Date: 2016-01-22 02:58 pm (UTC)
jjhunter: Drawing of human JJ in ink tinted with blue watercolor; woman wearing glasses with arched eyebrows (JJ inked)
From: [personal profile] jjhunter
Am much amused that the news coverage of the cat stroking article did not once mention scent-marking, despite all the talk about different gland areas! There may well be an element of cats being more positive about scent-marking someone not already marked with their scent than about refreshing already existent scent marking on their owners. Also, there was no mention of cat sex & age as potential confounders (the actual published article says 13 male and 7 female cats were involved, ages 1-12, but lumps them all together as 'cats' as far as data reporting & analysis is concerned), and the study design is decidedly causal about accounting for the effect of any smells the humans (owners or strangers) might bring with them to a particular interaction - they "wash their hands" (with soap? with alcohol? not mentioned) before and after each 'stroking' session, and interactions with different cats are spaced at least a day apart, but there's no mention of, say, controlling for smells on clothes or the like. Also, these are all interactions done 'at home' for the cat, i.e. within their territory, and all the cats are indoor cats - it's a bit much to generalize to all cats and all human-cat stroking interactions from there.

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