Why do cats make cookies?

When they’re not clamoring to get out the front door (and right back in), bringing home half-dead animals, and purring contentedly while you recover from hosting said animals, cats enjoy few activities more than “making cookies.” ”.

In case you’re not familiar, here’s a quick refresher: A cookie-making cat will take turns pressing its front paws against the side of its owner or perhaps a nearby piece of furniture, all while looking blissfully happy. What goes through the minds of our furry friends as they make cookies? Let’s look at the science.

Making cookies with kittens

The basis for cookie-making behavior starts early in a cat’s life, he says Danielle Gunn Mooreprofessor of feline medicine at the University of Edinburgh and owner of two cats: the Maine Coons MacDuff and Brora.

After a female cat, called a queen, gives birth to kittens, the newborns’ primary care begins and ends at the underside of their mother’s abdomen, where a cat’s mammary glands are found. Gunn-Moore calls this area the “milk bar.”

“To get the milk breakdown, you have to challenge the milk bar,” says Gunn-Moore. This is a common practice in mammals. Think of a calf head-butting its mother’s udder halfway through a feeding session. Kittens stimulate their mother’s mammary glands with their paws, using the same kneading motion as adult cats make cookies. In young animals, stimulating the mammary glands produces what they want most in this early phase of life: more milk.

Gunn-Moore says making biscuits for adult cats is about harkening back to kittenhood and an activity that makes them feel good. In some cats, she adds, cookie making can be accompanied by a heavy episode of dribbling.

“Cats begin weaning their kittens at about four weeks,” says Gunn-Moore. During the next month of life, kittens will transition to solid food. Some mother cats continue to nurse their kittens during this period. For cats, sucking is also a bonding behavior between mother and kitten, says Gunn-Moore. While kittens nurse, the queen releases a pheromone called the feline appeasing pheromone (FAP). FAP relaxes kittens and helps them bond with their mother. This chemical signal, synthesized and bottled in certain cat products, helps kittens stop fussing over weaning and makes cookie making even more of an enjoyable activity. “It’s appeasement behavior,” she says. “The equivalent in humans is sucking thumb.”

Excessive cookie making in cats

In some cats, excessive cookie-making behavior can be a sign that they were weaned from milk too early as a kitten, says Gunn-Moore. When a mother cat naturally decides that her kittens have had enough, they will get up and finish a feeding. While kittens may scream and moan when this happens, that frustration means their brains no longer associate cookie making with pleasurable outcomes.

Kittens whose natural process of separation from mother’s milk is interrupted tend to have more behavioral problems, says Gunn-Moore. “Especially the excessive bonding with their person to the point where they will actually suckle him and actually cling – they will bite him,” she explains. This biting wouldn’t hurt a mother cat, but a human’s thinner skin can easily break, resulting in trips to the cat behaviorist. Cats won’t stop nursing their humans – wean early predicted wool sucking in a study of Siamese and Burmese cats.

Even though cookie making can be excessive and produce an unfortunate amount of cat saliva, the underlying message to owners is positive. Cats make cookies of the person or people they feel most safe with, Gunn-Moore explains. “You have some cats that do it on inanimate objects,” she adds. These objects have soft surfaces with a similar tactile sensation to the underside of a mother cat. Cookie making is a common activity among cats and can even be seen in big cats like lions.

Many cat owners will have already realized that they are having a good time by the happy expressions on the faces of their cookie-making cats. Gunn-Moore confirms this. “They feel happy and relaxed and connected to their person. They are not going to do it to someone they do not trust,” she concludes.