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Comparisons between domestic cats kept in human controlled social conditions with their ancestral species and 'feral' counterparts highlight welfare concerns relating to sociality. This study aimed to investigate the relationships between co-habiting pet cats and assess their welfare based on the presence of, and relationships with, other household cats using a spatial judgement bias task and cat stress scores. Owner report was used to characterise social interactions between 93 cats and the cats they shared a house with. Each social behaviour recorded was significantly likely to be reciprocated. Three groups of social behaviour were identified using reliability analysis based on groupings identified by exploratory principal component analysis for two cat households (n = 61): 'affiliative' (allorubbing, tail up approach, allogrooming, not ignoring), 'active aggressive' (blocking, aggression) and 'avoidance/defensive' (fluffing, vocalising, avoiding, not allogrooming). These groups may reflect whether cats perceive one another as part of the same 'social group', and if not what strategies may be used in response to cats perceived as a threat. Judgement bias tests were attempted with 128 cats, 42 of which had results suitable for analysis. The majority of cats that did not complete testing showed fear/frustrated responses or were uninterested in the food reward. Latency to ambiguous probes and the number of training trials taken to reach learning criterion for the judgement bias task did not vary directly depending on the presence of, or relationships with, other household cats. This may be because there was no difference in affective state between these groups, or it could be the result of poor environmental control during testing/poor suitability of judgement bias testing to measure chronic social stress. Cat stress scores were significantly higher in cats from single cat households and were negatively correlated with latencies to the near unrewarded (Nr-U) judgement bias probe. This suggests the cats that appeared to be more relaxed during visits were more 'pessimistic', These results may be indicative of 'relief' effects resulting from separation from stress causing factors such as other pets during visits. They may also suggest there may have been an aspect of cat sociality/other environmental factors that had influenced judgement bias and cat stress score results that were not directly investigated in this study.

Obesity is considered the second most common health problem in pet cats in developed countries. This PhD thesis was the first to use prospective data from large scale longitudinal UK studies of pet cats ('Bristol Cats' and 'C.L.A.W.s.') to identify early-life risk factors for feline overweight/obesity. Multivariable logistic regression models were used (as no clustering within households was observed). Two factors were significantly associated with owner-reported overweight/obesity at one year of age, assessed using the 5-point Body Condition Score (BCS) system: restricted or no outdoor access (OR, 95% Cl = 1.7, 0.9-2.9) and feeding dry food as the only or major part (> 50%) ofthe diet (1.8, 1.0-3.2)' also measured at approximately one year of age. Six factors were significantly associated with overweight/obesity at two years of age, assessed by owners using images from the 9-point BCS system. These were: being overweight or obese at one year of age (10.6, 4.4 - 25.3); owner belief that BCS 7 was ideal weight, or overweight but they would not be concerned if this were their cat, at questionnaire five completion (33.2,8.5 - 129.4 and 2.7, 1.2 - 6.2 respectively); vets advising owners that the cat should lose weight, or making no comment on their weight, between one and two years of age (12.1, 3.2 - 44.9 and 3.9, 1.5 - 10.3 respectively); owners giving their cat treats when they "felt happy" with them at 18 months of age (2.7, 1.0 - 7.3); feeding ~250g wet food daily between two and six months of age (2.7, 1.2 - 5.9), and feeding dry food as the only or major part (> 50%) of the diet at two years of age (2.1, 1.0 - 4.2). These findings have the potential to reduce the currently high prevalence of a widespread problem, and as such improve the health and welfare of pet cats.

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Domestic cats (Felis catus) are predators that can attain very high densities and have the potential to detrimentally affect prey populations. Densities of cats in the town of Reading were comparable with other UK studies, and were on average 463 cats/km", with cat density increasing as a function of housing density. Mean rates of predation were estimated at 18.3 prey items car I year' I, but this was highly spatially and temporarily variable. Predation by domestic cats may be removing up to 40% of the prey population in some species. Variation in rates of predation between individuals was high. Cat owners can influence the predatory habits of their cats by using belled collars and by restricting the access of their cats to the outdoors overnight. Male cats were found to have higher predation rates than female cats, especially when under 3 years of age. Within prey species, there was also variation in the likelihood of being predated. The roaming behaviour of male wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus) leads to an increased likelihood of being predated, demonstrating a cost to the dispersing sex. The proportion of prey returned home by cats was investigated using faecal analysis. It was shown that as rates of predation are low in urban cats, faecal samples would need " to be collected over a longer period oftime to detect prey items. The average area ranged by a cat was 1.94ha and when occasional exploratory movements were included the ranging area increased to 6.88ha. Range area was not affected by sex or season, but ranges were found to be significantly larger at night than during the day. These data suggest that keeping cats in at night would reduce the distance that they range and reduce rates of predation. 9.

