Just like dogs bury food or their favorite toys, cats have a habit of burying their feces. Hiding their needs is a natural feline instinct, however, they don’t do it solely because they are obsessed with cleanliness.
The reason cats bury their needs is that they use urine and feces to mark their territory. For us, poop and urine from cats may have the same smell, but they manage to differentiate them thanks to pheromones, chemicals that animals secrete and that are a means of signal transmission. Pheromones, which are present in the urine and feces of cats, are information-carrying molecules that pass messages from one cat to another.
In their natural habitat, the most dominant cats (including lions, leopards, tigers, and jaguars) compete for territory. That is why they do not usually bury their excrement as a sign that they want to claim a specific area. In contrast, smaller or weaker feral cats bury their feces to ensure that dominant cats are not going to feel challenged.
On the other hand, feral cats hide their feces to avoid drawing the attention of other predators to themselves or their litter of kittens. House cats also have that instinct for self-protection, and although they don’t have predators, they may bury their droppings as a precaution.
Who dominates whom?
If your kitten buries his feces meticulously, he may be recognizing you as the dominant “cat” of the house , since in a quiet home cats are seen as subordinate to their owners. On the other hand, if your pet does not use the litter box, it is very likely that he feels that he is above his owners.
However, this behavior can also be due to certain diseases, such as a urinary tract infection or stomach problems. It is also possible that the cat does not know how to use the litter box correctly, since the instinct to bury its feces is learned by watching its mothers perform the task.
In addition, cats are not the only ones who hide their feces to ward off predators and resolve territorial conflicts, as marmots, armadillos and minks are also known to hide their needs.
