Research overview: greeting, rubbing and allorubbing in cats

Rubbing is a conspicuous affiliative behaviour in cats, directed at other cats, people and objects, and this overview surveys its forms and functions. It covers allorubbing between cats, in which animals rub heads and flanks, often in association with the tail-up greeting, and the rubbing cats direct at human legs and hands. The survey examines hypotheses that rubbing serves social bonding, scent exchange creating a shared group odour, and greeting after separation, and how it may flow up social hierarchies in groups. It discusses observations from free-living colonies and homes showing patterns in who rubs whom, and what these reveal about the relatively flexible social organization cats can adopt. By organizing this evidence, the survey presents rubbing as a key channel of feline affiliation.