Some people still believe that cliché: cats have bad tempers. Those of us who love them know it isn't true (or at least not 100%). Or well, even if it is, we don't mind (we all have our quirks), and we're delighted to talk about the virtues and feline charms of our ARISTOCAT to anyone who will listen.
However, the cliché is still out there… Perhaps cats as famous as Grumpy Cat or Colonel Meow (may he rest in peace) have successfully helped cement that belief. Or perhaps we have all contributed to it, because deep down we love cats being little devils, playing tricks on us from time to time… so we can later tell our friends about them with a mixture of annoyance and pride. Be that as it may, science remains determined to understand why they are the way they are. There has to be an explanation. Is it a gene? Is it because cats descended from big cats? Perhaps it's because we can't understand what they want no matter how hard we try?
Well, no… It seems that the behavioral problems of our kittens arise in the earliest stages of life and are caused, as happens with many human behaviors, by trauma. Trauma caused by early separation from their mothers and, specifically, by premature weaning. This is stated in a study recently published in Nature. According to the researchers, being separated from their mother is so traumatic for kittens that it causes them to experience chronic stress. This increases aggression and anxiety… something that in some cases is remedied over time. But not in others.
Early weaning is defined as the permanent separation of a kitten from its mother before it would occur in nature. Generally, before 12 weeks. Considering that the critical socialization period for cats occurs between 2 and 8 weeks of age, it is understandable that early weaning has a major impact on the animals' health and behavior and causes neurobiological changes, which are sometimes irreversible.
To discover the consequences of this on kittens, a questionnaire was developed to study and compare data provided by the owners of 5726 domestic cats. The results showed that when weaning occurred before eight weeks, the risk of behavioral problems increased. The study states that 41% of the cats were slightly aggressive toward other cats. Meanwhile, cats weaned after 14 weeks displayed less aggression toward strangers.
These findings clearly link early weaning with bad temper in cats. And when you think about it, it really does make sense… The solution? Researchers suggest that later weaning would be a simple and affordable remedy for significantly improving the temperaments of thousands and thousands of ARISTOCATS. And, by extension, family life. Since cats are the most popular pets, understanding their genetics and the environmental factors that affect their behavior is important both for us and for their well-being. So we'll have to see what impact this study has…
