🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Sound is an often-overlooked feature of the captive environment, and research has examined whether auditory enrichment can calm cats in shelters and veterinary settings. This overview surveys studies…

Practical, validated tools let staff assess feline welfare without specialist equipment. This overview surveys behavioural scoring instruments used for cats, foremost the seven-point Cat-Stress-Score…

Sedentary captive cats fed energy-dense diets are prone to obesity, which carries serious welfare and health consequences. This overview surveys body-condition management in felids: the prevalence and…

Conventional small single-compartment shelter cages force cats to eat, sleep and eliminate in close quarters, raising stress and disease. This overview surveys research on improved housing, especially…

Containing pet cats indoors or within enclosures is increasingly promoted to reduce wildlife predation, roaming-related cat mortality and disease, with some jurisdictions enacting curfews or containme…

The catnip response, a heritable reaction to nepetalactone causing sniffing, rubbing, rolling and a euphoric-seeming state, occurs in many domestic cats and some non-domestic felids. This overview sur…

Chronic activation of the stress axis can suppress immunity, impair reproduction and contribute to disease, and several captive cat species show evidence of such chronic stress. This overview surveys…

Felids are relatively susceptible to Yersinia pestis, and infection can progress to acute, severe and sometimes fatal disease, distinguishing cats from more resistant carnivores. This overview surveys…

Although cats are the definitive host, felids can also suffer clinical toxoplasmosis, particularly when immunocompromised or exposed to virulent strains. This overview surveys reports of disease in ca…

Cognitive enrichment challenges animals to solve problems for rewards, engaging mental faculties and providing a sense of control. This overview surveys the emerging use of cognitive enrichment for ca…

Understanding why some felids tolerate pathogens that sicken others requires comparing immune function across wild and domestic cats. This overview surveys comparative felid immunology, examining diff…

Feline immunodeficiency virus causes an AIDS-like syndrome in domestic cats yet has long been assumed benign in its wild hosts. This overview examines the evidence for and against that assumption, com…

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a web of animal infections, with cats among the susceptible species alongside mink, ferrets and others. This overview surveys cross-species SARS-CoV-2 dynamics relevant…

The European wildcat’s recovery is complicated by disease and hybridization stemming from contact with abundant domestic cats. This overview surveys the disease threats facing wildcats, including feli…

Small wild felids such as the Pallas cat, sand cat and various others have distinctive disease ecologies that are often poorly studied yet conservation-relevant. This overview surveys disease in small…

Free-ranging domestic cats prey on a wide range of urban and suburban wildlife, with documented effects on birds, small mammals, reptiles and amphibians. This overview synthesises predation-rate studi…

Free-roaming and feral domestic cats, vastly more numerous than their wild relatives, act as a reservoir for pathogens that can spill into endangered felids. This overview surveys the suite of disease…

Where domestic cats overlap with wild felids, interbreeding can erode the genetic distinctiveness of wild species, a documented threat to European wildcats and a concern for other small cats near sett…

Domestic cats occupy the urban carnivore community alongside native mesopredators and larger carnivores, and their abundance is shaped by interactions with these species. This overview synthesises res…

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic underscored that felids are susceptible to emerging coronaviruses, prompting renewed attention to the coronavirus host range in cats. This overview surveys the susceptibility o…

Tick-borne diseases are emerging and shifting in wild felids as tick distributions change and molecular tools reveal new pathogens. This overview surveys the changing landscape of tick-borne disease i…

Beyond the well-known feline immunodeficiency and leukemia viruses, felid genomes carry endogenous retroviruses and other retroelements that record ancient infections. This overview surveys the spectr…

Beyond basic housing, enrichment can substantially improve shelter cat welfare and adoptability. This overview surveys interventions studied in shelters: hiding boxes and elevated perches, toys and pl…

Feline panleukopenia virus is exceptionally hardy, surviving in the environment for long periods, which shapes its epidemiology and spillover potential to wild felids. This overview surveys the virus’…

Cats, both domestic and wild, are the only definitive hosts in which Toxoplasma gondii completes sexual reproduction and sheds environmentally resistant oocysts. This overview surveys the ecology of t…

Feline coronavirus circulates widely and usually harmlessly, but can mutate within a host into the lethal feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) virus, a particular danger in crowded captive felid collec…

Beyond the pathogenic FIV and FeLV, felids carry feline foamy virus, a generally apathogenic retrovirus that nonetheless offers a useful marker of contact and transmission. This overview surveys felin…

Feline herpesvirus and calicivirus, the main agents of cat respiratory disease, circulate in domestic cats and can spill into wild felids, causing upper respiratory and oral disease. This overview sur…

Beyond bovine tuberculosis, felids can be affected by other mycobacteria, including the agents of feline leprosy that cause nodular skin disease. This overview surveys what is known about these atypic…

The detection of feline leukemia virus in the endangered Florida panther triggered one of the few field campaigns to vaccinate free-ranging wild cats. This overview synthesizes the outbreak response:…