Animal Behaviorist The Iams Company

In a survey conducted to determine enrichment activities for indoor cats in the care-givers ’ homes, 304 indoor-cat caregivers answered structured interviews about their cats ’ use of windows and other “fun activities. ” The survey asked caregivers about durations of window use, what cats watched through the windows, and in what other fun activities cats freely participated. The results indicate that, of 577 cats, 84.3% looked out windows a total of 5 hr or less a day, that cats observed 14 different catego-ries of outdoor stimuli, and that cats participated in 17 categories of “other ” fun activi-ties. These results suggest that cats use windows and sunlight much less often than the welfare community may expect but that caregivers (owners), when possible, should consider providing access to these. Environmental enrichment for companion animals has become a growing move-ment in the nonhuman animal welfare community. One problem that often arises, however, is that the popular perception of what is “enriching and natural” represents only the human perception (anthropocentrism) of enrichment for a species and not actual enrichment for that species. Although almost everyone agrees that enrichment is important and appropriate, agreed-on definitions of what constitutes environmental enrichment have yet to be developed (Smith & Corrow, 2005). Almost all animal welfare advocates suggest that providing op-portunities for species-typical behavior is desirable. Cats living in cat colonies in the laboratory in particular are targeted as they typically do not get to participate in home-like or “natural ” outdoor activities. Determining what is enriching often is subject to intuitive speculation and, not as often, subject to scientific scrutiny