How Cats Use Scent to Communicate & Connect
Plus a journey into the fascinating history of cats
Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve been a bit obsessed with cats. Back then I drew cats, wrote stories about cats, and dreamed about one day having a cat friend. My parents finally relented when I was 9 or 10 and we adopted our first cat from a local shelter.
Once I became a veterinarian and started formally studying cat behavior, I became even more fascinated. If you read Dog Communication 101, you’ll know that domestic dogs communicate with complex ritualized signals that allow them to live in close contact with other dogs, navigate conflicts, and avoid dangerous disputes over resources. Many of these skills had already evolved in their ancestor, the grey wolf, and domestication broadened dogs’ abilities to live in groups of unrelated individuals and with humans. But what about cats?
The cat’s unique domestication story
One of the many fascinating things about cats is that unlike most other domesticated animals, which evolved from social species already tolerant of living in groups, domestic cats evolved from the Near Eastern Wildcat—a solitary and territorial species. The Near Eastern Wildcat’s close social encounters are limited to the brief time needed for reproduction and the first few weeks following birth when mothers are caring for young. That’s it. Many of the Near Eastern Wildcat’s communication strategies therefore focus on leaving signals that another cat will find long after the signaler is gone—in the form of visual and chemical (scent) signals. This method of remote communication allows them to send and receive messages all while avoiding direct, and likely dangerous, encounters.
When humans developed agriculture around 10,000 years ago, cats began their journey of domestication. As they adapted to living near humans, cats developed greater tolerance for being close to humans AND other cats. This tolerance gave them access to an abundant food source—the rodents drawn to stored grain. Through this domestication process, cats evolved into a flexibly social species.
Flexibly social species can survive well either on their own or within groups with complex social relationships—pretty cool, right?
Also, compared to most other domestic species, humans haven’t really tried to modify cats much. We started tinkering with dogs and selectively breeding them for different working abilities around 5000-7000 years ago. We’ve only been selectively breeding cats since the 1800s. That means many domestic cats both look a lot like their wild ancestor AND have retained a lot of their behavioral characteristics, including communication strategies.
While many of their social behaviors are now quite different from their wild ancestors, on an evolutionary scale the domestic cat’s social behaviors are still very much a “work in progress.” The current science suggests that cats have few conflict-diffusing or reconciliation behaviors to repair relationships when fights occur—rather, when conflicts occur in free-ranging cats they usually result in one or more cats leaving the group. This is one reason why many cat-cat introductions in a household don’t go so well, and why alleviating intercat aggression within a household is so challenging. Despite these social challenges, however, cats have several communication strategies to signal friendliness and maintain friendships within social groups, and many of these involve scent exchange.
Communicating with Scent
Chemical signals, scents and pheromones,1 play a vital role in how cats communicate and interact socially with each other. They have scent glands in many areas of their bodies, from chin to toes to tail, that produce chemical signals. Cats deposit these chemical signals on other individuals and objects in the environment via scent marking. Scent marks serve multiple functions: they help cats navigate their environment, identify familiar versus unfamiliar individuals, and engage in both affiliative (friendly) and agonistic (not friendly) interactions.
Allorubbing
Rubbing their head, sides, and tail against another individual
Allorubbing is one of my favorite cat behaviors—while engaged in this behavior, cats are depositing a “friendly” pheromone onto the other animal, whether cat, human, or other species, and are essentially signaling “I like you, let’s be friends.” Whenever your cat twines around your legs when you return home, this is what they are communicating.
Scratching
Scratching with the front claws on horizontal or vertical surfaces
Scratching, a very normal but potentially very frustrating behaviors to many cat owners, is a form of both chemical AND visual communication in cats. Cats scratch to leave a distinctive visual mark to attract other cats to approach and investigate the chemical signal left behind. Cats leave scratch marks within the core of their territories along their most traveled routes—not the periphery. This is why it’s best to place scratchers in the areas your cat uses the most rather than hidden in the corner, behind the couch, or in an unused room. If cats don’t have scratchers in the areas they’re innately drawn to mark, they’ll find another object that’ll meet their needs, such as your brand new couch.
