Guide to cat behaviour

These are emotions that aim to protect the cat from harm and ensure the cat’s survival: 

• Fear–anxiety emotions that motivate the cat to try and protect their access to essential resources such as shelter, food, and water, and manage threats to their personal or resource security to safeguard their survival. In general, fear is the emotion triggered when the cat perceives the threat as real, immediate, and present, while anxiety is a response to a perceived threat which the cat is uncertain about (e.g., anxiety about something that the cat feels might happen). Fear and anxiety emotions often result in behaviours which try to increase distance from or avoid an interaction with a perceived threat.
• Pain emotions that are felt when the body is physically damaged in some way. Pain is experienced as both a physical sensation and as an emotional state. The pain emotional state is associated with acute and chronic pain and can have a learned component. Pain emotions motivate the cats to protect themselves from physical harm and discomfort.

Previous experiences may make the fear, anxiety, and pain emotions more likely to be triggered; for example, if a cat has had a painful experience at the veterinary clinic, they might be more likely to experience anxiety and fear the next time they go, even if that visit itself is not associated with any physical pain.

• Frustration emotions result from a situation in which the cat has lost their control in a situation, been unable obtain resources when they want them, or has received nothing or a less desirable outcome than they expected (e.g., they couldn’t access food when they wanted to or received less food [or less desirable food] than they wanted). Frustration motivates the cat to try and access the resource that they want but have been denied, and to protect and defend what they do have due to the perceived threat of losing what they have. An inadequate environment that does not meet the cat’s needs is likely to trigger frustration emotions.

Frustration is often triggered along with one of the other protective emotions and intensifies and accelerates the behavioural responses to these emotions. This is commonly seen in cats who have a lack of or perceived lack of control and so an inability to react to a threatening situation and protect themselves. In this situation they may be more likely to display intense versions of behavioural responses to other emotions such as fear, such as a cat who is restrained and fearful being more likely to bite than they would normally because they cannot run away and hide.

• Panic–grief emotions are generally displayed by kittens when they are young and unable to protect themselves. For example, kittens crying when they are separated from their mother, to try and get their mother's attention. It is thought that these emotions may also be displayed by an adult cat in response to the loss of an individual to whom they are closely bonded.

Protective emotions are associated with behaviours which attempt to: 

• Increase distance from and/or decrease interaction with the situation which has triggered the emotion. These protective behavioural responses include avoidance (e.g., eye avoidance [looking away] and running away) and repulsion (e.g., doing something which is designed to get the threat to move away, these include active behaviours like hissing, swiping, and biting and also passive behaviours such as staring or blocking access).
• Gather more information about the situation which has triggered the emotion. These protective behavioural responses are either passive or active. The passive protective behavioural response is called inhibition and is the cat using their sensory systems to gather information passively, including listening, looking, watching, sniffing, usually while the cat remains at some distance from the trigger. In intense emotional situations, inhibition may manifest as a ‘freeze’ response.  The active protective behavioural response is called appeasement and involves the cat interacting with the emotional trigger in order to gather information and, at the same time, offering signs of non-hostility in return; for example, the cat actively giving and gathering information from another familiar individual by vocalising (in a non-hostile way) and then listening for a response so they can decide what to do. Appeasement is less common in cats than inhibition due to their natural state as a solitary hunter and survivor.