Experimental Analysis of Human-Cat Interactions During First Encounters

The goal of our study was to describe tween a human and a cat and to determine the social behavior during the first encounter beinfluence of the sex of the cat, individuality of the cat, activity state of the person, and person type on the cat's behavior; and the influence of the age and sex of the human partner (person type) on his/her behavior.Nineteen colony cats encountered 240 unfamiliar test persons in a standardized one-cat/one-person situation. In half of the encounters, the behavior of the cat was recorded (A experiments); during a first five-minute phase (Ph 1), the test person was not allowed to interact with the cat; during the second five-minute phase (Ph 2), he/she was allowed to behave without any restrictions. In the other half of the encounters (B experiments), the behavior of the human partner was recorded, and the test person was allowed to behave freely from the start for the duration of five minutes. The influence of the factors listed above was tested by analyses of variance and t-tests.Cats show an enormous individual variation in their behavior. Neither their sex nor the age-sex class of the partner influences their behavior nearly as much as their own individuality. The activity state of the test person (reading a book versus interacting freely) influences the behavior of the cat with respect to most of the parameters observed. Human behavior toward the cat is influenced by the person's age (adults versus children from six to ten years of age) and, to a lesser extent, by the person's sex.The first body contact is a key event and occurs more quickly in the dyadic situation than when the person is looking at a book, since the human partner usually initiates social interactions and motivates the cat to accelerate coming into contact. In addition to the speed and chronology of contact initiation, proximity and behavior regulating the distance between the partners are useful measures for describing human-cat interactions in different social contexts. Single behavioral elements of the cat and the human also may be used as indicators of the character of the relationship.