The prevailing theory on why cats lick themselves so much is that as predators, their instinct is to remove any blood or other scent from their fur that might attract larger predators to them. Makes sense.
Having watched cats do this over the years, am always puzzled as to what motivates them to suddenly lap one part of their body. Is it an itch, a hair out of place, a smell they don’t like?
Do they, over a period of a day or so, actually cover every square inch of their bodies?
If so, do they have a mental cat-shaped diagram in their little cat brains so that each patch covered gets a check mark, until the entire map is covered?
I’ve asked my cats about this, but they just stare at me and say, “You think we are going to reveal any of our feline secrets to you?”
According to Desmond Morris’s Catwatching, they actually have a set pattern through which they go through each part of their body in sequence, although I imagine it might vary somewhat from cat to cat. My guess is they go through it just about as thoroughly as they can.
Well, I know at least one of my cats consistently misses the middle of her back near her tail. It’s a mass of dredlocks during shedding season, and she’s not even a long haired cat. (Yes, I brush her when I notice.) They seem (based on only casual observation, not study) to pay more attention to the head and front paws, and then the chest, which would seem to support the “get the blood off” hypothesis - the blood would be more on their front than anywhere else if they were actually eating a gazelle.
My guess is it’s an itch thing, just like I get random itches and attend to various parts of my skin, but I really have no way of knowing. My cats are determinedly silent on the issue, as well. The male one won’t even let us watch him bathe - if I walk into a room where he’s attending his toilet, he gives me a horribly embarrassed look and runs away. Wish he was so discrete about his amorous encounters with the blankets!
You’re lucky. My boy cat will come seek me out and plunk himself down on the floor in my line of sight, so as to be sure I’ll see him. Then he lifts his back leg so that I get a great view of his butthole as he attends to business. If I’m watching a favorite TV program, it’s virtually guaranteed that Rex will come into the room and make a spectacle of himself, cleaning his butt. Complete with loud slurpy sounds.
BTW, Rex does seem to have a mental “bath map.” It starts with the head, moves down the front and shoulders, then down the back and sides to his butt. He rarely does it all in one sitting though.
Why, precisely, does my younger orange cat not quite grasp the part about licking his butthole so it doesn’t have poop still stuck to it? The older one has no problems in this area.
Also, the older one licks the hell out of the insides of the younger ones ears. Just goes to town in there like it’s an all you can eat earwax buffet. The younger one does not return the favor - Dewey’s ears are all waxy and gross.
Damn you all, now I’m going to draw a cat diagram on graph paper and study my two monsters for the next day watching and coloring in the little squares and see if the do it in any order.
You are welcome to borrow any in this album except the first one - Gwen passed away last week. You must return them in good condition with a full tank and try to stay under the milage in the contract, please.
I would especially appreciate it if you would take Cricket off of my hands for a few days. Last night I spent 20 minutes looking for my glass of lemonaide only to discover she had knocked in into the trash can. Very neatly, too - didn’t get a drop on the floor.
The thing that always cracks me up is sometimes I will go to pet the cat, and he gives me the stinkeye and makes a big fuss about grooming whatever part of his body that I touched (while still glaring at me).
He actually loves to be cuddled and petted most times, so I can’t figure out what triggers the occasional rush to re-groom the part of his body that I have apparently tainted by daring to lay my unclean hands upon his person. He also likes to be petted “against the grain” (this is unusual with cats, in my experience), so I don’t think it’s that.
Wow, you certainly have a goodly amount of cats. Ah, yes, the username should have told me that.
Well, Cricket sounds like a classy and tidy cat. And a VERY pretty one! Of course, chez Celyn, it has never been a cat that is guilty of breaking or spilling things, as I do all that myself. Just to save the cat the trouble, you know. However, I’m not sure how much Cricket would enjoy being stuffed into an envelope and posted overseas, so I might just have to return to my"shall I soon adopt a new cat?" musings.
I’m sorry to hear about the Gwen cat, I really am.
It’s probably not an itch, as such. Cats clearly do get itches, and the response to them is similar to ours: they scratch. It’s probably some type of sensation, but we probably don’t have anything similar to compare it to and really have no way of knowing how a cat experiences it.
That’s true, of course. I was just comparing it to how I feel when my “fur” needs cleaning - the skin underneath itches, and invites cleaning, or at the very least, brushing.
Maybe he just doesn’t want cat shit on his tongue.
My roommate’s cat lately has VERY black paws and stomach…we think it’s because now that summer’s here, we’ve opened up the glass sliding door to out screened in porch, and the floor in there is not that clean. I really should mop it or something.
However, I’m not sure how much Cricket would enjoy being stuffed into an envelope and posted overseas, so I might just have to return to my"shall I soon adopt a new cat?" musings.