Cats are looking for certain objects. Day after day, they can roam the neighborhood to collect an impressive haul of stolen items. It’s not uncommon for cats to bring in dead or petrified mice and birds, but it’s harder to explain if they show up with items like socks or panties.
Cats may seek attention
Researchers suspect a number of causes, but tend to agree on one point: Stolen items are not gifts.
“We’re not sure why cats behave this way. There are cats all over the world that do this, but it has never been studied. I want to know exactly why they do this,” says Auke-Florian Hiemstra, a biologist at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, a museum in Leiden.
Hiemstra and Dr. Claudia Vinke, a behavioral biologist at the University of Utrecht, have found a few reasons that could fuel cats’ cravings.
They may seek attention or want to play; thus, they could extend their foraging and hunting behavior, just as cats bring animals into the home.
They may also want to remove particularly smelly items such as worn or freshly washed socks from certain areas of their territory.
Cats have small stomachs and tend to bring prey into the center of their territory to feed when they are hungry. That same instinct might lead them to bring objects home, where the reaction they get encourages the habit.
“When you pay attention to the cat, you reinforce the behavior,” says Vinke.
Stolen items are not gifts
Dennis Turner, a private professor at the University of Zurich, believes that attention is essential, but adds that cats are attracted to some items made of wool and plastic because they contain lanolin, notes The Guardian.
To break the habit, Turner recommends silently leaving the room when the cat pulls something in and throwing the object out.
“Animals, including humans, respond to very simple stimuli. Something blowing in the wind could trigger hunting behavior. After catching some strange objects, cats may well decide to bring them back. I don’t think they think of them as gifts. They are simple rules of life that the cat’s brain follows,” says Daniel Mills, professor of veterinary behavioral medicine at the University of Lincoln.
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Source: www.descopera.ro
