Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The objective was to examine the frequency of unwanted behaviors in the Swedish feline population and what factors in the environment, inheritance and past life that have an influence on the frequency. SLU’s web poll generator was used to create a web poll which insinuated that it was a poll with objective to make an inventory of the Swedish feline population. I wanted to avoid that only owners to cats with unwanted behaviors answered the poll. The web link to the poll was sent to SLUs students and posted on Internet forums for people interested in cats. Polls with answers that had information about any unwanted behavior was compiled with information about "sex", "breed", "possibility to go outdoors", amount of cats in the household and information regarding the unwanted behavior, divided in twelve categories.

95 % of the answered polls were made by women and the age among the participants varied between 11 and 98 years. 86 % had previous experience with cats and 66% had previous experience of the same breed. Among the 833 cats, 292 were pure bred. 37,5 % of the cats were castrated males, 31,5 % castrated females, 21% intact females and 10% were intact males. 43 % of the cat owners experienced some kind of unwanted behavior. Breed, sex and possibility to go outdoors influenced the frequency significantly. If the cat lived as single cat or lived with other cats was not significant. The most frequent unwanted behavior was clawing on furniture or other unwanted space. The second most frequent behavior was behaviors around food and water intake. Cat owners to castrated cats, both female and male, reported unwanted behaviors more often than expected. Owners to pure breeds reported unwanted behaviors more seldom than expected.

What questions that is asked and how they are asked is very important for the results. You have to separate the behavior from the person that sees the behavior as a problem to be able to understand all influencing factors. There are a lot of devoted pet owners in Sweden, and a lot of them are willing to help in research and also willing to learn more about their beloved cats.