Temperament consists of stability in behavioural tendency across both contexts and time. Variability in temperament may affect how suited cats are to reside in certain types of environment. Over the past three decades many studies have been performed on the domestic cat in order to assess their temperament, often with a focus on social aspects of their behaviour, particularly how amenable they are towards humans. Whilst such tests could be used to evaluate or infer an individual’s suitability for domestic living, research in this area frequently lacks sufficient demonstration of reliability and validity. In addition, little consideration is often given to the practicality of the measures and tests proposed. Thus the ability to accurately measure key traits of relevance to human-sociability in a practical way remains largely unknown, as does the predictive validity of such tests in relation to future behavioural tendencies in other contexts. The aims of this PhD were to address these issues by developing robust measures with demonstrable reliability, validity and practicality, which could be used to evaluate the sociability of cats towards humans, and in a predictive capacity in relation to post-rehoming behaviour. A neurobiological framework based on relevant affective systems (a balance between FEAR, SEEKING and RAGE sensu Panksepp) was used to define ‘Human-sociability’ and the ‘aggressive response’. The deconstruction of these traits allowed the operational definition of psychobiologically based behavioural tendencies, which were hypothesised to be useful predictors of sociability towards humans. Four standardised behavioural tests and 65 basic behavioural measures were then used to provide information on these traits. These measures were subsequently refined based on their reliability, validity and practicality. Many measures were discarded because they were found to be influenced by (short-term) temporal and/or social factors (i.e. familiarity of a person or their interaction style), or were less practical to perform (without appearing to explain much additional variation within the data). At this point only nine individual measures were retained, from only one of the four initial behavioural tests. However, further analysis indicated that the majority of these remaining measures were either influenced by longer-term temporal factors or by the environment (i.e. individual rehoming centre). These findings suggest many behavioural measures currently used in the assessment of temperament may be invalid. In light of these results, other methods of trait assessment were explored. A series of questionnaire items were developed and put through a similar process to determine their reliability, validity and 4 practicality, based on the same neurobiological framework as the previous behavioural experiments. From an initial twenty-eight items, ten demonstrated sufficient practicality, inter and intra-rater reliability and temporal stability within the rehoming centre and were thus retained within a final model that could be used to generate behavioural ‘profile scores’ for cats within the rehoming environment. This refined questionnaire model demonstrated good content and face validity, containing three clusters of measures that were hypothesised to represent social aspects of all core processes of interest (FEAR, SEEKING and RAGE). In addition, good construct validity of measures was also demonstrated via the convergence of individual items hypothesised to share similar emotional underpinnings and via the discrimination between those that were not. A subset of measures from this model were found to have good predictive validity in relation to future post-rehoming behaviour, and were also associated with owner post-adoption ‘satisfaction’ scores. However, this subset of items no longer included RAGE reactivity and thus the criterion validity of the questionnaire in relation to the behavioural manifestation of this core process post-adoption is limited. Based on these findings, an initial framework process for the behavioural assessment, management and matching of cats to suitable owners for use within the rehoming environment has been proposed (the Lincoln Rehoming centre Cat Assessment Tool (L-RCAT)). This research has resulted in the provision of a first-of-its-kind tool that can be used to generate practical, non-invasive and valid information about the behavioural tendencies of cats in relation to aspects of human-sociability, not only in-situ (i.e. within the rehoming environment), but also in a predictive capacity in relation to future ex-situ behaviour (i.e. post adoption within the home), as well as to aspects of owner-satisfaction and thus the potential ‘rehoming success’ of individuals.

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