Companion Animals: Cats

Cats have historically played an interesting role in the culture. In Egypt, nearly 3000 years ago, some cats were mourned when they died and others were bred to be sacrificed. By the Middle Ages, Christian leaders believed that cats were connected to witchcraft and cats were slaughtered in large numbers. The Renaissance (15th and 16th centuries) brought a wave of humanism and compassion and cats began to appear in paintings as not only barn cats, but as companion animals for families.

Today, nearly 78 million cats are owned as pets. These remarkable creatures have maintained many of the feline behaviors as their ancestors. Modern cat owners say they love their cats because they engage in such interesting behaviors, they are easier to care for than dogs, they are playful, independent, and they have a mind of their own.

Training

Many people allege that cats cannot be trained. This isn’t true; operant conditioning procedures work very well with all animals, cats included. A good demonstration of a cat responding to consequences in the environments is to watch what happens when the cat hears the can-opener opening a can of cat food. When the cat hears the food being opened (at dinner time each evening), here comes kitty looking for food, a primary reinforcer.

Cats have been trained to compete in entertainment acts and in cat agility competitions. Many cats are certified as animal-assisted therapy cats.

Feline Behavior Problems

As with many other animals, cats may have behavior problems that are best treated with a systematic approach that includes a functional assessment. The results of the functional assessment might indicate that the environment needs to be changed. In many cases, cats will benefit from behavior plans based on the principles of operant conditioning.

Common feline behavior problems include:

• Aggression (scratch, bite, hiss) toward other animals
• Aggression toward people
• Destruction of furniture, other objects (usually by scratching)
• Feeding problems
• Refusal to be held
• Scent marking furniture (with urine)
• Scratching (furniture) with nails
• Toileting/litter box issues

Feral Cats: A Community Behavior Problem

At the community level, feral cats present problems that can be addressed through several types of behavioral interventions. Feral cats are cats who have never had contact with people (e.g., a stray gives birth to a litter at a garbage dump) or they were abandoned and have become wild. Feral cat colonies might live behind shopping centers or restaurants, near apartment complexes, or anywhere there is a food source.

As a method of eliminating the feral cat problem in a community, owner education programs should encourage owners to spay or neuter their cats and not allow them to run loose. Some communities offer incentives and price reductions to owners who take their cats to designated clinics or mobile clinics for spaying or neutering.

Because cats reproduce so quickly, when a feral cat colony exists, animal control agencies can manage the colony using a shaping procedure to ensure the cats are in a safe location. This might involve gradually moving food dishes away from a road or busy parking lot until they are under some bushes and out of sight. Systems referred to as TNR (trap, neuter, release) or TAR (trap, alter, release) involve catching the cats, taking them to a veterinarian to be spayed or neutered, then releasing them where they were found.

Human behavior is a significant component of the feral cat issue and behavior analysts can play a very helpful role in helping a community address such a problem.

Resources