Why Your Cat Sits With Its Back To You

Bramble does it every evening. I sit down, he comes in, he climbs onto the other end of the sofa, and then he turns around and sits facing the wall. Not at me. Away. For about two years I read that as a cat putting up with my company, and I used to say so out loud, in that voice people use about their animals. Then somebody who knows more about cats than I do asked me one question: which way were his ears pointing. I had no idea. I had been watching the end of the cat that was facing away, which tells you nothing, and ignoring the part that was still aimed at me the entire time. In this one we go through it properly. Why a direct stare is pressure rather than a greeting: two cats working out who goes first will hold each other's eyes until one concedes, and the one that looks away has not lost anything — it has ended the standoff. Nothing in a cat's history prepares it for a species that stares at everything it likes. So the politest thing a cat can do is take its eyes off you, and the most complete version of that is turning its head away entirely. Then the ears, which are the part you should have been watching all along. A cat's ear rotates independently of its head, driven by around two dozen muscles, and it points at whatever is being monitored — which means the face and the attention are two separate instruments. The head can be aimed at the wall while both ears are aimed at you, and that is the normal arrangement, not a rare one. The geometry of the room, which does more work than you would think. A cat almost never settles in the middle of the floor: it takes a wall at its back, or a corner, or a height, and it keeps the door in view. If the only seat beside you has its back to a doorway, your cat is choosing between you and a sightline, and the sightline wins every time. Move a blanket onto the arm of the sofa that faces the door and you may find it was avoiding the geometry, not the person. We also cover the loaf and what that shape costs to get out of, the belly that everybody reads exactly backwards, the whiskers, the pupils, and what cats that live together do about facing outwards — they take turns, and the direction each one faces is a division of labour. A cat facing away from you has assigned you a direction: the one it is not watching. And I'll be straight about where this stops. You will hear that your cat sits facing the door to guard you. Guarding a human is a dog behaviour with dog breeding behind it, and nobody has demonstrated anything like it in cats. What is established is the arrangement. What it means to the animal is not, and I am not going to hand you a warm version of it I cannot stand behind. There is a four-minute test you can run tonight, with no hands and nothing bought, and at the end the signal I rate above all the others: the tail held straight up on approach, especially with a small hook curled over at the top. That is the clearest friendly thing a cat is capable of producing, it lasts a couple of seconds, and almost nobody is watching for it. A note on health: if a cat that always sat with you stops, starts facing walls in corners it never used, or sits hunched with its ears flat for long stretches, that is not a mood. Pain changes where and how a cat sits before it changes anything else. That is a call to your vet. I don't diagnose and I never will. Which way does yours face when it settles near you? Tell me in the comments, and give me their name while you're at it. I read every single one.