🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Outdoor enclosures, often called catios, and other containment systems offer a middle path between free roaming and strict indoor living. This overview surveys research and welfare reasoning on these…

Cats are the definitive host of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, shedding environmentally resistant oocysts that can infect other animals, and this overview surveys the resulting impacts on wildlife an…

Whether cats track whether a person is paying attention to them bears on their social cognition. This overview surveys experiments testing if cats adjust their behaviour according to a human's attenti…

Object-choice tasks, in which an animal must use a human pointing gesture to find hidden food, are a standard probe of social cognition. This overview surveys studies applying these tasks to cats, whi…

A key concept in understanding cat impacts is that cats are subsidized predators, sustained by human-provided food and shelter independent of wild prey, and this overview surveys its consequences. It…

Cats appear in Greek and Roman art, texts and household life, though their role as rodent controllers competed with weasels and ferrets that were also kept for the purpose. This overview surveys liter…

The amount of felinine in cat urine is regulated in part by an enzyme called cauxin, which is excreted in the urine and influences the production of this scent precursor. This overview surveys the rol…

Tactile information from the whiskers is integrated with other senses in brain regions that coordinate orienting and targeting, including midbrain structures involved in directing attention and moveme…

As cats age, their perception of taste, together with smell, can change in ways that affect food acceptance. This overview surveys age-related changes in feline taste and their interaction with declin…

Beyond the mechanics of the flehmen response, felids use vomeronasal sampling to extract social information from scent marks. This overview surveys research on how cats assess reproductive status, ind…

Cats are common in households with children, and research has examined the developmental and welfare dimensions of these relationships. This overview surveys studies on how children form attachments t…

Beyond the familiar meow and purr, cats produce chirps, trills and chatters that figure in greeting, excitement and predatory contexts. This overview surveys efforts to build ethograms, systematic cat…

Scratching serves several functions at once, and this overview untangles them. Dragging the claws strips worn sheaths to maintain sharpness, stretches the limbs and back, and deposits both visual mark…

Like HIV, FIV infection progresses through recognizable phases: an acute stage with fever, lymphadenopathy, and transient neutropenia; a long, clinically silent asymptomatic stage that can last years;…

Therapeutic renal diets, characterized by restricted phosphorus and protein, supplemented omega-3 fatty acids, added potassium and B-vitamins, and alkalinizing properties, are among the few interventi…

Coat colour can affect heat balance, and this overview reviews how dark and light fur interact with thermal load in cats. Darker coats absorb more solar radiation and may warm faster in sun, while lig…

A cat coat is layered for function, and this overview reviews its structure. Many cats have coarse outer guard hairs that shed water and resist wear over a softer, denser undercoat that traps air for…

Older cats can develop cognitive dysfunction syndrome, a decline analogous in some respects to human dementia. This overview surveys research on age-related changes in feline cognition and behaviour,…

The cognitive bias paradigm tests whether an animal in a negative affective state judges ambiguous cues more pessimistically, providing a window into emotion. This overview surveys research applying j…

Brightly patterned collar covers, designed to make stalking cats conspicuous to prey with good colour vision, have been tested as a tool to reduce predation. This overview surveys trials of such cover…

Cognition has been studied far less in cats than in primates, birds, or dogs, but a coherent picture is emerging across the felid family. This overview synthesises research on object permanence, spati…

The tapetum lucidum is widespread among nocturnal and crepuscular vertebrates, but its structure varies, and comparing forms illuminates how cats fit the broader pattern. This overview surveys differe…

Cats and dogs differ in how they handle water, and this overview reviews the comparison and its roots in feline biology. Cats, descended from desert-adapted ancestors, tend to have a lower thirst driv…

Dogs and cats represent contrasting domestication stories, and comparing them clarifies what domestication means. This overview surveys the differences: dogs descend from wolves through a long, intens…

How much better do cats really see in the dark than people? This overview surveys behavioral and physiological comparisons, which generally credit cats with the ability to detect light at intensities…

Dogs are famed for their sense of smell, and comparing them with cats puts feline olfaction in perspective. This overview surveys estimates that cats possess a large but somewhat smaller repertoire of…

Silver vine and catnip both elicit the characteristic feline rubbing and rolling response, but they differ in potency and in which cats they affect. This overview surveys comparisons showing that silv…

Several studies have tested how well cats exploit human-given cues, such as pointing, gazing, or tapping, to find hidden food in object-choice tasks. This overview surveys the range of cues cats can a…

Deafness is strongly associated with the dominant white coat gene in cats, particularly in blue-eyed white individuals, and this overview surveys the phenomenon and its biology. It examines how the wh…

Continuous and flash glucose monitoring systems, originally developed for humans and adapted for cats, use a small subcutaneous sensor to track interstitial glucose over days, providing detailed gluco…