How do I find information about cat personality research?

May 30, 2010 11:56 AM

Librarians? Anyone? I'm looking for information on describing and/or predicting cat personality characteristics. I've been trying to find a library (or otherwise borrowable) copy of the ASPCA's "Meet Your Match Feline-ality guide" somewhere, or science/research/articles about it. No hits in WorldCat. Is it hopeless?

I'm in Chapel Hill. I started with the local university libraries (there are three major ones, including a veterinary school), then moved to WorldCat. I found a few of the Canine-ality guides, but no copies of the feline version.

I'm pretty sure the rescue org I'm working with would rather spend the $40 that the guide costs for antibiotics etc. than for this book in which I'm vaguely interested. Descriptions of their nine personality types are on the ASPCA web site, but I'd like a little more detail.

Alternatively, I'm trying to find codified ways to describe/reference personality characteristics of cats and kittens for use in a possible web / searchable database of adoptable foster cats.

Also, the ASPCA program is aimed at cats in shelters, so I'm not sure that their carefully-designed personality tests would work for cats in foster care (which is the situation for the organization I work with).

I tried doing searches for cat and feline "personality", and I found one reference to a single twenty-year-old or so research article about it a while ago, but ran into a brick wall after that, and couldn't even find the full text of that article (I even tried tracking down the vet who wrote it). Any help would be welcome.

I know I could just show up at the veterinary school's library, but I don't hold out much hope for that solution (they seem surgery-focused), and it's a bit of a drive.

posted by amtho to science & nature (6 answers total)

Note: I found and purchased this article from Amazon; I extracted the name "Emily Weiss" from the article (she was the program founder for the canine version), but again, I'm hitting a dead end. Found her web site, but there's no info about this on it.
posted by amtho at 12:15 PM on May 30, 2010

This looks like the ASPCA guide - I'll keep looking, see if I can find the video.
posted by soft and hardcore taters at 12:34 PM on May 30, 2010

Poking around on other animal shelter sites, here's the magic decoder ring for the basic cat personalities:

All of our animals are tested to determine his or her characteristics including friendliness, playfulness, energy level, motivation and drive.

Each animal is then placed into one of three color-coded categories: easy maintenance (purple), average maintenance (orange) and high maintenance (green). Within each color category are three descriptions to help you better understand the animal.
posted by soft and hardcore taters at 12:39 PM on May 30, 2010

Catster's breed profiles (eg Ocicat) have some self-reported personality indicators by breed. This is not scientific research, of course, but it's a fair amount of data. There are also detailed descriptions of temperament and characteristics which you may find useful.
posted by judith at 1:17 PM on May 30, 2010

Have you talked to the local ASPCA? Whenever I've been after some obscure professional resource like that (the last time was a small A4 book about 2 types of trawlers in one river in the 70s) I hit up the body that published it and explain that I'm a librarian and I'm looking for a copy for research purposes (not for adding to the collection). Half the time they send a gratis copy for the library, the other half they photocopy what I need or loan it.
posted by geek anachronism at 4:36 PM on May 30, 2010

Thanks, taters. I've seen the list of the nine "types", but they also have some sort of procedure for testing the cats, and a questionnaire (available for free in Spanish) to help people determine what type of cat they're looking for, plus some kind of scoring system. I'm guessing the $40 binder guide includes that information. I'd also love to see what research is behind this, and whether anyone's done follow-up research to see if the cat's later behavior matches it's "type" -- it might be in the binder, or might not, but heck, I'd like to see.

Maybe I'll call a local ASPCA chapter. I think I called the local shelter earlier, and they didn't have it. Maybe contacting the national ASPCA would yield fruit. Thanks, geek a.

Interesting idea, judith. I'll think about that.

I just got handed a more immediate dilemma; someone may want to adopt, through the organization, one of our two 9-month-old foster kitties as an only cat; I'd love to have some systematic way to predict whether that's likely to lead to a happy cat or a sad lonely cat. You know, some cats love being only cats, some really are happier with friends.
posted by amtho at 6:04 PM on May 30, 2010