Cats Smell, Taste and Tact

The first thing all cats do when being offered some food is to smell it. Only if it smells right will they take their first bite. The sense of smell in cats is very well developed, so much that we could say that it is the most important sense. Its nasal cavity lodges more than 200 million of olfactory cells, double than in humans.

Most of the people that have cats are surprised before the capacity that even younger cats have to detect odors like those of bacon on liver or a can of sardines or a just opened can of tuna fish.

The odors
Because cats natural diet is carnivorous, the vegetables odors (except for that of the catmint or the valerian plants) barely generates interest to them, although some may even identify the odor of onions, for example, and to relate with a plate of liver, if its usually prepared at home. Cats also use their smelling capacity to situate their preys, to be able to identify other cats´ territories, for exploring and evaluating the surroundings and also for the use in its sexual behavior.

Developing the smell
Cats learn very soon to differentiate odors and from an early age they use the smell for identifying its mother's odor and the rest of the litter.

If they are moved, or the mother decides move them, to a new place, the kittens present symptoms of anguish until the mother reunites them near her, confirming with her odor that there is nothing to be afraid of.

At this stage, when they have a few days from birth, their sense of smell is so distinctive that it makes each kitten to always go to that one mother, always the same one, when they feed from her. As it happens with the rest of the senses, the smell develops very fast and it soon reaches a high grade os specialization. From the moment in which they venture far from the protection of their mothers, they begin to learn the rich language of the odors of the world around them.

Map odors
For when at last the kittens decide to leave the mothers side and start an independent life, they already have created a unique world of familiar odors. When leaving it, they enrich their experiences of that world with new odors.

They begin to deposit olfaction marks rubbing their heads or sides against the furniture, trees or other objects, against its owners and other people and animals of the house, and against other cats that come in his way.

Generally, it's about, activities that will help him elaborate an odor map of his own and unique of his surroundings. But, overall, the smell gives cats a great quantity of information about the outer world.

For example, if an owner of a cat visits a friend that also has cats, these pick up information from the smell of cat that the arriving guest is transmitting, and the same will happen when the owner returns home.

Since the smelling capacities of humans are not as rich and diversify as that of the cats, we barely have an idea of the world of odors they live in.

If you think on those gust of odors, as the ones some particular flowers emit, the sea, the perfume of a person, which are capable of bringing us remembrances from years off forgotten, maybe then will you be capable of understanding a bit as how cats build their odors "data bank", which they carry during the whole life. And its this odor memory that works on humans on some occasions which is an essential part of a cats daily life.