🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Veterinary visits are a major source of acute stress for cats and a barrier to care, since fearful cats are harder to examine and owners may avoid appointments. This overview surveys the science and p…

Cats communicate and organise their world through scent, marking with urine spray, facial rubbing, scratching and other signals, and the ability to perform and perceive these behaviours matters for we…

During the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers surveyed domestic and free-roaming cats for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies to gauge how often the virus moved from people into felines. This overview synthesizes seros…

Whether to house shelter cats singly or in groups involves trade-offs between social opportunity, stress, disease transmission and space efficiency. This overview surveys research comparing the two: g…

Cats naturally rest and sleep for much of the day, which complicates welfare interpretation because inactivity can reflect either healthy, contented rest or boredom, depression and learned helplessnes…

Domestic cats are facultatively social and did not evolve to share territory with unrelated individuals, so multi-cat households can generate chronic social stress that manifests as behaviour and heal…

How many species the wildcat complex contains has shifted with new evidence and species concepts. This overview traces the debate from treating all wildcats as one species, Felis silvestris, with many…

Shelters are inherently stressful for cats, combining novelty, confinement, unfamiliar conspecifics, noise, unpredictable handling and loss of control. This overview surveys the science of shelter-cat…

Feline upper respiratory disease is the most common illness in shelters, and a body of research connects its incidence to stress-related immunosuppression as much as to pathogen exposure. This overvie…

Synthetic analogues of feline facial and appeasing pheromones are widely marketed to reduce stress in cats, and their use in shelters, catteries and clinics has been studied with mixed but instructive…

Genetic and archaeological evidence converge on the African or Near Eastern wildcat, Felis lybica, as the sole wild ancestor of all domestic cats. This overview explains how the foundational phylogeog…

The wildcat complex is among the most taxonomically debated felid groups because of its broad range, clinal variation, and entanglement with the domestic cat. This overview surveys the complex's struc…

Findings that Toxoplasma alters rodent behavior have fueled extensive, contested research into possible effects on humans, from subtle personality differences to associations with psychiatric conditio…

Wildcats on some Mediterranean islands, such as Sardinia, Corsica, and Crete, were long treated as native subspecies, but genetic studies suggest they descend from cats introduced by humans. This over…

Consensus veterinary guidelines distil decades of feline welfare science into five environmental needs: a safe place to retreat; multiple and separated key resources; opportunity for play and predator…

Toxoplasma is maintained in both domestic cycles centered on house cats and sylvatic cycles driven by wild felids, and the two intersect in complex ways. This overview surveys how domestic and wild tr…

Mesopredator release, in which the decline of top predators allows smaller predators to increase and overexploit prey, is a foundational concept linking urban fragmentation to biodiversity loss. This…

While cats typically host Toxoplasma without illness, immunocompromise can unleash severe, even fatal toxoplasmosis in felids. This overview surveys the conditions under which the parasite causes clin…

Trap-neuter-return, in which free-ranging cats are sterilised and returned to colonies, is among the most contentious topics at the intersection of animal welfare and conservation. This overview synth…

When anthropogenic food subsidises predators, the effects ripple through food webs, altering predation pressure on native prey and interactions among carnivores. This overview synthesises research on…

Cats used in research have specific welfare needs and have been the subject of foundational stress and housing studies. This overview surveys laboratory feline welfare: the classic finding that unpred…

Conceptual frameworks structure how we judge captive animal welfare, and they have evolved over time. This overview surveys the progression from the Five Freedoms, freedom from hunger, discomfort, pai…

Boarding catteries, breeding catteries and long-term confinement settings raise welfare considerations distinct from short shelter stays. This overview surveys research on cats in these environments:…

Unowned free-roaming cats present distinct welfare questions, and trap-neuter-return is the main alternative to lethal control for managing them. This overview surveys the welfare science around commu…

Cats are notably permissive to SARS-CoV-2, a susceptibility rooted in the structure of their ACE2 receptor, which the viral spike protein binds efficiently. This overview surveys comparative studies o…

Hayes, Carey and Schmidt discovered that cats fed diets lacking sufficient taurine developed central retinal degeneration leading to blindness, identifying taurine as a dietary essential nutrient for…

Hayes KC, Carey RE, Schmidt SY · Science · 1975

This study applied genome-wide SNP markers to quantify how thoroughly Scottish wildcats have hybridized with domestic cats, a central question for the survival of the population. The authors developed…

Senn HV, Ghazali M, Kaden J, et al. · Evolutionary Applications · 2019

This study examined the large domestic dog population living around the Serengeti to test whether dogs sustained the canine distemper virus that spilled into lions and other carnivores. Through serosu…

S. Cleaveland, M. G. J. Appel, W. S. K. Chalmers, et al. · Veterinary Microbiology · 2000

Drawing on GPS-tracking of hundreds of pet cats across several countries, this study found that owned cats typically stayed close to home with small home ranges, yet concentrated their hunting in thos…

Kays R, Dunn RR, Parsons AW, Mcdonald B, et al · Animal Conservation · 2020

Kessler and Turner used the Cat-Stress-Score, a validated behavioural scale they helped popularise, to assess domestic cats in boarding catteries kept alone, in pairs or in groups. Most cats showed el…

Kessler MR, Turner DC · Animal Welfare · 1997