Feline Gender Stereotyping

[muninnhuginn]

Sighs.

The young men upstairs (yup, still stuck due to the little white witch downstairs) have two litter trays between them--the old, plain dark blue one and the snazzy new pink one with an anti-splash surround--in two locations--LL's bedroom and the bathroom. The blue one in the bathroom--smaller and prone to overspills of ltter--was well-used; the new one in the back bedroom was less frequented. It therefore seemed sensible as it was larger to put the pink one in the bathroom and the blue one in the bedroom. So I swapped them around. Evidently it wasn't location that made blue in the bathroom more popular than pink in the bedroom. Blue is still preferred over pink.

Can it really be the case that tomcats won't use pink accessories? And choose blue?

Downstairs, the Little cat (who is on a diet to increase her weight [yes, after all those years of keeping her weight down, she's now too thin]) prefers the pink Whiskas Senior sachets over the blue. Inconvenient when you can't buy a box of just, say, Salmon flavour.

Queens prefer pink, eh?

Three cats is, I suppose, too small a sample to definitively state that cats make gendered colour choices.

Sighs.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I suspect it may be a scent thing -- the blue one smells more familiar, so they use it. Plus none of mine will touch trays with anti-splash or, even worse, lids. These are Bad, apparently. (I read somewhere that they can make the smell too strong even for cats.)

[muninnhuginn]

Little seems to like her lidded one, except when she decides that behind the front door is better :-(

Blue and pink are equally familiar/unfamiliar for the boys since they were set out for them before they arrived. I did wonder if the blue one still smelled slightly of other cats, as I think we've had it since we had 'Strophe and Co. But fifteen years sat out in the back garden and a thorough disinfect ought to have removed all traces.

Removing the anti-splash guard is certainly on the cards. It's not as if they need it: I've never met such well-mannered tidy animals before.

[gurthaew.livejournal.com]

Black is the preferred colour, marmite rice cakes come in a black(ish) wrapper.

[muninnhuginn]

Your cat pees on Marmite rice cakes? Could improve the flavour, I s'pose.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

grin!

[uk-sef.livejournal.com]

You could make a sachet cover (perhaps even out of old pink sachets) to put over each of the unopened sachets (while the cat is not looking) and then make it appear that you're opening a pink sachet for her each time. That's how to either not have wasted sachets or find out that there really is an important flavour/scent difference.

[muninnhuginn]

Ooh, I could knit a pink cat food seachet cosy! Or maybe not. A bit sticky and smelly after a while.

There is a difference in both scent and flavour. I prefer the smell of the white fish; Little does not.