Study Proves Cats Hate Change – and It Makes Them Sick

If you’re a longtime cat owner, you’re probably aware that cats are hypersensitive to change. A recent scientific study confirms this, proving that healthy cats “play sick” to demonstrate that they are upset with changes in the household. The results of the study appear in this month’s issue of Live Science: They don’t talk, but when cats are upset about a change in their environment they let you know by acting sick – refusing to eat and vomiting excessively, even if they’re healthy, a new study finds. “For veterinary clinicians, when you have a cat that’s not eating, is not using the litter box or has stuff coming up out of its mouth, the quality of the environment is another cause that needs to be addressed in coming up with a diagnosis,” said study researcher Tony Buffington, a professor of veterinary clinical sciences at Ohio State University. When cats in the study experienced “unusual external events,” such as a change in the caretaker or feeding schedule, the healthy ones were just as likely as the chronically ones to exhibit sickness behaviors. Playing sick The study used two groups of cats – a set of healthy cats and a set of cats with feline interstitial cystitis (IC), a chronic illness characterized by recurring discomfort or pain in the bladder. Both groups demonstrated the same number of sickness behaviors in response to unusual events, and in both groups, the risk of acting sick over disrupted routines tripled from when everything stayed the same. The research project hadn’t begun as a study of cats’ tendency to exhibit sickness behaviors. Judi Stella, a doctoral candidate in veterinary preventive medicine, was the primary caretaker of 20 cats with IC and of healthy cats housed in Ohio State’s Veterinary Medical Center. Based on previous work about the benefits of environmental enrichment for cats that stay indoors, Stella spent months setting up a standardized feeding, play and cleaning schedule that seemed the least stressful for all of the cats. Eventually she noticed the cats with the chronic illness looked better: Their coats were shinier, their eyes were clearer, and no cat had missed the litter box or vomited for two weeks. Buffington said, “What we found, in other clinical studies and with this study, is that by enriching the environment, you can reduce IC cats’ symptom burden by about 75 or 80 percent.” Stressing out cats After the environment was stable for all of the cats in this enriched environment, Stella observed them for 77 weeks, tracking any changes in behavior. During this period, the researchers made various changes to the cats’ environment, including discontinuation of contact with Stella, a combination of husbandry schedule changes (food removal, and withdrawal of playtime and music), a three-hour delay in feeding time and a dramatic change in caretaker personnel. During control weeks, when the routine was unaltered, the healthy cats exhibited an average of 0.4 sickness behaviors, and the cats with IC exhibited 0.7 sickness behaviors – virtually no difference between the two. Similarly, during weeks containing “unusual external events,” the number of sick behaviors increased to 1.9 for healthy cats and 2.0 for cats with interstitial cystitis. Overall, this translated to a 3.2-fold increase in the risk for sickness behaviors by all cats Read more at LiveScience.com .

Cat Owners More Likely to Cheat on Their Spouses

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Jilly Cooper’s famously naughty novels about play-away horse owners may be more accurate than previously thought; a national survey has shown that an overwhelming majority of cheating spouses own horses and ponies. In the survey, over 2,000 unfaithful spouses were quizzed on which pets they kept at home; of the respondents, 8% own a horse or a pony. The most common pet for cheaters to keep is a cat (45%), despite the fact that dogs are officially the most popular pet in the UK with 8 million Brits owning at least one (source: Daily Mail 2010). The survey was conducted by IllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s largest extramarital dating site. “Horses certainly aren’t your average domestic pet,” says Sara Hartley, site representative, “and they cost a lot to keep. IllicitEncounters.com’s clientele earn £5,000 more a year than the average Brit, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that their conspicuous consumption stretches to their choice of pets.” “As for cats, they have often been seen as a symbol of mystery and allure. Perhaps the owners are projecting a little?” IllicitEncounters.com has just over 540,000 members across the UK, and has been running since 2003.  [SOURCE: sfgate.com; PHOTO: smvblog.com ]