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What Your Cats are Saying

The scratching post is more than
just a scratching surface but a vital
platform for inter-feline communication.
Can we ever decipher their secret codes?

Cat Communication: Scratching Post Secrets Revealed

Last updated February 18th, 2018

A scratching post is a vital communication tool used by cats and is also their podium for leaving little scent messages for their fellow feline housemates. 


Cat communicating text messages on his scratching post

“Charlie, stop stealing my treats” signed, Ollie

The Silent Treatment

Cats display an array of vocalizations for cat-human communication but when it comes to communicating with other cats, they give each other the silent treatment. In the world of cats this is not a bad thing, in fact, their world is rich with scent messages and stimuli which they are busy decoding every second. Imagine how rich their scent vocabulary must be to be able to establish their little cat hierarchies and time-sharing schedules in their multi-cat homes. Cats will generally avoid confrontation and would rather just leave a little scent message to their housemates to get a point across. They certainly do have lots to say to each other and in order to live happy and enriched lives with their feline housemates and people, they need a platform to communicate their feelings, viewpoints, and grievances.

In our post about 5 Essentials must-haves for keeping cats happy we highlighted the significance of why cats scratch and choosing the right type of scratching post. But the humble scratching post or cat tree is more than just a scratcher, it’s a vital means of communicating to his feline housemates through depositing his unique scent message by scratching. This is your kitty’s podium for his important message to be ‘read’ by the other cats. Us humans will never know what they are saying to each other but we are going to have some fun with this and guess. We think cats leave little invisible Post-It sticky notes for each other which only they can decode.

Your cat trees and scratching posts are littered with invisible sticky note scent messages your cat leaves behind for his feline housemates. It’s their secret posting board where they keep pinning stuff only they can see and read.

This is the first in a series of Caturday Doodles in which we will feature snippets of sticky notes with our guess about possible kitty gripes, affirmations or warnings that could be present on any one of our cat trees. But we will never know…

As cat owners, we are often left in the dark when it comes to these subtleties in feline communication. There are, of course, a myriad of other ways we can decode their messages and mood by observing body language, the position of ears, tail and the way they greet us or a passing cat.

Cats also scent mark in more undesirable ways such as urine spraying but that is preventable by presenting your multi-cat crew with adequate litter boxes. If a cat feels the need to urine mark, he hops into a litter box!

What do you think your cats are writing on their invisible stickies? I’m sure your kitties are quite opinionated and we’d love for you to chirp us some gems in the comments below. We may feature one of your cats in the next Caturday Doodle!

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Cat communicating text messages on his scratching post

Ollie leaves a clear message for Charlie on the scratching post

 

About the author

The Lady Cat

Whiskers make me smile.
Coffee is good for you.
And cats are for life.
Helping cats live enriched lives with their people.
(Yasaar Nakchbendi)

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