Why do cats scratch? Scratching is thought to be a form of territorial marking, signaling something along the lines of “I live here.” These marks may also provide cats with landmarks that help them orient themselves within their homes.
*Keep in mind that suddenly scratching after years of not doing so can be a sign of illness in cats, and an increase in the frequency or intensity of scratching can signal your cat is distressed or frustrated.
Bunting
Rubbing their heads, cheeks and chins on objects
Bunting deposits a specific facial pheromone (F3) on objects. Cats use this pheromone to orient themselves within the home and mark commonly used objects. Several commercially available pheromone products, such as Feliway Classic, Feliway Optimum, and Zenifel, contain a synthetic version of this pheromone and can help cats to feel more comfortable in unfamiliar environments, such as a new home or veterinary clinics.
Urine and fecal marking
Depositing chemical signals using urine or feces2.
Cats often spray urine on vertical surfaces in prominent locations when using urine to communicate. When doing so their tail is held straight up and may quiver, and they may tread up and down with their back feet as seen in the photo above. Both male and female cats urine mark—these marks communicate a lot of information to other cats including health and reproductive status, location, and emotional state. Urine marking is considered a sign of emotional arousal, distress and conflict in neutered or spayed cats and it can also indicate health issues such as hyperthyroidism.
Sometimes cats urine mark on horizontal rather than vertical surfaces (i.e. peeing on floors rather than walls). This can make it a bit more complicated to figure out of your cat is peeing outside of the litterbox to communicate “I’m distressed” or doing so because they’ve found an alternative toilet meets their needs better than their litterbox. One important clue can be found in the pattern of their urination—if you’re finding urine around doors, windows, and prominent locations around the house (a location pattern), it’s most likely urine marking. If, however, you’re finding a consistent pattern to the type of surface peed on (a surface pattern3), then it’s likely a toileting issue.
Do cats mark with feces?
In many carnivores, scents within fecal material carry social information including health, reproductive status, and location. Research suggests these scents play a social role in domestic cats too. A study of chemical compounds in cat feces (imagine running that study!) found distinct differences between males and females, with certain compounds correlating to age in male cats only. This suggests cats can determine both sex and age of male cats by sniffing their feces. Supporting this idea, cats spend more time investigating feces from unfamiliar cats than those from themselves or familiar cats. Also, while cats typically bury their feces in core areas of their territory, they sometimes leave them exposed at the edges. Researchers are still debating whether this behavior is communicating a territorial message or merely cats conserving energy when on the outskirts of home.
So how does all this talk about cat poop apply to you? If your cat is pooping outside of the litterbox and you see them making burying motions OR you discover a surface pattern in their pooping locations, there’s something about the litterbox or its location your cat finds unpleasant. If you can’t find a surface pattern and are finding poop in random locations, there could be something physically amiss that is either causing urgency or discomfort during elimination, and evaluation by a veterinarian is in order.
Thanks so much for reading this post. Did you learn something new about cats? What were the key take-home messages for you?
Insightful Animals is operated by me, Kelly C. Ballantyne, DVM, DACVB. I’m a vet behaviorist, nature fanatic, bird artist, wife, and mom to two hilarious Ragdoll cats, Pipit and Towhee. In my day-to-day, I consult directly with pet parents and veterinarians on a range of behavior problems in dogs and cats.
Pheromones are chemical compounds that evolved for communication within a species. Carnivores, including cats and dogs, have the greatest variety of glands secreting these fascinating chemicals.
Experts disagree whether cats actually mark (i.e. communicate) with feces.
Cats have individual preferences for the types of surfaces they’ll eliminate on. Some like soft absorbent surfaces, such as fresh laundry or bath mats, others like clean and smooth surfaces, such as an empty tub. If there’s consistency in the general type of surface peed on, that’s a surface pattern.
I feel much more cat literate. Great article. I agree with Hadley, the photo is great.
Another super informative article to read! Thank you for helping folks learn more about how cats communicate and providing explanations for some of their more common behaviors!