How to tell if your cats are fighting or just having fun

When cat owners mistakenly believe their pets are merely playing, they frequently miss the warning signals of a difficult relationship, which can create stress and disease in the animals, according to the expert. Other times, owners rehome their cats because they believed, wrongly, that their cats were fighting.

Gajdo-Kmecová and associates saw roughly 100 movies of various cats interacting in pairs in order to evaluate and characterize interactions. Gajdo-Kmecová recognized six types of activities, including wrestling and remaining still, after watching around one-third of the movies. Then she viewed every video and recorded how frequently and for how long each cat displayed one of the listed behaviors. She identified three different interactions between cat pairs: playful, aggressive, and intermediate by doing statistical analysis on the behaviors.

According to Gajdo-Kmecová, this investigation offers preliminary understandings of cat relationships, but it's only the beginning. She intends to investigate other subtly expressed behaviors in the future, such as tail swishing and ear twitching. Delgado and Gajdo-Kmecová both emphasize that a tumultuous interaction may not always indicate a disastrous relationship.

This is not only about one contact, Gajdo-Kmecova asserts. To put things into perspective, owners truly should look at the varied, multiple interactions in several stages of the cats' lives.