Research

Research on Cats’ Body and Head Rubbing Behaviour: Initial Findings

For my research, I focussed on identifying whether cats with certain personality types engage in head rubbing behaviour more frequently than those with other personality types. This is a start to try and understand why cats display this behaviour inside the home.

For example, is this purely friendly behaviour? Or is it more territorial? Or perhaps anxious cats display the behaviour more often because they feel a need to reassure themselves?

The personality types I analysed are based on research by Litchfield et al (2017). I analysed head rubbing behaviour in three categories: people, permanent fixtures in the home and new items in the home.

The initial findings:

Agreeable cats (relaxed, friendly and affectionate) head rub people significantly more often than other personalities, both people they live with as well as visitors to the home;
Neurotic cats (shy, insecure and tense) most frequently head rub furniture or other permanent fixtures in the home after a visitor has left;
Dominant cats (independent, sometimes bullying) engage in head rubbing new items in the home most often.

Similar to findings on cats’ grooming behaviour of other cats (allogrooming) (see Curtis et al (2003) and van den Bos (1998)), there seems to be a duality to head rubbing behaviour. This would require further research and ideally observational studies in order to assess body language during rubbing behaviour in order to establish whether this behaviour can indeed be regarded as friendly as well as neurotic or dominant depending on the circumstances.

Research

Research on Cats’ Body and Head Rubbing Behaviour: Help Needed!

In one way or another, our cats all leave their marks. Some cats urine mark, especially if they haven’t been neutered or they scratch. These behaviours are well-researched, mainly because they are natural cat behaviours but many humans find them problematic.

A lesser researched area is the behaviour of body and head marking. I’m sure you’ve seen your cats do it as well. If your cat has a favourite spot then perhaps you’ve seen brownish scuff marks on it. They may also rub their bodies along your legs.

Partially, it may just be that it feels nice for cats to give themselves a bit of a chin or cheek rub. However, it is also a more subtle form of communication between cats that we can still learn much more about.

As a cat behaviourist I am interested in all forms of communication between cats and have decided to focus on the subtle form of body and head rubbing specifically.

My first piece of research will focus on cats’ personalities and body or head rubbing behaviour.

If you want to participate then please click here. The survey will open in a new window.

A few cats ‘caught in the act’

Research

Bonding with your cat: slow blinking

* Adapted from Anna Ford’s article for the University of Sussex’s News Broadcast

A team of psychologists at the Universities of Sussex and Portsmouth have shown for the first time that it is possible to build rapport with a cat by using an eye narrowing technique with them.

This eye narrowing action by humans generates something popularly known as a cat smile – the so called “slow blink” – and seems to make the human more attractive to the cat.

The study found:

Cats were more likely to slow blink at their owners if their owners had slowed blinked at them, compared to when the owner was present in the room but not delivering a slow blink stimulus.
Cats were more likely to slow blink when an unfamiliar experimenter slow blinked at them, compared to when they had maintained a neutral expression.
Cats preferred to approach an experimenter after they had slow blinked at the cat than if they had maintained a neutral expression.

To read the full article, click here.

Research

Cats recognise when you’re talking to them

French research published in Animal Cognition has found that your cat recognises when you are talking to them. Most people use a different tone or pitch when speaking to their cat as compared to speaking to other people. Cats recognise the difference, but this does not necessarily mean they will listen…

The researchers found that cats respond to their owners’ cat-directed speech; they don’t respond to a stranger’s cat-directed speech.

This implies that the bond a cat has with a person influences their behaviour and highlights the importance of relationships between cats and their owners.

To find out more click here to access the full article.

Research

No tummy rubs, thank you

Research by Finka et al (2022) has demonstrated that many ‘cat people’ tend to pet their cats in areas the cat does not like. Their tummy being one such example. I know a cat’s tummy is soft and it is tempting to give them a tummy rub, but the vast majority of cats do not like this and will scratch you. When they lie on their backs it is a sign of trust, not an invitation to pet them. In fact, petting the tummy could be perceived as a betrayal of that trust.

From the researchers:

“Tactile interactions with cats are considered to have therapeutic benefits to humans and are increasingly included within interventional contexts to improve human wellbeing. However, cats are not considered an inherently social or highly tactile species and may have specific preferences for the ways in which they like to be touched and interacted with. Despite this, the common occurrence of human-directed aggression during interactions suggests humans’ understanding of cat behaviour and appropriate styles of interactions with cats may be limited. To address this, in a recent study, we incorporated expert understanding of ‘best practice’ styles of interactions with cats into an educational intervention for humans to use during unstructured social interactions with cats. By encouraging humans to engage in styles of interactions with cats which provided the cat with greater levels of autonomy and also emphasised focusing on the cat’s behaviour and comfort, cats responded with increased human-directed affiliative and positively-valanced behaviour, in addition to decreased rates of human-directed aggression and signs of negative affect.”