Social vs Non-Social Cats: What's the Big Difference? | Vet Advice

[@meganh7526]

We adopted a 1 year old cat whose background is kind of a mystery - just that he was picked up by our city’s animal services as a stray. The rescue recommended him to us because he was very playful and confident, and we have a dog. NOTHING deters this cat! There have been some things that have temporarily freaked him out, like the blender, but eventually he gets used to it. We take him outside on a harness and although we’re always careful if a dog approaches us, he’s never shown any fear.

[@CatVetNele]

This sounds like a very confident cat! Confident cats are more open to learning new things 😀 There are other positive and negative things about a confident cat, expecially if it's not wel socialized. If you wanna know about it, keep your eyes peeled for next week's video.

[@laguna4life]

I’m going to guess my cat is more confident than socialized. Like my of my previous cats he has been a street rescue (that the vet thought he was around 2 when we got him and took him for a checkup and chip scan, and to schedule a neuter procedure since he was not fixed and no chip found). He is still a bit defensive around other cats, and hates vacuums, but does absolutely wonderful with new places, people and my younger human. He is lead trained and enjoys walks and exploring, but avoids dogs. If a dog is walking near by at the park near us he comes and basically pleads for us to pick him up for protection. I’d love to know his history. I would have to think someone at some point tried socializing him before. Possibly they just didn’t like the behaviors of a non-fixed male cat.

[@CatVetNele]

Hi! Just to clearify, cats are either more confident or more shy, combined with more socialized or less socialized. So my best guess, with what you're telling me, is that your cat is more on the confident side and well socialized to most things. It's possible that he's had a bad encounter with dogs in the past, making dogs a scary predator for him. But you could make him feel better around dogs if you practice. The first thing you could do, for example, is have something that smell like a dog, let him sniff, and if he's not reacting scared or stressed out, reward him with his favourite treats. If that is too scary for him, try to find something to do with dogs that doesn't scare him. Start with that, and train every day for 5 minutes. Always make the 'training' non forced. He has to participate at his own free will. Let me know if that's helpful 😊

[@Kidaru]

The quiz link is broken

[@CatVetNele]

Thanks for letting me know, I had no idea! Don't know how to fix that at the moment though 😅

[@CatVetNele]

I don't understand, if I copy/paste it to an incognito page, it works normally...

[@ShotoNemar]

there is captions. why put up subtitles :sob: its very distracting and makes it hard to watch for people like me.

[@CatVetNele]

Thanks for letting me know! I didn’t realize that there where automatic subtitles on. I don’t see anything about that on the backend of this video. Is it possible that it’s a setting that you have to turn off on the videos you’re watching? I’ve put in the effort to add captions because I see a lot of mistakes in the automatic subs that KZbin generates, especially with me not being a native english speaker.

[@meganh7526]

Counterpoint: auto generated subtitles are rarely accurate while it is possible for the creator to insert subtitles that can be turned on and off, it’s still better for them to be included by default than to not have at all. There are a lot of people who will be excluded from watching if there are no subtitles.

[@CatVetNele]

@@meganh7526 That's what I was thinking! Thanks ☺