What is it with cats and water? Why are they so afraid?
Dear Readers,
There are many good reasons why cats act the way they do towards water.
more cat pictures
In the cat’s original environment, large bodies of water would have been both rare and potentially dangerous. Watering holes would have been places where all kinds of animals gathered, and some of them want to eat the others. So cats are instinctively cautious around water, even if it’s a tub or sink.
Cats vary greatly in their swimming ability, but none of them are all that good at it. The slimmer and finer-boned the cat, the less fat is on their body. Fat is what makes swimming animals buoyant, and protects them against temperature loss in cold water. Cats who have had many generations in cold climates tend to have more of a fat layer, but this is offset by their stockier build and heavier bone structure.
So, no matter what kind of cat we have, it is unlikely they will be natural swimmers. And they know it.
Cats can catch fish, but they don’t swim to do so. They wade into the water, and feel far more comfortable when their feet can touch the bottom. If the cat has not chosen to make their own way into water, they will feel panic at being suspended over water of unknown depth.
Cats also dislike rain, but it’s more than having their fur matted down and taking a long time to dry. Rain also creates white noise that doesn’t let them hear, obscures their highly light-sensitive vision, and walking in wet grass constantly stimulates the long whiskers on their paws and disrupts their athletic moves. Water in a cat’s highly convoluted ear canal is very annoying and can result in painful ear infections. All these factors will lead to a cat’s natural avoidance of rainy weather, even if it’s inside our bathroom.
So cats will happily play in their water bowl, jump in the tub when we are finished with a bath or shower, or even go fishing in our fish tank. These are all circumstances where the cat controls how much water gets on them, and how far they go.
Which is how they quite sensibly prefer it.
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There’s more ways to understand our cat with The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See all of my posts on WHY CATS DO THAT.
Maine Coons love to play with water, and mine will happily hop in the tub to enjoy the droplets after the tub is empty. They also have so much fluff on their butts they don’t seem to realize when they’re sitting in a puddle… which often causes mats on their britches.
I’m told that in Turkey there is a breed of cats that love the water. I guess a lot of it depends on the cat’s physiology and the environment the cat was raised in.
The Turkish Van is probably the breed you are thinking of. They have a distinctive color pattern on their heads and tails.
As always with cats, they prefer any water play to be their idea.
Hm, that’s odd. Another article I read said cats were natural swimmers. Maybe they only meant the big cats? Most of the information I’ve looked up doesn’t correspond, so I feel like I’m at square one again.
Some breeds, such as the Turkish Van, do enjoy a swim, as do some big cats. As always, it has to be the cat’s idea.
i have a black fluffy cat, that he does not know its raining plus he is really slow. etherwise cats can like water depending how there life is, some hate it because they don’t want to get there fur wet.
Cats sometimes enjoy water it depends really of how they expirence it when they are kittens. If they have abad expirence then they won’t like it that well, but if they have a good expirence then thy will like it.
i have a cat and when ever i give her a bath her heart beat increases and when i let her out meows to death !!!!!!!!!