Cats love concrete tiles
Category: Animal world, PEGI 0+
Today, 15:24
Videos of owners buying concrete tiles for their cats are gaining popularity online. The pets use them as scratching posts and to escape the heat.
Cats like the roughness, which is convenient for scratching, the coolness helps in the heat, and the hard surface can be used to sharpen their claws.
Cat owners all over the world have noticed that cats have a strange passion for concrete. Some owners have even brought home rectangular concrete slabs from hardware stores for their pets. There are no scientific studies on the reasons for such a love of cats for concrete, but Jonathan Losos, a professor of biology at the University of Washington in St. Louis, has several ideas on this matter.
According to Live Science, he believes that there are a number of reasons why pets like this material. First, cats like the feel of a rough surface. This texture allows them to scratch and clean themselves, touching those parts of the body that they cannot reach.
Second, concrete is a good place to mark territory. The thing is, cats have scent glands located all over their faces and bodies that secrete pheromones. They are used to mark territory and send social signals to other cats nearby. They are released when animals rub these scent glands on objects.
Third, cats may be attracted to the material not because of the concrete itself, but because the animals are inquisitive by nature. According to Losos, they will at least react with curiosity if a new object appears in the house.
He noted that an experiment needs to be conducted to understand why cats are actually so interested in concrete. Losos suggests giving the animals a concrete block made of smooth plastic or a soft cat bed of the same shape. Then you can observe the animals to understand whether they are attracted to concrete or whether they will be attracted to any new object of a similar shape.
It is also necessary to find out to what extent the reaction of cats to concrete in viral videos is connected with the rectangular shape of the blocks. According to the expert, this is reminiscent of another trend that went viral several years ago. Squares or rectangles were laid out on the floor and sealed with masking tape. On the videos, cats often sat in these frames. Scientists associate this behavior of animals with their love of boxes.
Researchers have already found that these pets like to sit in boxes because it gives them a sense of comfort. However, their love for boxes goes beyond three-dimensional rectangular shapes. It seems that cats like two-dimensional boxes, too.
In fact, a 2021 study found that cats prefer to sit in a two-dimensional illusion of a square, showing how much they love to relax in rectangular spaces.
Losos noted that concrete tiles are also rectangular, so they may awaken a desire in cats to sit on blocks.
