Except cats don’t have pack behavior.
more cat pictures
Cats have social guidelines, attitude rituals, and friendship criteria. They have cats they find annoying, cats they get along with, and cats they regard as buddies. There are cats who want things very much and there are cats who are laid back.
But none of this is pack behavior, and none of it conforms to pack rules.
Dogs are pack animals. We can tell because they have buttons. A knowledgeable and confident dog person like Cesar Millan, the “Dog Whisperer,” can press their buttons and do amazing things based on his knowledge and understanding of dogs. I admire him very much.
But he can’t do that with cats. I can’t do that with cats. No one can do that with cats.
Because cats don’t have buttons.
Lions have “prides,” consisting of a few dominant males and a larger number of females. They are a cooperative structure. That’s the closest thing we can find to a pack in the entire feline kingdom. And it’s not a pack.
The dangers of trying to treat our multiple cats as a pack is that a) it won’t work, and b) it will create tensions and expectations in our cats that will be detrimental to the smooth functioning of our household. What domestic cats have, in the home, kept as pets, is a civilization.
Every dog pack has slots that keep it basically the same. Every cat civilization is independently created from the personalities of the cats, and each one is different.
Cats hang with each other, or not, depending on how much they get along with the other cat. Cats harass or cooperate with other cats depending on what each of them wants and what the other cat is willing to go along with.
The leverage we have is providing unpleasant consequences for behavior we don’t like, and pleasant consequences for behavior we want to encourage. That’s all. Cats are not going to obey us because we are strong leaders, or because they are afraid of us, or because we demand it of them.
Cats do what they want to do. Always.
What we might mistake for dominance is simply a cat who wants the high shelf more than the other cats. What we think is battling for alpha status is simply a cat who wants to be friends, and is frustrated by a cat who is rebuffing their overtures. What we might regard as our lowest status cat is simply a cat who dislikes a lot of confrontation, and avoids it of their own choice.
We have to make a space for each kind of cat.
Pack behavior does not exist in cats, and cannot be used as a management tool. We do the cats a disservice if we think they are working things out on their own. What we will get is a hodgepodge of bad behaviors which pleases no one.
We may not have the status or the instant obedience that would come as Pack Leader. But, as people with cats, we do have the responsibility to make every cat welcome in our home. We can and should stop cat bullying, draw out the shy ones, and make sure every cat gets the attention they want, in the way that they want it.
We are the Boss of Cat Town. Everyone can do what they want, as long as they don’t interfere too much with other cats doing the same thing. Then we can do what we want, which is to enjoy our cats as individuals.
Each and every one of them.
Got here from a Link or Search?
There’s more about multiple cats in The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See more posts on the MULTIPLE CAT ADVANTAGE.
FWIW, research on the wolf packs at Yellowstone is showing that pack behavior in dogs is much more complicated than the condensed version you read about in training books, too. The Alpha dog is much closer to the first among equals than the master of all he surveys.
Excellent point! A dog with a strong “will to power” will respond much better to a negotiated partnership approach. Such dogs feel they have a viewpoint to contribute, and this must be respected.
I had a malamute/collie mix who had strong views on house security. Every time I let him override my own judgment, he turned out to be right. And I told him so.
You need to rethink this whole idea that cats aren’t pack animals. Maybe some or even most aren’t but, there’s a lot of genetic variation that goes into a house cat. I have a cat that seems a lot more like a dog, seriously.
This brings me to the “face smash” or heat butting” behavior in cats. Why would a cat want to rub its territory marking glands on you so furiously?
If we assume this is a variation of a natural behaviour then we have to wonder why a cat would want to mark territory with another cats scent.
Well, if cats belonged to a pack then things would go more smoothly if packs could mark territory as a group instead of each member marking on his own and hoping somehow, that the members of another pack somehow know all the other scents of all the neighboring packs.
In fact, it would be this ability, to mark as a group, that would allow packs to form at all. Otherwise, everyone would be fighting everyone and no groups could form or at the very least,it would be hard to exist without expending more energy than the advantage of being in a pack in the first place.
For packs to be able to function the most efficiently they must be able to communicate to each other.
You are setting up a straw man argument here. Just because cats are not pack animals hardly means that they have no means to communicate with other cats or social life at all. They have to get together to breed, if nothing else.
And range with animals isn’t a fortified boundary. Cats move through and into other cat’s ranges all the time. Marking is a way to tell other cats that you have passed by, either to warn them off or as a kind of welcome. Marking another cat itself can act as a reminder the next time you meet that you approve of them, or as a seal of approval meant for any cat that knows both cats.
And the ‘act like a dog’ phrase always irks me. Unless your cat is barking and weeing on the carpet unless you walk him, he’s not acting like a dog. I’m tired of it being used as a synonym for a active or affectionate cat.
Oldcat´s last [type] ..Flashback – Introductions
Pingback: The Truth About Humans And Dogs | Dog Training Blog | Tips and Dog Training Resources
Pingback: Three Tips to Teach Your Dog Better Manners | How To Teach Your Dog
Pingback: Quora