Why do cats clean themselves?

That’s an awful lot of fur to clean! But even though cats have been domestic for thousands of years, cleaning is one of the traits left over from their wild ancestry.

Have you ever noticed when cats clean themselves? before they sleep, after they eat and after you touch them? Well there are reasons for them to clean themselves. Grooming and combing are just part of the answer. Get this…

Cats clean themselves after they eat because they want to remove all scent of food from their bodies… in the wild, cats are small enough to become a meal for a larger animal. They want to remove all traces of food so that a larger predator doesn’t sniff them out and mistake kitty for a tasty treat…

…it’s the same when the clean themselves before they sleep. They think they are safer from larger predators if they remove any scent of what they ate, where they’ve been, who they met up with, etc. Kinda like taking a shower after a night of club-hopping and…. you know what I mean?……um…ahem … I guess that’s a story for another day…

Anyway… Cats also clean themselves after you pet them because they like how it feels to be petted, so they clean themselves as a way to keep the feeling going!

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