Scent communication using excretions in the domestic cat

Abstract

Many mammals use scent marking to indicate territory ownership to other conspecifics. Domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus) perform scent marking by spraying their urine and leaving their feces on the ground around the border of their home range. When other cats find these excretions, they approach these for sniffing, suggesting that feline excretions provide information about the scent owner’s identity and territory for other conspecifics. However, volatile chemical profiles have complex patterns that differ between individuals and are too unstable after marking and too subject to daily variation to be used as scent signals. In this review, we report chemical profiles of feline urine, feces, and anal sac secretions to understand scent communication using species and sex specific compounds and compounds that vary between individuals in cats.