Cat Personalities
by Joelle Steele
Many people think all cats are the same: distant, aloof, independent, finicky, etc. But cats have very diverse and often complex personalities. Those who think differently have obviously not known very many cats. I’ve had a lot of cats – I’m on numbers 12, 14, and 15 at the moment – and known a lot of cats, and I’ve never found any of my cats or those I’ve met to be the same personality-wise. They are all so distinctly different.
I’ve had fifteen cats so far, not counting the ones that were not my designated kitties in our family when I was growing up. My first was Candy. I got her when I was 8 years old. Candy was feisty and territorial. She was a good hunter, and she could intimidate the biggest, baddest cat in the neighborhood, because she was even bigger and badder than they were (at least in her own mind). She routinely drove them out of the yard with nothing more than a well-uttered hiss. But, she was always very affectionate and loyal – to me. I could put clothes on her, dangle her, even wrap her around my neck like a scarf, and she would be fine with that. She never scratched or bit me, never growled at me, and was always very gentle with me. But she scratched the daylights out of my mother twice, and my mother doted on her. Candy was unpredictable with anyone other than me.
My second cat was an adopted young stray named Pandora. She and Candy got along pretty well. Pandora was quiet, shy, kept mostly to herself, and was cuddly and affectionate. Cats 3 and 4 were raised together as kittens and were always very close pals. Puff, the female, was outgoing, curious, and very playful. Puff got into everything. You couldn’t leave anything out because she would find it and play with it, usually destroying it in the process. In particular, she liked a little white stuffed rabbit that someone gave me as a gift. I even hid it on the top of a closet shelf and she found it, so I finally gave in and let her have it, and she treated it like a kitten, washing it for years until there was pretty much nothing left of it. Whisper, the male, was the shyest and most gentle little cat I’ve ever met. He truly could not have been sweeter. He absolutely adored my mother, and she felt the same way about him. As an adult, he became friends with my parents’ cat, Lucky, following him around the yard – and probably the whole neighborhood – whenever we visited my parents.
Cat 5 was the great love of my life: Twinkle. I got her when she was an abandoned, 1-1/2 week-old kitten. She was the greatest cat that ever walked the earth. She was very smart and could figure out how to open things. She could do a variety of tricks – she learned very quickly – and could dance on her rear legs and play fetch and retrieve. She and Puff only moderately got along, but Whisper raised her. Twinkle was disabled following hip surgery at age 11, but it didn’t stop her from getting whatever she wanted out of life. She believed in the saying that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and when she wanted something, she really let you know. She loved shoes, and liked to sleep on them and partially in them. My shoes, the neighbors’ shoes, any shoes she could find. She also liked to curl up inside of things, including the waste basket and laundry hamper, and she liked to sleep with something soft in her mouth, usually a sock that she pulled out of the hamper.
Twinkle went on to raise three other cats and to be friends with a lot of neighbor cats. She raised cats 6, 7, and 8 – Misty, Muffin, and Timmy. Misty was very pretty, sweet, and a little shy, and she died very young of feline leukemia back in the pre-vaccine days. Muffin was not shy, but she kept to herself a lot. She and Twinkle were very close and they were never far apart. Like Twinkle, Muffin played fetch and retrieve. Muffin was also very accurate at predicting earthquakes. She would retreat under the bed or deep under the covers for two or three days before a quake. She was a good watch cat. She recognized footsteps in the hallway that didn’t belong, and would walk up to the front door and stand there and growl at whatever stranger was near my door. Muffin was also very good with children, as was Timmy. He loved everyone and never met a cat he didn’t like. He actually had play dates with my neighbors’ cats, and if anyone had kittens, Timmy would babysit them and keep them from getting into mischief. When someone knocked at my front door, Timmy would get up from wherever he was and be right there to greet my friends and clients when they arrived. Everyone I knew, knew and loved Timmy. He was very agile and could jump very high and straight up. He used to walk along a very narrow dish rail in my old apartment. He also liked to eat bugs, and so my life was always bug-free during his 19 years.
