[devmor]

In nature, cats form colonies where they take communal care of the young, old and infirm. One of the core behaviors of cats is hunting and providing for colony members who are too weak to do so.

Cats being "solitary" animals is largely a misunderstanding of cat behavior towards humans due to cat affection being expressed differently than dog affection.

[nerdjon]

I have had cats nearly my entire life. I love dogs but I am a cat person. All of the cats in my life have been loving social pets.

I hate when the idea that cats can't bond, isn't loving, all of the stereotypes of cats are thrown around. Because they are just wrong.

I do think a fair amount of it is not knowing how to properly socialize a kitten. But even a socialized cat will never be as affectionate as a dog. Or at least not the way a dog shows it.

But I have 2 cats, they will sometimes sleep in different rooms and sometimes cuddle up basically on top of each other. They almost every night will sleep in my bed or at the very least will sleep on the cat tree next to me.

I have noticed that when I have had to take one of my cats for an extended stay at the vet the other is noticeably... different. I don't want to assign an emotion since their emotions are different. But he is not himself. This often starts when I put one cat in a carrier.

They seem to know when I am in a mood and really need that affection.

But I also acknowledge that a cat isn't for everyone. Some people need that constant unquestionable affection that a dog gives you. Cats are more subtle.

[cmrdporcupine]

The thing is, I like both dogs and cats and I really like our cat. But I've only ever had failures in situations where I tried to introduce additional cats into a solitary cat situation. Which is sad, because I'd actually kind of like to have a second cat here. The only time we had any luck with two cats was when there were two from the same litter.

I know some people accomplish this, but it honestly seems like the exception rather than the rule.

(EDIT: I should mention that our cat came from a shelter where she lived with a pile of other kittens. But her response to other cats now is... GTFO here)

[X0Refraction]

It takes a long time to introduce a new cat, we have 3 indoor cats all introduced one at a time. It took around a month for both the second and third cat to be completely accepted.

The approach we took was to keep the new cat in a separate room for the first few days to allow them to begin to get used to the new scent. We would then swap blankets to give them further time to get used to each other's scents. Then we'd open the door and allow them to interact under supervision for short periods and then we gradually increased the time they could interact each day.

I'm not sure this would work if you had outdoor cats. We didn't actually intend to get the third cat, but we ended up taking him in as our friend's original cat refused to acclimate to the point that he was spending all but 20 mins a day outside of the house and so they needed a good home for their new cat.

[UncleMeat]

> It takes a long time to introduce a new cat, we have 3 indoor cats all introduced one at a time.

Yep.

> It took around a month for both the second and third cat to be completely accepted.

Oh boy that's nothing. I think we were like 10 months. They still don't get along flawlessly but it is now tolerable. We did precisely the recommended steps (scent swapping, separate spaces, associating each other with food, play nearby each other).

[animal531]

It's funny if you think about it, in a certain way cats are very much like people. Those that are poorly raised or socially isolated when young have issues later on to adapt to having others around, whereas if they've been brought up properly (and maintain that through practice) then it's a lot easier for them to make new connections later in life.

It's probably true for a lot of other animals as well.

[UncleMeat]

It is hard because adopting is important but you can't really know what was in a cat's past. One of our cats is very grumpy at the other. This could be caused by something in her past that we aren't aware of. Our other cat also has very poor manners for a cat (he stares at everything) that might have developed by being raised with other animals.

What I wish people told us was that sometimes it isn't enough to do everything right. We planned everything and did as much as we possibly could to socialize them effectively and it ended up only fine after a lot of struggle. I had always figured that people who had cats who hated each other simply didn't follow the best practices when introducing them to each other. But that's clearly not the case.

[dragonwriter]

> But I've only ever had failures in situations where I tried to introduce additional cats into a solitary cat situation.

Cat colonies, as I understand, tend to follow the the eighth rule of Fight Club, which can make introductions seem unsuccessful even when they may not be.

[technothrasher]

> In nature, cats form colonies where they take communal care of the young, old and infirm.

Yup. I spent several years working with feral cat colonies throughout central Massachusetts in a TNR program, and they are quite similar in their social structure to lions, less like other more solitary cat species. The colonies at their core tend to be groups of related females, with adult males roaming between a few different groups of females. Neutered males tend to act more like females and stay with a particular colony. Given the artificial food supply the "crazy cat ladies" provide, you will see colonies of unrelated individuals, but if there are multiple food sources readily available the colonies will tend to fracture by maternal line.

[bmj]

It's been interesting to see local shelters realize this, and create colony rooms for cats that have been properly socialized. It keeps the cats out of smaller cages, and likely simplifies the care and feeding of the cats in the colony.

It's also a great way to pick a few cats to bring home. My local shelter will just let you into the room, and you can hang out and decide which ones (and how many) you'll bring home.

[cmrdporcupine]

This is how we "chose" our cat. My wife and daughter sat down in the room of kittens and picked the one that came over and started snuggling and playing. It chose us.

She's such a mellow "no f's given" cat. Lives in a house with two border collies and doesn't take any crap from them and lies around totally chill all day long. I suspect this might be due to her socialization at the animal shelter.

[devmor]

My local area also has several outdoor colonies that are managed (Neutered, health checkups, etc) because they realized that leaving fixed feral cats in place and taking care of them prevents other feral cats from taking their place and breeding further.

[cmrdporcupine]

"hunting and providing for colony members who are too weak to do so."

Is that why my cat dropped a dead vole on our doorstep last week? Is she sad that we're deprived of such essentials? :-)

[jdougan]

"You poor incompetent kitten."

[goodpoint]

Many species are more social and cooperative that people think.

I wonder if seeing nature as more ferocious, competitive and individualistic that it really is comes from psychological projection.

[nonstickcoating]

I recommend Kropotkin's book about Mutual Aid regarding this topic. Disregarding his obvious political affiliation he is one of the first critics of the then-emerging social-darwinist readings of animal behaviour with regards to Evolution and therefore deals with this topic quite extensively.

He was a zoologist apart from all the other topics he had time to deal in because of his noble heritage. Here is the wikipedia article [0] since I do not know how HN regards links to e.g. libgen.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin

[throwanem]

That'd make him one of the last of the old-line ethologists, before the dark interregnum of the behaviorist scum began - I respect Kropotkin considerably more now than I did five minutes ago. Perhaps I'll read him after all.

[gquiniou]

feral cats tend to form colonies but wild cats are solitary, like the european wildcat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wildcat

[amyjess]

Housecats are descended from the African wildcat, not the European one. The African wildcat forms colonies just like housecats.

Much of the myth that cats are naturally solitary creatures comes from people studying the behaviors of the European wildcat and attributing them to housecats, which is wrong because that's not what housecats are descended from.