Experimental Analysis of Human-Cat Interactions During First Encounters

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Abstract
The goal of our study was to describe tween a human and a cat and to determine the social behavior during the first encounter beinfluence of the sex of the cat, individuality of the cat, activity state of the person, and person type on the cat's behavior; and the influence of the age and sex of the human partner (person type) on his/her behavior.Nineteen colony cats encountered 240 unfamiliar test persons in a standardized one-cat/one-person situation. In half of the encounters, the behavior of the cat was recorded (A experiments); during a first five-minute phase (Ph 1), the test person was not allowed to interact with the cat; during the second five-minute phase (Ph 2), he/she was allowed to behave without any restrictions. In the other half of the encounters (B experiments), the behavior of the human partner was recorded, and the test person was allowed to behave freely from the start for the duration of five minutes. The influence of the factors listed above was tested by analyses of variance ...