Scent
See also: Major urinary proteins and Cat pheromoneCats can communicate through scent via urine, feces, and chemicals in skin glands located around the mouth, tail, and paws. They also use scent in order to mark their territory. If another animal tries to invade the cat's territory, it will fight for the territory, or the cat will scare the animal off. Urine spraying is also a territorial marking. Cats rub up against furniture or doorways to mark the items as "theirs". When cats rub people, they are marking them with their scent, claiming them as "theirs", in much the same way they would mark each other as neighbors in a natural setting. In addition, they are picking up the peoples' scents.
Read more about this topic: Cat Communication
Famous quotes containing the word scent:
“I am ... willing to admit that some people might live there for years, or even a lifetime, so protected that they never sense the sweet stench of corruption that is all around them—the keen, thin scent of decay that pervades everything and accuses with a terrible accusation the superficial youthfulness, the abounding undergraduate noise, that fills those ancient buildings.”
—Thomas Merton (1915–1968)
“Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys,
Unfriendly to society’s chief joys.”
—William Cowper (1731–1800)
“In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)