A study conducted by the University of South Australia interviewed more than 3000 cat parents and found out that felines share only 5 types of personalities. These five categories are: hunter, human, inquisitive, skittish and a cats’ cat.
Understanding your cat’s personality plays a huge role in understanding your cat’s needs and its behavior. This step is also very important if you have more than one cat living in the same home. Learning what their personality type needs and feels comfortable with will save you a lot of behavioral problems and possible fights between them.
A cat’s personality is a result of its genetics as well as the temperament of its parents.
The researchers sent out questionnaires to 3000 owners of a wide array of cats, which resulted in the discovery of 5 different types of cat personalities.
The questions were based on 5 distinct cat characteristics:
- Outgoingness
- Dominance
- Skittishness
- Friendliness
- Spontaneity
Let’s have a look at all five personality types, so that you can find out what type your cat is, and learn what would make it content and happy.
The human
The more attention from humans the better.
This cat is 2/3 cat and 1/3 human.
It wants to share your space and home with you, and likes to sleep near or on you.
Its ideal home would be a home where it gets plenty of attention and laps to sleep on. The more attention it gets, the happier it is.
The skittish cat
These cats are quite easily frightened and highly strung. They are anxious and nervous and shy away from people, especially new guests.
When someone unfamiliar calls them, or comes up to play with them, their first reaction is to run off to a familiar place and hide there.
If your cat is the skittish type, there are a few things you can do to help it out.
First of all, you need to provide your cat with a lot of places where it can hide. You can do so by cutting up holes in a few cardboard boxes. This should do the trick and your cat is going to love it.
Second, you should never push your cat to face its fears head on. These cats survive by avoiding such scary situations, and these encounters will do nothing but traumatize them.
The cats’ cat
Unlike the human type, this one enjoys the company of other felines more than its humans.
This type develops relationships with other cats from a very young age. They are quite sociable with other cats throughout their whole life.
The way to identify if a cat has this type of personality is to observe them while they are still in the litter. This type will certainly stand out as the most playful, sometimes even annoying its siblings. All it wants to do is constantly play, groom or bother the other kittens.
They enjoy living with other felines, so they wouldn’t have any trouble living with a busy, working family, as long as they have feline friends to keep them company during the day.
The inquisitive type
This is a “noisy”, curious cat, that wants to spend its day exploring and investigating things.
These cats often get into trouble by going where they’re not supposed to.
They are sometimes even prone to destruction, and can often resort to scratching furniture or soiling themselves in the house, if they feel bored or are not mentally stimulated.
What you need to do with these cats is give them enough toys to play with, or find them some sort of a fun activity to do, such as chasing a feather on a string.
They have a lot of energy, and if they don’t use it playing, they’ll go into a destructive mode, and possibly ruin your furniture.
The hunter
Although all cats are born with their hunting instincts, some are better at it than others. This type excels at capturing prey.
The hunter can be identified at a very young age.
This cat differs from the others by the way it plays with its toys. It will often play with its teeth, clasp it in its mouth and frantically kick.
The hunter’s best environment is a home that has a back yard or an open space for it to roam free, without you worrying about the dangers of busy urban roads.
Our cats can have many traits of different personalities, and same as humans, they can be a blend of a few personality types. Nonetheless, it’s important to know your cat’s personality traits, and determine which ones prevail, so as to be able to give them the best possible life they deserve.
What cat personality does your kitten have? How do you two get along? Share your story in the comments!
My cat is a wonderful mix of human, cat’s cat and inquisitive. He loves other animals and they love him but he always has to be near me and he sleeps with me every night. He’s also very, very inquisitive and has gotten into some places that he shouldn’t have been able to get into….lol