Understanding cat behaviours

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Understanding cat behaviours

Cats are emotionally complex and communicate in subtle ways, so understanding their behaviour, preferences, and needs is key to supporting their wellbeing. By recognising their unique personalities and emotional cues, caregivers can create safe, enriching environments that help cats thrive.

RSPCA Australia
Wednesday, 14 May 2025

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Cats are complex and fascinating creatures, as many cat caregivers will attest! They experience a range of emotions, communicate in a variety of ways and have a number of things that motivate them and make them tick.

To help provide them with the best life possible, understanding a cat on a fundamental level is important. This includes understanding why they engage in certain behaviours and what they are communicating to their humans and to other animals. This knowledge will be the key to knowing how to provide the right opportunities for positive experiences for them and advancing their overall wellbeing.

Cat fundamentals

While there are certain traits common to all cats, each individual cat is unique in personality and preferences. Cats vary in how sociable they like to be with humans (not just their own human, but all humans!) and other animals, and have their own preferences in how they like to play, rest, and spend their time. They also vary in their individual responses to situations and environmental stimuli, as these responses are often influenced by things like past experiences and personality.

Cats’ flexible social systems mean that some may choose to be more solitary and live alone, while others may be more sociable and comfortable living in groups of compatible cats. This may be why some cats are suited to being the only feline in their family household, while others enjoy the companionship of another cat or cats.

Lastly, cats prefer to be self-sufficient; even when living with humans or other animals they possess an innate preference to rely on themselves for protection and survival. In order to feel safe, cats need a familiar, positive and predictable environment where they feel in control, as well as the ability to manage their interactions with other humans and animals that may share that environment. This is why creating a home that feels safe to the cat and, particularly, making sure they have a safe space to retreat is an important part of providing a suitable environment for cats and is crucial to their wellbeing.

How cats communicate

Cats are real characters and will communicate with humans and each other in a variety of ways, so it’s all about understanding how to read their signals. Understanding a cat’s signals not only helps caregivers to better communicate with their cat but can improve the quality of their interactions and deepen the bond between them.

Body language - a cat's body language can be subtle, so it's not always easy to accurately read how they're feeling. In addition, it’s often a combination of body language signals that paint the full picture of a cat’s mood rather than one sole indicator. For example, a tail swishing side to side can be a signal of focus, anticipation or even annoyance. To best understand a cat's state of mind, look at their eyes, tail, mouth and posture as a starting point, and for specific indicators this guide is a helpful tool.

Visual - a cat’s body language gives overall indicators of their emotional state, but their facial expressions typically change faster than their body posture and will give the most current signals about how the cat is feeling and what their likely behavioural responses might be. Understanding the subtle facial expressions of cats by observing their eyes, ears, and whiskers is key to interpreting visual signals of their current emotional state. It’s important to use both body posture and facial expression to assess how a cat may be feeling, but if their posture and facial expression appear to be indicating different moods, their facial expression will generally be the most accurate clue to interpreting what they’re feeling.

Touch – cats will use tactile communication as a form of social bonding, generally with other cats but also with a human or animal of another species who the cat considers part of their social group. Rubbing, grooming, kneading, and nose touching are common tactile communication signals and are signs the cat is comfortable and finds the interaction positive.

Smell – scent signals are very important communication tools for cats, as they allow individual cats to communicate with one another without coming into direct contact. Cats will generally leave scent signals by rubbing on objects, scratching or spraying). These signals are often intended as distancing signals, allowing cats to avoid each other and thus potential conflicts.

Vocal – cats possess a wide vocabulary including chirps, trills, growls, hisses and meows, and they’ll often use them to increase or maintain distance between themselves and other humans or animals. They may also use them in greeting, to signal when they're hungry, feeling affectionate, or if they're feeling threatened or in pain. Being the individual creatures they are, some cats will be quieter in nature and rarely vocalise, while others will make their presence known loud and often. The more caregivers pay attention to the types of vocalisations their cats use and how they use them, the more attuned they’ll be to their personality and habits. This helps caregivers to understand their cats better and detect subtle changes in their cats’ mood and overall wellbeing.

Feline feelings and the behaviours they influence

Like us, cats can experience a range of emotions, they can even experience multiple emotions at the same time or switch quickly between them. They also possess long-term memory and learn from both positive and negative experiences which can impact their mental state and overall welfare. How cats respond to situations is influenced by a combination of their current circumstances (including their nutrition, physical environment, and health), interactions with other animals or humans, and their previous experiences.

Emotions, feelings, perceptions, and experiences matter to individual cats, so it’s important to note that their mental wellbeing is just as important as their physical health.

While it can be easy to default to thinking of a cat’s emotions and behaviours as simply positive or negative, it is helpful to our understanding of cats to think of their emotions and behaviours as engaging or protective (as described in the Heath Model of emotional health) since all are aimed at helping the individual survive and thrive.

Engaging emotions lead to behaviours where a cat actively seeks out and engages with something (such as food, water, shelter, social contact, finding a mate [more common in un-desexed cats]) that benefits their needs and survival.

Protective emotions such as pain, anxiety, fear, frustration, panic or grief, aim to protect a cat from harm and ensure the cat’s survival. These may result in behaviours such as increasing distance from and/or decreasing interaction with the situation which has triggered the emotion, inhibition (using their sensory systems to gather information passively, including listening, looking, watching, sniffing) or appeasement (interacting with the emotional trigger in order to gather information and, at the same time, offering signs of non-hostility in return).

Allowing the cat to experience their range of emotions and successfully use their suite of behavioural responses reduces the likelihood that the cat will become frustrated and that the emotion and behavioural response will increase in intensity. This can help the cat experience more positive mental wellbeing.

Understanding how a cat may think and feel goes a long way in helping them have a happy and healthy life. To learn more about providing good care and a great environment for your cat, visit the RSPCA Safe and Happy Cats website.

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