I've come to the Cats Protection shelter in Derby today to help find ways of
reducing stress in the shelter cats. Before we can do this though, we need to
find out what aspects of their environment actually cause cats to be
stressed. Because we live closely with our cats in a domestic environment, we
tend to think of them as small people. But in fact they are a very different
species and have a very different evolutionary history. Whereas we have
evolved as a social species, cats have evolved from a species called the
African Wildcat, which was essentially asocial. The African Wildcat lived out on
the savannahs of North Africa – they were uniquely designed to hunt small rodent
prey, which were dispersed widely across the savannah. Because of this, each patch
of land was only large enough to support an individual cat, so they are highly
territorial and in fact the presence of other cats is very often seen as a
threat to their food resource. Our domestic cats today therefore have a
unique history. They had a long period of time developing as an asocial species
and a relatively short period starting to develop social behaviour. What that
means is that they're not very good at showing social behaviour as a dog or a
human would be. When we go out and look at far more feral colonies, we can see
that they do live in large social groups. They usually have related individuals
and the size of the group is generally only large enough for the amount of food
that is available. We see lots of friendly behaviours, lots of rubbing and
the females co-operatively rear their young together and there's relatively little
aggression. However, these cats can go out in any direction to get food or water or
go to the toilet – and this is a very different situation from where we
artificially put them into multi-cat households.
So, knowing what we know about the behaviour of cats, we can see that moving
into a shelter is likely to be a very stressful time for them. To start with,
they are taken away from their familiar territory area, where they're surrounded
by their own familiar scent and arrive somewhere that smells very alien: of
disinfectant and where there are smells of other cats. Their routine changes and
they have contact with unfamiliar people and they're also left for long periods
of time without being able to display their normal patterns of behaviour. So
although it's obviously necessary for cats to come into our care, we can
understand that from the cat's point of view, they may not see it that way
themselves. The normal response of a cat to a situation that it finds threatening
or stressful is to run away, hide – perhaps underneath the bed or to try and climb
up high. In this way it's able to feel more secure until it starts to adapt to
its new environment. In a shelter, cats can't easily display these behaviours but
what we do often see is cats that withdraw to the back of the pen, sink
into the litter box or climb underneath their bedding, or even hide behind other
pen furniture as they attempt to show their normal hiding behaviour. In addition,
stressed cats will generally not show normal maintenance behaviours such as
eating, grooming or using the litter box. Often they won't sleep either, but will
sit with their eyes partly open to keep a watch out for any dangers that might
occur. These cats may not respond at all when approached, but often they will show
signs of aggression. They're scared of the unfamiliar environment and see the
approaching hand as a threat. Cats show these behaviours because they are
stressed. Although we tend to think of stress as a bad thing, in fact it's a
very clever and adaptive part of the cat's physiology that enables them to be
best prepared for changes in their environment. There are several aspects of
the stress response. Certain hormones are produced, for example: adrenaline and
cortisol. There is also changes in the nervous system and all these things
together help the cat to increase its blood pressure,
heart rate and respiratory rate, so that it can be active and deal with whatever
it is that's causing it to be stressed. Once the cat gets away from the thing
that's stressing it, all of these things turn down and the cat goes back to its
normal state. This change is related to the feeling of relief and the cat feels
happy and relaxed again. The signs of stress that we see in cats as they first
enter the accommodation are: a loss of maintenance behaviours, such as eating,
sleeping, grooming, drinking or toileting; they will often have a withdrawn
demeanour; they will often hide or be at the back of the pen. We see a tense body
posture, with their paws down and their tail tucked in. Cats will usually be
vigilant and watchful; and their pen may appear either completely untouched or
completely trashed.
He's just come in, he's a little bit stressed. Is there anything
that we can do to help him?
