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moment before letting it fall back again to its usual four-footed posture. This greeting hop is therefore a token survival of a head-to-head contact.
    A clue to this interpretation comes from the way small kittens sometimes greet their mother when she returns to the nest. If they have developed to the point where their legs are strong enough for the 'hop', the kittens will perform a modest version of the same movement, as they push their heads up towards that of the mother cat. In their case there is not far to go, and she helps by lowering her own head towards theirs, but the incipient hop is clear enough.
    As with all rubbing-greetings, the head-to-head contact is a feline method of mingling personal scents and turning them into shared family scents. Some cats use their initiative to re-create a better head contact when greeting their human friends. Instead of the rather sad little symbolic hop, they leap up on to a piece of furniture near the human and employ this elevated position to get themselves closer for a more effective face-to-face rub.
     

Why does a cat trample on your lap with its front paws?
     
    All cat-owners have experienced the moment when their cat jumps up and with cautious movements settles itself down on their lap. After a short pause it starts to press down, first with one front paw and then with the other, alternating them in a rhythmic kneading or trampling action.
    The rhythm is slow and deliberate as if the animal is marking time in slow motion. As the action becomes more intense the prick of claws can be felt, and at this point the owner usually becomes irritated and shoos the cat away, or gently picks it up and places it on the floor.
    The cat is clearly upset by this rebuff and the owners are similarly put out when, brushing away a few cat hairs, they discover that the animal has been dribbling while trampling. What does all this mean?
    To find the answer it is necessary to watch kittens feeding at the nipple. There the same actions can be observed, with the kittens' tiny paws kneading away at their mother's belly. These are the movements which stimulate the flow of milk to the nipples and the dribbling is part of the mouthwatering anticipation of delicious nourishment to come.
    This 'milk-treading', as it is called, is done at a very slow pace of approximately one stroke every two seconds, and it is always accompanied by loud purring. What happens when the adult pet tramples on the lap of its human owner must therefore be interpreted as a piece of infantile behaviour. It would seem that when the owner sits down in a relaxed manner, signals are given off saying to the cat, 'I am your mother lying down ready to feed you at the breast." The adult cat then proceeds to revert to kittenhood and squats there, purring contentedly and going through the motions of stimulating a milk supply.
    From the cat's point of view this is a warm, loving moment and its bodily removal by a claw-pricked owner must be quite inexplicable. No good cat mother would behave in such a negative way. People react rather differently. To the cat they are clearly maternal figures, because they do supply milk (in a saucer) and other nourishment, and they do sit down showing their undersides in an inviting manner, but once the juvenile reaction of milk-treading is given, they suddenly and mystifyingly become upset and thrust the pseudo-infant from them.
    This is a classic example of the way in which interactions between humans and cats can lead to misunderstandings. Many can be avoided by recognizing the fact that an adult domestic cat remains a kitten in its behaviour towards its pseudo-parental owner.
     

Why does a cat bury its faeces?
     
    This action is always referred to as an indication of the fastidious tidiness of the cat. Owners of messy dogs are often regaled with this fact by cat-owners insisting on the superiority of felines over canines. This favoured interpretation of faeces burying as a sign of cat hygiene does