Saturday, September 02, 2023

Humans and a safe haven


 Why do humans insist on leaving their territory. They call it a "holiday" or a "vacation." They move out of their proper place and roam far afield - for no very good reason.

No sensible cat would do this. We cats live in our own habitual areas - a core territory with a safe den and then a hunting range. 

The hunting ranges is where we go about, even if we don't hunt. We patrol it. We make sure nothing has changed and, if it has, we sniff carefully and sometimes mark it with urine as a kind of post-it note to ourselves to double check and as a message to other cats if  they share our range.

If we are indoor-only cats, then this distinction between the core territory and the hunting range is not so clear. Even so we appreciate a safe haven area, like the core den, where we can retreat if there are upsets or changes within the house.

My core territory is on the bed of my human. That's where I go if there are strangers in the house. I feel safe there. And, if things go really bad like shouting or building work in the house, I can always go under the bed, itself. 

My friend Percy has his safe haven on the top shelf of the wardrobe! He feels safe high up.

Why don't humans have the same sense? They go hunting for food or for work outside the home, but why go away for a whole two weeks roaming far afield?

Humans really are a strange species.

1 comment:

  1. You're absolutely right. And how can they leave their kitties for so long? It's just wrong.

    ReplyDelete

Help for cats whose humans show behaviour problems.

This blog is devoted to the study of human behaviour. We cats, who live with this sometimes unpredictable and always feeble minded species, can benefit from seeing their behaviour in its proper scientific context. The study of feline dilemmas, training problems, and difficulties with humans, can only benefit all of us. All of us train our humans - to buy the right food, for instance, but many of us do not have knowledge of how to improve our training methods. The human species is obviously not as intelligent as the cat, but nevertheless can learn quite a lot - if properly managed. Topics of interest include the use of claw and order, purring as a human reward, rubbing your human up the right way, when to bite, spraying as a method of making our wishes known, ignoring the human, human harassment, human inattention and sheer human stupidity. I welcome your questions. Photos can be sent via my secretary's website, www.celiahaddon.com This blog has been chosen as one of the top 50 feline blogs by Online VetTechprogramms.org