Creating a ‘cat friendly’ environment helps you and your cat in a number of ways – it helps …
o Ensure your cat’s essential needs are being met.
o Support their emotional and physical wellbeing.
o Reduce stress for your cat and promote calmness and relaxation.
o Avoid and address unwanted behaviour.
o Your cat feel safer and more secure in your home.
o Your cat feel more in control of their environment.
o Reduce tension between cats in the same home.
To create a ‘cat friendly’ home, it’s useful to think of the ‘5 Pillars of a Healthy Feline Environment’ for your cat.
I’ve added an additional pillar at the end which seems to be really important to a lot of cats – predictability, choice and control.
Pillar 1 – safe places
Provide lots of safe places for your cat that are private and secure.
Safe places allow your cat to withdraw from perceived threats and helps them have some sense of control over their environment.
Provide places for them to hide, rest and safely ‘perch’ up high spread throughout the home.
Cats like to have lots of safe places so they can switch between them so provide as many options as you’re prepared to tolerate.
Add a safe heated pad (e.g. Pet Remedy’s Heated Pad) to one of their safe places – best to cover it with a towel or blanket to diffuse the heat so your can isn’t laying directly on it.
There are other tips and ideas for safe places in the following videos.
Note - if using large paper bags as safe places for your cat, remember to remove the handles for safety.
Pillar 2 – ‘resources’
Have a review of your cat’s essential ‘resources’ to check they have everything they need to help them be happy, healthy and to thrive.
Different resources should be separated from each other (e.g. food away from water and away from litter trays) and spread throughout the home, ideally in quiet and private places.
This video is a good overview of what to provide for your cat, how and where etc.
If you have more than one cat, provide enough resources for everyone spread throughout the home to avoid congested areas.
Cats enjoy being able to access what they need when they need it without other cats in the home impacting them. Cats don’t tend to be very good at sharing and queuing!
Safe places are often in demand in multi-cat homes so provide lots of options in different locations – think about what each cat prefers and cater for everyone.
Pillar 3 – play and predatory behaviour
Engage your cat’s hunting instincts by using a variety of toys for playtime and puzzle, activity and ‘foraging’ feeding for mealtimes to allow more natural feeding behaviour.
Cats who are really play motivated might need more playtime than other cats in the home. Take care with catnip and lasers as some cats can get very aroused or frustrated by them.
This is a great resource on puzzle feeders –http://foodpuzzlesforcats.com/.
Pillar 4 – cat friendly interactions
Interact with your cat in a way that’s positive and predictable so interactions are ‘cat friendly’ and safe for everyone.
It can be useful to think of ‘less is more’ when interacting with cats as too much physical touch, stroking, handling and being picked up can be stressful and overwhelming for some cats.
Follow ‘cat etiquette’ and avoid interacting with your cat when they’re resting, using any of their resources or when they seem worried, frightened or ‘on edge’.
This video is a great overview of ‘cat friendly’ interacting.
Pillar 5 – respect your cat’s sense of smell
Provide an environment that respects your cat’s sense of smell to help them feel safe and secure in their environment and to support them to communicate through scent, which is really important to them.
This infographic is a useful quick reference to help you review what you’ve got in place for your cat to see if there’s more that could be done to respect your cat’s sense of smell.
Extra Pillar – predictability, choice + control
Provide an environment and routines that are as predictable as possible for your cat and avoid unnecessary change and upheaval in the home as much as you can.
Cats often thrive in a peaceful and calm environment and don’t always cope well with change.
Cats tend to like to feel in control of their environment, and also during interactions with people and other animals in the home, so trying to give your cat as much choice and control over their daily lives as possible can help them (e.g. when they can go outside, whether they want to interact with you or not, access to parts of the home etc.).
Cats also like to be able to anticipate when things will happen. This includes the ‘good things’ (e.g. meal times, playtime) as well as the ‘not so good things’ (e.g. the pesky vacuum cleaner, having medication).
Having an idea of when things will happen can help your cat feel more in control of their environment. For example, doing the vacuuming at a predictable time each week (e.g. on Saturday mornings) can help your cat cope better with it at the time as well as supporting your cat to relax during the rest of the time as they’ve learnt that the hoover isn’t likely to be making an appearance.
For The Understood Cat’s website, go to https://www.theunderstoodcat.com/.
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