If two cats are on the verge of fighting, you don’t want to charge in between them because then you’ll likely get yourself scratched up. Instead, use your knowledge of cat psychology to defuse a cat fight before it gets out of hand.
Animal experts at the University of Veterinary Medicine and Pharmacy in Košice, Slovakia, and the University of Lincoln in Lincoln, U.K. decided to study cat social behavior and determined that the best way to defuse a cat fight is to interrupt both cats’ attention by doing something non-threatening such as just walking into a room.
A non-threatening action takes both cats’ attention away from each other without invoking a fight or fear reaction. Yelling or interfering with a cat will likely trigger a fearful or anger reaction, which can escalate a fight. So if you spot a cat fight about to erupt, just calmly walk by the cats to distract them and see what happens next.
To learn more about the social behavior behind cat fights, click here.