...even though they have never had kittens?

The reason I ask this is because I was playing around with a website that had a sound of a (real) kitten in distress on it, which I kept on playing repeatedly. I had my laptop on my tummy at the time.

My older female cat stopped eating, jumped on the bed with a concerned look on her face, as if to say "can't you hear that, do something".

After growing tired of me doing nothing, she quickly sniffed around and proceeded to try to burrow into my tummy!

I'm not sure if she thought I had kittens inside me and they were ready to come out!!! Maybe it's just because the speakers on my netbook are underneath it, so she might have thought the sound was coming from there

Anybody?

If anybody wants to try it out to see if their cat responds in a similar way, this is the link:

http://www.kessels.nl/CatSounds/DistressedKitten.wav

Could anyone who tries it please let me know the outcome, cheers.

I wouldn't say it's pregnancy as such. I think all animals (humans included) are wired to respond to sounds of other animals of the same species in distress. In a lot of cases it's a survival advantage because they could hear another animal in distress, and then be able to avoid a threat to the their individual survival (and possibly that of the group or community). I can't remember whether it's prairie dogs or meerkats (or possibly both), who take turns doing a sort of sentry duty. The minute one of them sees a threat, they start making a noise, and then the rest of the community dive into the burrows and to safety.

I wouldn't say your cat was particularly concerned, but was probably looking at you as if to ask you where the noise was coming from and why she couldn't see or smell the other cat around. She might also be slightly concerned as to why you hadn't consulted her about getting another cat LOL.

Also, all species have pregnancy 'hardwired' into them. If they didn't know to procreate (be it spawning or more conventional methods) then the species wouldn't multiply and survive. A mothering instinct also has to be hardwired into females where females provide a food source for the start of a baby's life. Humans are the only species where we have birthing and parenting classes, whereas other animals just seem to know what to do by instinct. It makes me how humans got as far as the 20th century before we started having ante-natal classes LOL.

As an asides and slightly off topic, birds amaze me. No one teaches birds how to build nests, yet they seem to be able to do it without any training and some nests (weaver birds especially) are quite elaborate.

I just tested this in my house - Flo didn't respond at all, but 12-year old ginger tom Gus has come running with a concerned look on his face!

Well, I was once reading a cat behaviour book. It said that when cats go outside, they don't just wander aimlessly around, they have "jobs" to do eg look for food, reinforcing territory bounderies etc. It said one of the jobs of a tom is to keep an eye out for kittens and/or their mothers who may be in trouble. So, he was just doing his job really


Yes, what you say makes sense. I know meerkats do sentry duty after watching Meerkat Manor. One once skived off and faced thge wrath of the others for putting the group in danger!

Nature can be a confusing, yet fascinating thing at times.