Cat Environment Enrichment: Massages

Video Transcript

"Massage and petting for cats is also very important. It is great to relax them and calm them down and you want to do long slow strokes trying to stay away from the back end directly because that is exciting for them. So you rub around their head and their ears like this, long slow strokes along the back to about the middle of the back. You can also go down the chest area just to the shoulders because they don't really like to have their bellies rubbed and you can see how he is starting to rub against me and enjoy the massage. So long slow strokes are calming to them and help them to feel relaxed. They have little cheek glands here that they like to rub so if you rub on those it is like a marking behavior for them and they enjoy getting stroked there. So these are all ways to calm your cat when he may be excited to get your kitty to calm down and sit with you while you are watching television or doing some other quiet activity."