Cats 9 and 10 were adult female strays that I took in, Izzy and Hedy. Izzy was 6 years old and small, but she was assertive and wanted to rule the roost immediately. Poor Timmy! He was used to making friends immediately, and Izzy made him work at it. In the end, those two were like an old married couple, always curled up around each other on a tiny pillow. As for Izzy and Muffin, they simply gave each other a very wide berth, as they never managed to form a close bond. Izzy was very social and friendly with people, and she was affectionate, but only when she wanted to be, and only with people, not with other cats except Timmy. The rest of the time she kept to herself. Unlike Timmy, Izzy was afraid of the front door, and when it was open, she hid as far away from it as possible – probably afraid she was going to get locked out and become a stray again. Hedy was very cuddly, and she and Muffin bonded almost immediately. They both liked to lay in a sunny window all curled up around each other. Hedy’s idea of a perfect day was one where she was in my lap for as long as I could possibly remain sitting.
Cat 11 was T’ai. I got him when he was 4 weeks old, and he was partially blind with congenital cataracts. He was kind of shy, but he liked to go outside and walk on a leash, just like a dog. But he didn’t like trash collection day because he got freaked out by the trash cans. He also liked to go out on the back patio on a tether. He didn’t care what the weather was like. Raining? Snowing? Not a problem. T’ai was a good communicator. You could always tell what he wanted. Outside? He waits at the door or next to the drawer where his leash was stored. He was also curious and very strong. He could open the heaviest of doors including the closet doors where I used to live (I found them kind of hard to open) and he could open the sliding glass door. Like Timmy, who raised him, T’ai was uber-friendly to other cats. When we had my cousin’s cat Poikka visiting with us on a couple occasions, he and T’ai liked each other immediately.
Tansy is cat 12. She was 4 months old when she joined the family shortly after Muffin died. She immediately bonded with T’ai, but she was much more outgoing and social. She was also leash trained, but not as well as T’ai was. She just couldn’t seem to understand that there was a human on the other end of the leash. Tansy is a whiner with no obvious reason for all the noise. Tansy doesn’t like it if you touch her with a damp hand, and she does not go out on the patio if the patio is wet or if it is even drizzling the slightest bit. She is territorial and does not like other cats to be in her yard.
Cat 13 was Callie. I adopted this precious little calico girl three days before I had to say goodbye to my beloved T’ai. Callie was 12 years old at the time and she died only a year later of mammary cancer. She was one of the sweetest cats ever and she bonded with me immediately, rarely left my side, slept on my desk every day while I worked. At night, and throughout the night, she would bring all the toys from the toy basket into my bathroom and leave them in a pile next to the sink – no idea why. She had never lived with another cat, so she had no interest in being friends with Tansy, even though Tansy tried to be friends with her.
Just a few short weeks after Callie passed away, I adopted cat 14, Pharaoh, who was about 1-1/2 years old. He is a giant at 17 lbs., and is a short-haired, orange tabby. Pharaoh is tied with Timmy for first place as best-natured cat ever. He is easy-going, friendly, playful, and affectionate. He hit it off with Tansy immediately. Pharaoh’s only short-coming is that he wants to go outside, and he has escaped three times. He always came back home within about three hours, but I live in a forested environment, and I worry about him coming into contact with something bigger and badder than he is. And, he was originally found wandering by a freeway and all efforts to find his home were in vain. So I am concerned about how far he is capable of wandering.
When I took Pharaoh to the vet for the first time, one of the office staff was holding a tiny kitten she was hand-raising. I carried the little one over to Pharaoh who was patiently waiting in his carrier and introduced them, telling Pharaoh that this was going to be his little brother. Oliver was 14 weeks old when I officially adopted him a few weeks later. Pharaoh played very gently with this much tinier cat and they are still the best of cat buddies.
Oliver is cat 15, and he is precious. He is one of the smallest cats I’ve ever had at 7-1/2 lbs. He is gentle, affectionate, and playful and he is definitely a Mommy’s boy, spending most of the day with me on my desk or in the chair next to it, and sleeping next to me at night. He bonded well with Tansy, then they fell out, but now they seem to be okay together. He shows no interest in going outside. He loves to play with toys, and in his mind, that’s anything small that he can bat around, including the tiny little twigs that my significant other finds for him in the yard and brings indoors for him to play with.
As you can see, just from my own cats, no two cats are ever truly alike. They may have certain kinds of typical feline traits in common, such as curiosity and playfulness, but they also have their own preferences for how they like to spend their time and who they like and don’t like. If you don’t have a cat and are thinking of getting one, remember that how you raise a kitten or adult cat will only affect part of their personality, and the rest is just the unique little animal that they are inside.
This article last updated: 02/09/2012.
The articles on this Web site are informational only and are not intended to be a substitute for professional veterinary advice or treatment. Cats are not “one size fits all.” They are different in terms of breed, age, health, lifestyle, and tolerance for different foods and other substances.