Yeah, there's certainly a lot we can do to help him. If
you think about it, where he's come from in his house, he's used to a very
particular routine – things happen at a certain time of day. He knows when he
gets fed and when people come home and he's come out of that environment and
come here, where he can't predict what's happening in his environment and he
can't control it at all. So one of the first things we need to do is make
things quite predictable and routine for him. It will help if the same person is
dealing with a cat when they first come in so they can get used to them and it
will also help if things happen at the same time of day each day for the first
few days, so they can get used to the environment and how everything works
within the shelter. We can also help a cat cope with the stress of moving into
the shelter by enabling it to show normal coping responses like hiding, for
example, by giving it an igloo like this. Another thing I recommend is providing
the cat with two vet beds. In this way when you take one out for cleaning each
day, the second one remains and contains the scent of the cat, making it feel more relaxed.
So who's this?
This is Misty. She's about three years old and she has got a bit of a problem.
Has she? What does she do?
She overgrooms herself.
Does she? Whereabouts?
Normally on her front paw.
Oh I can see – just here and there's a
little patch on her neck as well, isn't there? And down on her tummy as well, where
she's been grooming. This is actually a sign of stress in cats. They do do it,
but not generally as a sign of acute stress, it tends to occur in cats
after they've been stressed for a little while. And we talked earlier about the
ways of dealing with acute stress in cats and providing them with somewhere to
hide so that they can cope with being stressed in this kind of environment. If
they can't show those kinds of behaviours and the stress stays high for a period
of time, they tend to develop these other behaviours like overgrooming, which is
their way of dealing with the stress situation and getting their stress
response inside to go down. It's a little bit like humans biting their
nails – it's an abnormal behaviour that develops as a way of coping with
something that changes in your environment.
Are there any other signs of stress that develop in cats over a long period of time?
Yeah, there is quite a problem actually, because if cats don't develop a a coping mechanism like
she has, sometimes the stress levels stay very high in the body. And in those
cases, the cats can actually end up quite quite ill – they can develop disease or
get things like cystitis and that kind of thing, so that can be really serious.
He is quite aggressive isn't he? Yeah, but he's really friendly and
he'll come up and be stroked with you. What's he like normally in the pen?
Well to look at him, he is a really friendly cat. It's when someone opens the
pen door and goes in – then he takes a swipe at them.
Really? And he's so gorgeous looking as well, I bet people do go in.
Everyone wants him... until he swipes.
Right, ok. Well what he's doing is essentially a sign of frustration.
Frustration can be a real problem in our shelters. What we've talked about so far
really is acute stress – of how cats respond when they first come into the
shelter, before they can predict what's going to happen in the environment and
before they really settle down and know what's going on. Once they do settle down,
however and they know what's going on and they know who's going to come
when and when the food's going to come, they can start getting frustrated
because they can't show their normal patterns of behaviours that they would do
in a house or in an outside environment. And one of the most common signs of
frustration that we see is aggression, just as Chester is showing. I'm sure you
see lots of other signs of frustration in the cats that have been here for a while as well?
Yes, we do. A lot of them climb up the bars and stay there,
hang from the bars. Others pace around the pens like caged lions.
You can see that those are all signs of cats that have settled down and are now starting
to feel frustration because they can't do their normal cat stuff. But there's
lots of things that we can do to try and decrease their frustration, make them
feel a little bit happier. I can see you've got a load of toys there – let's
see if Chester's playful, let's see if we can get him directing some of that
behaviour on to something appropriate shall we?
We need to give frustrated cats
lots of things to do. Toys are great, but ideally they should be novel for the cat
or changed a lot and it's best if they're moving toys. Cats also like
puzzle feeders – things that they can move around and their food comes out of and
lots of cats respond well to catnip. It sometimes helps to give cats lots of
extra attention and also to give them an irregular routine, so they can't predict
what's happening next. So to summarise, when cats first come into our care they
experience acute stress due to their change in environment and routine. To
help them at this time, we need to give them a very predictable routine, provide
them with somewhere to hide and make sure they have plenty of quietness and
time to adapt. It is once cats have become adapted to the environment that
they can become frustrated. For these cats, we need to maintain their interest
by enriching their environment. Our understanding of the welfare of cats is
improving all the time and we now realise that the psychological
wellbeing of cats is as important as their physical health. By understanding
the true nature of the cat, we can make small but significant changes to
our routine that make all the difference to the cats in our care.