Cats Behavior: Understand Your Pet Better

A cat's behavior can be aloof or very loving, eccentric to boring, and all variations in between, also size, color, and appearance differences provide the reasons there are so many cat lovers in the world.

Growing up in a household with an insane amount of indoor cats was made fascinating by the variety of personalities the cats possessed. One of the cats, Pansy, was a lovely tricolor cat who was reserved and shy. Pansy took every opportunity possibly to sit on top of our old Encyclopedia Britannica's.

We had one cat, Eric, a short-haired marmalade, who made up for any lapse in bathroom etiquette by having the best bed side manner if you happened to be under the weather or troubled. Another of our cats, Tinker, the most clever, was able to open the trash container with little effort, and loved to pluck out a tune on my guitar should it be left lying about.

It is important to recognize what is normal in your cat's behavior before you start to worry. For instance, some cats may race around the house at the same time and it would be perfectly normal for him to do that. However, if a normally peaceful or lazy cat were to start bouncing off the walls it could be a sign that she is either sick or upset by visitors disturbing her territory.

Stability and safety are important to cats - a sudden change in circumstances might cause typical unexpected cat behavior such as missing the litter box. Or, as was the case with one of mine, deciding out of nowhere that she no longer liked the litter we were using. Her only effective way to communicate this was by no longer using her box. Eventually we figured out what she was trying to get at and, after some trial and error, found out that what she wanted was torn-up newspaper. Everything has been fine since.

Basically, you have to be aware that cats behavior can be just as diverse as human behavior.