Pretty much every cat owner has experienced this at some point: Kitty crawls onto your lap and sticks her rear end out in your face. What is she trying to tell us?
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| Why does the cat love to show us its butt? |
Why do cats show us their backside?
We all know that cats sometimes show strange behavior. For example, they first lick something devotedly, and then sink their pointed teeth into it.
Another peculiarity, which can irritate us humans quite a bit, is the thing with the butt. You are lying comfortably in bed or sitting relaxed in front of the TV, the velvet paw jumps on you, the tail sticks straight up in the air and suddenly you have their butt right in front of your face.
In many cases this is simply amusing, but sometimes it can also be unpleasant and annoying or even really unhygienic.
But why exactly do our house tigers actually do this? The answer is: because they really like us. According to Amy Shojai, author of several books on pet behavior, presenting the intimate zones is actually meant in a particularly positive way and thus almost a compliment to us.
Why do cats present their rear ends to us?
For cats, smelling each other is incredibly important, they communicate through it. They sniff conspecifics to recognize them and to get to know each other. First, a cat smells its face and neck during a friendly encounter to pick up the other's pheromones.
In the next step, it stalks forward towards the hips and then the rear end is sniffed, because the odorants are particularly intense in the anal region. This is why the "olfactory signature of the other person" can be found here.
When greeting a conspecific, a cat thus behaves similarly to a dog. By sniffing in the anal region, it receives additional information about who is standing in front of it. In plain language: When cats show their butts openly, they want to greet the other in a nice way and demonstrate that they are not aggressive towards the other.
The importance of pheromones
Smells play a crucial role in the lives of cats, because they communicate through the exchange of pheromones. These are chemical messengers that are released to affect the environment and communicate with other cats. These substances are completely odorless to humans.
In cats, the important odor substances are produced on the one hand by the sweat glands between the paw pads or by sebaceous glands distributed over the body. They are located around the lips, on the chin, above the eyes, at the base of the tail and near the genitals.
Decoding the pheromones
Cats are specially equipped by nature to pick up even the finest particles of chemical messengers. The cat perceives these olfactory messages with its particularly fine sense of smell, more precisely by means of Jacobson's organ, which is located in the roof of the mouth, approximately at the level of the incisors.
With the help of this organ, the cat can "taste" odors. You've probably seen your cat with her lips curled and her mouth wide open: In this way, it captures odors through what's called the Flehmen grimace and, in effect, passes them on to Jacobson's organ.
Cats essentially live in a world full of pheromones, without which they would not be able to recognize and orient themselves. This is also a major reason why our fluffy housemates are constantly making sure that everything, absolutely everything in their environment has their scent on it. That's why they rub and lick everything and also cling to things.
Why do humans get their butts shown?
But why do cats show their butts to their humans, even though they know full well that they are not conspecific? According to Amy Shojai, Miezi is just showing us her friendship with this gesture and also how much she trusts us! In short, the velvet paw is paying you a great compliment! A cat that shows you its buttocks is ultimately reproducing the behavior it learned as a puppy in contact with its mother.
To explain this, you have to go a little further: remember that the mother cat licks her kittens to help them defecate. This is how she stimulates the appropriate areas. As you feed your cat, take care of her, pamper her, and help her defecate by petting her belly, you are ultimately acting like her mother did back then! If Miezi appreciates your affection, she will thank you as she would her four-legged mama - by presenting her rear end.
How do I get the cat to stop showing me her rear end?
If your house cat's instinctive behavior still bothers you, you can easily do something about it. Just ignore your kitten when he shows you his butt, and in the future reward him with cuddles or treats when he nudges your hands with his nose.
Bottom line: this behavior is completely natural and normal. If we do not want the cat to present its buttocks to us, we should simply not pay attention to it at that moment.
Thanks for reading: Why does the cat love to show us its butt?, Sorry, my English is bad:)