Population Density

This vastly adaptable range of social behaviors depends upon a variety of environmental factors, but by far the most important of these are the size and proximity of the food source.

Sociable behavior increases when food is plentiful, and decreases when food is scarce. Studies that have been carried out on feral cats to learn how many cats will occupy an area of 250 acres (100 ha) in different circumstances clearly illustrate this.

When the only food available to the cats is prey, such an area will not support more than five cats. When both prey and garbage can be exploited for food, the same area may support as many as 50 cats.

But when there is unlimited food, as there is from the cat lovers who feed the feline colonies in Rome's public gardens, or around fish-processing plants in Japan, the area can contain over 2,000 felines.

In these circumstances there will be an overlapping of many smaller cat colonies, each of them consisting of up to 50 related feline members.

Social interactions naturally increase with population density. Thinly scattered hunting cats will restrict their social gestures mostly to defensive postures.

Well-fed cats in colonies are spontaneously and surprisingly sociable, resting together, greeting each other, and sometimes grooming each other.

When they sleep, half of the time they are in contact with one or more other cats, although males make only half as many bodily contacts as do females.

In one extensive study of a feral cat colony, 64 percent of interactions involved licking, 29 percent involved rubbing, and only seven percent involved forms of aggression. Contacts were initiated by kittens and females, seldom by males.

Feral cats are also flexible enough to change their social behavior regularly according to the prevailing conditions.

On the Hebridean Islands, off Scotland, each cat has its own rabbit-hunting territory in summer, and defends it from others the winter sets in, these cats move close to the security of local cottages, live on halt accept the presence of other cats.