Understanding cat body language

Let’s face it, dogs are just better at expressing their emotions than cats (I know I am biased!). Although I am a dog person, I also love all animals and find cats very fascinating. So, I have been looking at some cat signals and body language. I felt the need to do this after I made the cardinal sin of rubbing my neighbor’s cat’s belly when it started to roll on its back when it saw me. I thought, like a dog, this was an invitation that it wanted its belly rubbed. Well, turns out that a cat exposing its belly to you is a sign that it feels safe with you, that doesn’t mean it wants its belly rubbed. Well, a few scratches and some google searching later, that bit of trivia got added to my “did you know..” conversation list.

So, what else did I discover on my google searches for cat body language? How about cat greetings? A few ways cats do this, some just come over to you and rub their cheek against you. This is both a greeting and also a scent marking. It's kinda getting familiar and adding you to their list of familiar objects. Another one is a head bump also known as ‘bumping’. A third way is they will approach you with their tail up high and or a ‘meow’. This is also done when they might want something from you. Another thing I discovered is that cats rarely meow to other cats, it is used mostly with humans and they can have 100s of different sounds to communicate with us. Usually, it’s to get us to open the door or if they are hungry.

Well, I know there are 1000s of other signals that cats make, and I can’t cover many here but over time, I will be sure to add more as I discover them. Let us know in the comments of any peculiar cat habits or signals you have encountered.