Unlike most dog breeds, our feline pals can be a little more subtle and even inscrutable about what they want or need. This mysteriousness can be very frustrating when trying to assess your pet cat’s quality of life. How on Earth are you supposed to tell if your cat is receiving adequate exercise, play, and mental stimulation?
Luckily, there are some reliable ways to judge whether a pet cat is satisfied with life or itching with boredom. Let’s walk through 6 of the most classic signs!
1. Repetitive and Aimless Behaviors
When cats are bored, many times they choose to channel their pent-up energy into simple, repetitive, and even pointless motions. Most commonly, this will take the form of behaviors like excessive licking and chewing. Licking oneself, in particular, is both a grooming behavior in cats and a way to self-soothe.
If a cat is in pain, for example, they will often obsessively lick their paws or skin. But, this can also be a symptom of a “mental pain”, so to speak. If you observe your cat showing excess licking and it’s combined with other warning signs on this list, that’s a good indicator that your furry friend is bored.
Bored cats also tend to chew at themselves repetitively. Like licking, this can lead to coughing up hairballs and other nasty side effects, so keep a close watch out for it!
2. Scratching, Tearing, and Biting
If bored cats just kept their boredom confined to self-soothing behavior, believe me, the problem would be a lot easier to solve. Alas, many unstimulated cats opt to act out their boredom through more destructive channels. And yes, that often includes the worst: Chewing, ripping, and scratching at furniture!
Even well-entertained cats tend to have a fascination for “playing” with couches, chairs, and beds. Mix this curiosity in with a storehouse of bored energy, and you have a recipe for disaster. On the other hand, this is usually one of the simpler warning signs to deal with. Leaving scratching posts around the home, trimming (but not declawing!) your cat’s nails, and covering furniture with tape or thick fabric will often do the trick.
3. Excessive or Unusual Vocalization
Another classic (and almost impossible to ignore!) sign of cat boredom is excessive, abnormal vocalization. This, as you’ve probably experienced, generally takes the form of loud and repeated meowing. Pet cats meow to express a huge range of emotions and desires, from hunger to pain to stress.
Boredom is frequently near the top of the list. A bored cat might meow to try to attract their owner’s attention, to express their frustration, or even simply to entertain themselves. The positive side of this is that, once owners alleviate the underlying boredom causing the loud, constant meowing, the symptom tends to subside.
So, be sure to provide plenty of exercise, cat toys and puzzles, play, and attention to keep your pet cat preoccupied! In all likelihood, the meowing will soon become much less frequent.
4. Low Physical Activity
I hopefully haven’t given the impression that all symptoms of cat boredom involve destruction, mischief, or noisiness. In fact, one of the most common warning signs to watch out for is reduced physical activity. Some cats respond to boredom and lack of mental or physical stimulation by becoming lethargic and lazy.
Keep in mind, though, that “low physical activity” is very much a symptom that depends on each individual cat. Not all pet kitties are equally energetic, and some simply have a low activity level baseline. Additionally, let’s not forget that lethargy can also be a sign of many physical illnesses. It’s best to avoid dismissing low activity as boredom if you’ve noticed other physical symptoms of a sick cat.
That said, if your once highly-active feline buddy has shown a marked drop in walking, play, and sociability, you could be looking at pure boredom as the root cause.
5. Sleeping More Than Normal
Excessive sleeping is one of the clearest signs you can find of a bored cat. As with physical inactivity, this symptom largely depends on the personal routine of your unique pet cat. On average, most cats sleep between 12 and 18 hours per day. Any given cat might tend toward the low or high end of that spectrum, and some perfectly happy and healthy cats sleep more than 18 hours a day!
However, if your cat shows a huge fluctuation in how much time they spend sleeping, that can be a worrying sign of boredom. Bored cats often choose to sleep when they feel there aren’t any ready sources of stimulation to use for entertainment.
As with most signs on this list, the problem can ultimately be solved by addressing the cat’s lack of mental stimulation, exercise, or entertainment. Interactive cat toys, additional playtime, and climbing structures can all work wonderfully to this effect.
6. Irritability and Aggression
The only thing worse than a bored cat who attacks furniture is one who attacks other animals or even their owner! Unfortunately, in some cats, aggression (or at least a grumpy disposition) can be a symptom of boredom. Outright fights between cats are rare (and attacks on owners even rarer), but a cat with too much energy and nowhere to put it is certainly more likely to act out aggressively.
Thankfully, pet cats communicate through many clear signals, and these signs can be used to spot aggressive behavior before it happens. If your feline companion is feeling threatened or defensive, for example, they might growl or hiss, wag their tail, or pin their ears back.
If you notice these subtle cues, you’ll usually have enough time to remove your cat from a tense situation before things escalate!
