Battle Of The Sexes

Do felines prefer females?

- Yolanda Wessels

We all know the joke of the old spinster whose only company are her cats. Of course, in today’s life, women take their lives and when/if they want to marry into their own hands, but this article is not about female emancipation. It’s about cats’ association with women. Do cats prefer women as their social partners?

Domestication

In the beginning, cats were probably attracted to man by the hordes of mice and rats that congregated around the stores of food that he had learned to build up in Ancient Egypt. As man became aware of the value that different animals could have for him, he began to domesticate them. The earliest known evidence of a co-operative relationship between human and cat has been dated to 4,500 years ago in Ancient Egypt. While dogs joined the men on hunting expeditions, cats were used around the house, where the women worked and lived. They had to keep the vermin under control in the fields and storage facilities. They later became tame and valued pets, and even objects of worship.

Affectionate creatures

Research has shown that women, in general, tend to bond more with cats than men do. A study published in the journal Behavioural Processes demolishes the stereotype of cats as cold, distant animals who want only food from their owners, and recognises that there is indeed a special bond between felines and females.