🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Feline chronic gingivostomatitis is a severe, painful inflammatory disease of the mouth characterized by widespread inflammation of the gums and oral mucosa, often causing difficulty eating, drooling,…

The cochlea is the inner-ear structure that converts sound into neural signals, and its mechanics set the frequency range an animal can hear. This overview surveys what is known about the feline cochl…

Aging cats can develop cognitive dysfunction syndrome, a decline in cognitive function analogous to dementia, manifesting as disorientation, altered social interactions, changes in sleep-wake cycles,…

Feline coronavirus circulates widely as a generally mild enteric virus (FECV), but in a minority of infected cats it mutates within the host into a virulent biotype (FIPV) capable of replicating in ma…

Feline coronavirus spreads efficiently by the fecal-oral route, and in multi-cat households, catteries, and shelters most cats become infected and shed virus, with some becoming persistent shedders th…

Cats are generally understood to be dichromats, possessing two functional cone types rather than the three that give humans full color vision. This overview surveys behavioral and physiological eviden…

Cats deposit secretions from facial glands when rubbing objects, and these are thought to contain pheromone fractions associated with familiarity and reduced anxiety. This overview surveys the science…

Hospice and palliative care for cats with terminal or advanced chronic disease focuses on maintaining comfort, managing pain and symptoms, and supporting quality of life when cure is not possible, an…

Feline idiopathic cystitis, a common cause of lower urinary tract signs in cats, is increasingly understood as a stress-related condition with systemic dimensions, sometimes termed Pandora syndrome. T…

In the early 1990s, clinicians and pathologists recognized an association between vaccination, particularly certain adjuvanted vaccines, and the development of aggressive soft-tissue sarcomas at injec…

Obesity has become one of the most common nutritional disorders in domestic cats, driven by overfeeding, calorie-dense diets, indoor sedentary lifestyles, and neutering, and it substantially increases…

Feline parvovirus, the cause of panleukopenia, is a small, environmentally hardy DNA virus that targets rapidly dividing cells, producing the profound leukopenia, intestinal damage, and, in fetal or n…

Anecdotes describe cats approaching distressed owners, and researchers have begun testing whether cats respond differentially to human emotional signals such as crying. This overview surveys explorato…

Mice and other rodents produce vocalizations and movement sounds that extend into ultrasonic frequencies inaudible to humans, and cats are well equipped to hear them. This overview surveys how the cat…

Cats famously fail to respond to sweet tastes, and this trait is rooted in their genetics and diet. This overview surveys the phenomenon of feline sweet blindness, in which cats lack a functional swee…

Tooth resorption is one of the most common and painful dental diseases in cats, in which odontoclasts progressively destroy tooth structure, often beginning below the gumline and causing significant d…

Whiskers, or vibrissae, are specialized tactile hairs that give cats a high-resolution sense of touch crucial for navigation and hunting. This overview surveys the types and distribution of feline vib…

Cat urine contains felinine, an amino-acid-derived compound that breaks down into volatile sulfur-containing molecules responsible for the strong odor of cat marks. This overview surveys the role of f…

Long-term studies of urban feral cat colonies, including well-known work in Rome, document stable groups built around related females and their offspring, with males ranging more widely and showing lo…

Removing feral cats from islands has produced some of conservation's clearest predator-management successes, and this overview surveys eradication programs and their outcomes. It examines campaigns th…

A survey of the documented and ongoing impacts of feral domestic cats on island vertebrates, among the most damaging examples of introduced-predator effects. Feral cats have contributed to dozens of b…

Free-roaming cats intersect with human health through zoonotic disease, and this overview surveys the public-health dimensions of feral and community cat populations. It examines concerns including ra…

Body temperature is actively defended around a set point, and this overview reviews how cats regulate temperature during illness and fever. When fighting infection, the body can raise its thermoregula…

Beyond the face and paws, cats have scent glands on other parts of the body, including along the tail and flanks, that contribute to chemical marking. This overview surveys these additional glandular…

The flehmen response, in which a cat draws back its lips, opens its mouth, and appears to grimace, delivers chemical signals to the vomeronasal organ in the roof of the mouth for processing of non-vol…

Cats are exquisitely sensitive to movement, and their temporal vision, including the rate at which flickering light fuses into a steady image, shapes how they perceive motion. This overview surveys fe…

Whether companion animals understand human communicative gestures bears on how domestication reshapes cognition. This overview surveys research on cats' ability to use human pointing to locate hidden…

Cats have forward-facing eyes with substantial binocular overlap, giving them stereoscopic depth perception that complements any depth cues from pupil shape. This overview surveys how binocular vision…

Beyond detecting sounds, cats can discriminate between tones of different pitch, a capacity studied through behavioral and physiological methods. This overview surveys feline frequency discrimination,…

Whether semen is used fresh or after cryopreservation strongly affects the success of artificial insemination in cats, since freezing damages a fraction of sperm. This overview surveys comparisons of…