Your cat starts to sharpen its claws using one of your wooden pieces of furniture, again. You say "No", maintaining a firm gaze, again, and your cat cancels that gaze with an expression of "you're very wrong and you should be ashamed", again. Why does that happen? Why do cats... do what they do? There are many experts out there studying cat behavior daily, but if you want a more solid general idea, you should perhaps watch this new video from TED-Ed.
My Unlikely Adoption Story
My life changed definitively in the first weeks of March, after adopting a pregnant cat (or she adopted me, I'm still not sure). From the beginning we knew the family would grow (after all, the pregnancy was quite evident), but within hours, my cat became a proud mother of four, and I became a hybrid between "furniture-with-legs-that-gives-food" and stepfather.
My little chaos avatars will be seven weeks old next Friday, a period in which I've accumulated pricks, scratches, bites, and even a black eye (no joke). I've learned a lot, but there are still things I don't understand. Why does my cat insist on her "meow" full of complaints even when she has food, fresh water, and the door open? Why does she only choose two specific places (a wooden window and a cardboard box) to sharpen her claws at four in the morning?
What Science Says About Their Behavior
Let's take these questions to the Web. 26 billion views split across more than two million videos stored only on YouTube have cats as protagonists. Some love water, and the majority hate getting wet. The "cucumber test" has been proven to exhaustion (DO NOT do that to your cat, period), their love for boxes is considerable, and the fact of watching everything from heights is more than frequent.
According to this recent video published by TED-Ed, the behavior of the modern domestic cat is the result of the hard work done by their ancestors, surviving in the delicate predator-prey position they occupied. For example, staying in elevated positions (which in turn helped develop their balance and muscle structure) provides security "and" a wider visual field to locate food, even when they don't need those skills these days.
The claw detail is even more interesting. Cats need them to climb, hunt, defend themselves, and even compete with other cats (I've seen spontaneous fights of males in heat, and if they could kill each other, they would), therefore, their "maintenance" on wood, cardboard, plastic, carpet, leather and other materials is perfectly normal, with the benefit of relaxing back muscles and relieving stress. The video also mentions aspects like hiding in strange places or keeping their favorite places free of odors, but if there is one that surpasses all for its mystery, it's purring.
The cat can vary the purr according to its state (happy, stressed, tired, hungry), however, the video also talks about a certain regenerative capacity that is activated in its muscles and bones. Now, all these details about a cat's behavior are associated with its environment. The big question the video leaves us with is: What are we to them?
This video is from TED-Ed.
