Cat Communication - Scent

Scent

See also: Major urinary proteins and Cat pheromone

Cats 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.

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Famous quotes containing the word scent:

    “The fairest things have fleetest end,
    Their scent survives their close:
    But the rose’s scent is bitterness
    To him that loved the rose.”
    —Francis Thompson (1859–1907)

    “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)

    “But soft, methinks I scent the morning air,
    Brief let me be.”
    —William Shakespeare (1564–1616)