Feline stress in a nutshell — why does it occur, how can it be recognised, and what can be done to alleviate it?

The PDSA Animal Wellbeing Reports are useful sources of ‘up to date’ statistics regarding the welfare of the companion animal population. The 2015 report produced the following statistics that are highly relevant to feline welfare:

Regarding the behaviour of domestic cats:

The 2016 PDSA Report found that:

Hence, it should not be surprising to find that both multi-cat households and chronic stress are two of the three key issues in feline welfare (along with neutering) that the 2016 report identified, that veterinary surgeons considered needed to be addressed. But are practice staff doing enough to educate owners about these issues?

Even the owners of highly sociable indoor cats will describe the frequent tendency of their cat to actively desire periods of solitary independence. This level of freedom to remove themselves from the human social environment can often leave owners with the impression that cats actively choose to encounter the stimuli with which they come into contact and hence that their lives should remain free from the distress associated with the negative emotions of anxiety/fear or frustration. In contrast to this assumption, the cat is highly susceptible to these emotions (Ley, 2016a).