Quote:
Originally Posted by The Colonel
I've never been a big cat fan, but I was under the impression that even in a colony cats live "alone together" - they may share space and have a hierarchy, but they tend not to socialise much with one another whilst they do it.
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My household includes too many cats. They do a lot of socializing with each other. What they don't do is leverage that socialization for anything other than sharing space. Cats are constantly reaffirming relationships with each other, via tail position, grooming of each other (the grooming is done by a friendly but dominant cat), blinking of the eyes, and how close they lay down next to each other. They also give each other gifts of food.
Remember that to live with humans cats need social skills. Exceptional social skills, in fact. They just don't use them for anything but territory sharing. However sharing territory with humans is well worth the investment in those exceptional social skills, because we generate so many rodents and keep most predators and competitors away.