Discussion

Personality structure and breed differences

We used a subset of the personality adjectives selected by Litchfield et al. (2017) to assess personality traits in domestic cats. As our exploratory factor analysis revealed only four factors that were very similar to the traits of Litchfield et al., we kept their labels: extraversion (MR1), which reflects a high level of intelligence and perseverance; dominance (MR2), which reflects aggressiveness toward other cats; neuroticism (MR3), which reflects high levels of shyness and fear of other cats; and agreeableness (MR4), which reflects friendliness to people. However, we did not detect the impulsiveness factor of Litchfield et al. (2017). Even when we tried performing exploratory factor analysis with five factors, the additional factor did not correspond to impulsiveness (Appendix Table 2). The impulsiveness factor was expected to emerge from the adjectives impulsive, predictable (negative loading), and distractible. However, in our dataset, impulsive was strongly loaded on the dominance factor, whereas predictable and distractible were moderately loaded on the agreeableness factor (Table 1). Litchfield et al. (2017) analyzed survey data from New Zealand and Australian owners. When the two datasets were examined separately in the initial analysis, the scree plot of both datasets supported retaining only four factors as in the case of our dataset. Furthermore, in this initial separate analysis of the two datasets, the impulsive adjective was strongly and positively loaded on the impulsivity factor in the Australian dataset but negatively in the New Zealand dataset. It is therefore possible that cat impulsivity is perceived differently in different countries.
Our analyses showed that cats from different breeds tend to have different personality traits, with non-pedigree and Bengal cats showing a higher tendency toward dominance (MR2) and extraversion (MR1) but a lower tendency toward agreeableness (MR4) than other cats. Bengal and Main Coon cats also demonstrate lower levels of neuroticism than other cats. These findings are in agreement with organizations of cat owners and breeders, which report that cat breeds differ not only in morphological traits but also in behavior (Salonen et al., 2019). For example, Bengal cats are described as intelligent and active, while Birman cats are described as affectionate and gentle. Recently, Salonen et al. (2019) examined behavioral differences between breeds in a sample of over 5,700 Finnish cats from 19 different breeds and detected differences between breeds in all traits relating to social and non-social behavior. Even though our results are less detailed than those of Salonen et al., because we examined fewer breeds with a smaller number of behavioral dimensions, they nevertheless seem to be in good agreement. For example, we observed that the Ragdoll, Persian, and British Shorthair cats generally seem to be more agreeable, less dominant, and less extraverted than other breeds of cats (Appendix Figure 1). These breeds were previously shown to be closely related genetically (Lipinski et al., 2008) and to have low levels of activity and aggression (Salonen et al., 2019).

