, attachment, jealousy, fear, anger, curiosity, and playfulness—although they seem capable of other emotions as well. He makes a case that most of the cat's personality traits and emotions might be rooted in feline history and evolution. For example, what we think of as aloofness or indifference (he includes these traits in the chapter on narcissism) could be a natural result of cat evolution. Wild cats evolved as fairly solitary animals who therefore needed to depend on themselves above all. The author adds:

"Perhaps we have a tendency to interpret as smugness, or indifference, or superiority, or superciliousness, or disdain, or aloofness, or whatever other negative word we can think of, what is really a form of self-satisfaction—that is, that the cat is happy to be himself."

And after all, isn't it that sense that a cat is truly comfortable in his own skin part of what attracts us to him?

The Character of Cats: The Origins, Intelligence, Behavior, and Stratagems of Felis Silvestris Catus by Stephen Budiansky

Referencing research in cats' physical nature and social behavior, the author also relies on human emotion in describing how cats have evolved from jungle creatures to homebodies sharing their lives with humans. He says, "Cats are the least tamed and the most successful of domestic species, the least altered within but the most changed in circumstance without." In discussing intelligence, he contrasts test performance of dogs with that of cats, saying "what in truth determines an animal's ability to master a given task often has much less to do with innate intelligence than with behavioral predispositions. ... It makes as much sense to consider a cat dumber than a dog because cats cannot be taught to fetch as it would make sense to consider an American dumber than a Frenchman because he cannot pass an IQ test written in French." Maybe animal intelligence tests should include portions on ignoring people and sleeping—then we'd see which species performs better.

The Feline Mystique: On the Mysterious Connection Between Women and Cats by Clea Simon

Why are cats sometimes perceived as "women's" pets more than men's? While acknowledging the stereotype (sadly, often based on reality) of the "crazy old woman" with dozens of cats, she tries to explain the never really understood connection between women and cats, seeing a sort of mirror between the two. "We admire their sensuality, their beauty, their seemingly intuitive and self-determined natures—all traits we would like to strengthen in ourselves. ... Cats seem a natural complement to our femininity, part of our mystique." She also quotes statistics from the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association Pet Owners Survey which state that 13 percent of all cats are owned by women living alone. Now if someone can explain the connection between librarians and cats.

Lest you think men are being neglected, there's an article in the February 2003 issue of Cat Fancy that should interest you—"Real Men Love Cats." Such "real men" as Ernest Hemingway, Warren Beatty, James Dean, and Joe Namath are named as being among the cat lovers of the world.

A Cat Named Darwin by William Jordan 

The author is a biologist, trained to be cool, detached, and unemotional in dealings with the natural world. Much to his own surprise, an encounter with a stray cat changes his whole outlook on animals and, he says, helps him "become a human being." The story of how the cat named Darwin works his way into the biologist's heart is funny and moving. Although Darwin's illness ultimately challenges his human's new emotional relationship with the outside world in profound ways, the heartbreaking end is not really an end—it reaffirms life and human connections to other living beings.

"Trust lay in the deep pleasure of simply knowing that the pleasure passed back and forth between two living things, through fur and flesh, with each intimating his love to the other. The proof was in the purr."

CatSpeak: How to Learn It, Speak It, and Use It to Have a Happy, Healthy, Well-Mannered Cat by Bash Dibra

The author shows how you can use an understanding of cat physiology and psychology to communicate better with your cat (both as a sender and a receiver of communications). If you're new to living with a cat and aren't sure whether a twitching tail and wide eyes means defensiveness or excitement, use the handy chart in this book. And to decipher your cat's vocalizations, there's another chart describing "speech" from caterwauling to murmuring. The author also gives seven instinctive feline behaviors that you should know about in order to understand your cat—flight, chase, hunting/stalking, territorial, aggressive, social, and vocal behaviors.

Think Like a Cat: How to Raise a Well-Adjusted Cat, Not a Sour Puss by Pam Johnson-Bennett

Pam Johnson-Bennett is a feline behaviorist, but she also has insights into the human behaviors that sometimes cause or contribute to feline behavior issues. For example, in discussing ways a cat can feel stress, she points out a number of causes of stress that owners may or may not think about—a dirty litter box or a change in type of litter, some change in the household like visiting guests or new babies, even rearranging the furniture. She also brings up an interesting point about a common cat behavior—rubbing a cheek against furniture corners, knobs, anything that sticks out. We've often been told that this is a type of territorial marking, a way of saying that some object or person belongs to that cat. But I've often wondered why they would continue to mark things this way when they've lived in the same house for a long time and don't have other cats to compete with. Johnson-Bennett says that the pheromones given off by rubbing the cheek have a calming effect (as opposed to the pheromones released at the other end of the body when a cat uses urine spraying to mark territory). There's even a commercial product called Feliway that contains synthetic versions of these calming pheromones. If your cat is having spraying problems or you need to comfort and calm your kitty, you might try it out:

 Feliway Behavior Modification Kit
 

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Last modified: 9/22/2007