"A happy cat will have a normal appetite and thirst," Dr MacMillan confirms. "Cats that are depressed, anxious, or unwell ...

The drive to groom themselves is so strong that, in a 2000 study, if a cat was prohibited from grooming for 72 hours, a 67% increase in oral grooming would take place in the following 12 hours.

Learn about proper cat grooming including brushing your cat's fur, cat baths, and clipping your cat's claws.

Cats can groom themselves, so it may come as a surprise that brushing them is an important part of keeping them clean. Brushing your cat is one of the best ways to bond with them while keeping ...

The drive to groom themselves is so strong that, in a 2000 study, if a cat was prohibited from grooming for 72 hours, a 67% increase in oral grooming would take place in the following 12 hours.

Cats groom themselves a lot - and sometimes it can become excessive - why ? It has been estimated that cats spend up to 50% of the time that they are awake grooming themselves. So grooming a lot may ...

Cats may also groom themselves "as a stress-relieving behavior," Vitale said. "Sometimes this can turn into over-grooming, in which the cat licks itself so much that patches of fur go missing.

Instead, cats recreate the sweating process—which works to cool humans via evaporation—by grooming themselves regularly.