Factors influencing owner-reported frequency of prey brought home

It was previously shown that domestic cats have highly variable predation rates: some cats frequently bring prey home, while a significant proportion rarely does so (Baker et al., 2008; Tschanz et al., 2011; Thomas et al., 2012; Kauhala et al., 2015). Given the high local ecological impact of pet cat predation, understanding the causes of this variation could potentially help identify ways of mitigating this impact. Variations in hunting behavior among pet cats are related to three main factors: (1) the availability of prey in the environment (e.g., Barratt, 1997; Bonnaud et al., 2009); (2) the practices of owners, who can influence the cats’ access to prey by regulating their outdoor access and using deterrents and can affect the cats’ motivation to hunt by providing a suitable diet or enriching the environment (Cecchetti et al., 2021b); and (3) the intrinsic characteristics of the cats themselves, which modulate their reactions to the previous factors. In this study, we focused on the effect of cat characteristics (personality traits in addition to sex, age, and breed) and included several factors related to the cats’ environment (see Methods), which were expected to play an important role.
Regarding the relationship between the individual characteristics and the reported predation rate of cats, we observed a significant effect of breed in addition to the four personality traits studied here. By contrast, age and sex did not seem to play a significant role, as also observed by Cordonnier et al. (2022). Note however that we excluded cats younger than 1 year from the analyses, while their sexed and desexed status was not recorded. The main finding of this study is that cat personality has a major influence on the owner-reported frequency of birds and small mammals brought home, which, to our knowledge, has not previously been observed. For both birds and small mammals, cats with high levels of extraversion (here, intelligence and perseverance) had significantly higher frequencies of prey brought home, whereas cats with high levels of neuroticism (shyness and fear of other cats) had significantly lower frequencies. Thus, our findings clearly confirm the hypothesis of Cecchetti et al. (2021a) that cats with low levels of neuroticism or high levels of extraversion hunt wild prey more frequently. Additionally, we observed that cats with low levels of agreeableness (here, friendliness to people) and high levels of dominance had higher frequencies of bringing home birds but not small mammals.
The personality of cats can potentially influence their predation activity at several different levels. First, it can modulate the time that cats choose to spend outside. For example, cats with high neuroticism could be more fearful of going outdoors than other cats, or friendly cats with high agreeableness could be more motivated to stay inside with their owners. Lowe et al. (2001) thus showed that “staying indoors” is an important element of the behavioral styles recognizable in young domestic cats. Second, personality can also influence the time that the owners allow to their cats to spend outdoors (Tan et al. 2021). In their large international study, Foreman-Worsley et al. (2021) showed that “Some owners felt their cat’s temperament made them unsuitable to go outdoors.” For example, owners of timid cats tended to keep them indoors more to avoid their cat being “bullied.” Furthermore, Foreman-Worsley et al. (2021) observed that the large majority of owners who allowed their cat to go outside did so because they believed that their cat wanted outdoor access, again suggesting a relationship between cat personality and the amount of outdoor time allowed by the owners. Third, during the time spent outdoors, personality can also influence cat motivation to hunt. For example, fearful cats with high neuroticism could be less likely to venture far from home and thus locate prey. Although not demonstrated in domestic cats to our knowledge, the effects of personality on space use have been shown in several species (e.g., Marmet et al., 2012; Schirmer et al., 2019; Wauters et al., 2021). Finally, cats with personality traits such as high levels of intelligence and perseverance could be more successful hunters. Our dataset does not allow us to disentangle these four possibilities. However, a survey with a larger sample, particularly a larger sample of free-ranging cats, would make it possible to determine whether the observed effect of personality traits on the frequency of prey brought home is primarily mediated by the time spent outdoors or by a greater motivation or hunting efficiency once outdoors.
Regarding the cats’ environment, we found that rural or suburban settings as opposed to an urban environment and a high abundance of vegetation around the home were associated with higher frequencies of prey brought home as reported by the owners. As expected, we also found that cats who spent a greater amount of time outdoors had higher reported frequencies of prey brought home (though cats without outdoor access were excluded from this analysis). Because pet cats usually remain close to their home (~100 m radius in average; Kays et al., 2020) and are opportunistic hunters, their predation should reflect the fauna found in immediate proximity to their home (Barratt, 1997; Castañeda et al., 2019, 2020). Several studies on free-ranging pet cats found significant differences between rural and urban areas in terms of the amount and composition of prey brought home, probably reflecting differences in local prey availability induced by differences in land use (Kauhala et al., 2015; Krauze-Gryz et al., 2017; Piontek et al., 2021). In our study, predation analysis was conducted on cats with outdoor access ranging from less than 1 hour per day to free-ranging cats. This has the advantage of being more representative of the pet cat population as a whole, because not all pet cats are free ranging. However, because owners living in urban settings are much more likely to limit their cat’s time spent outdoors, often due to their fear of road traffic accidents (Foreman-Worsley et al., 2021), this means that the effects of urban and rural environments as well as the time spent outdoors are difficult to separate in our dataset.

Limitations

In this study, we used online convenience sampling to survey cat owners about their animals’ personality traits as well as the frequency of prey brought home. This methodology allowed us to gather a large sample, although it also has several limitations. First, we contacted respondents through social media by disseminating the questionnaire in user groups dedicated to cats. However, the sociodemographic characteristics of these social media users probably differ from those of the general population, for example, in terms of age and education level (Mellon et al., 2017). Furthermore, it is likely that the participants in the cat-dedicated groups present differences in terms of their relationship to their cat (high interest in particular) compared with cat owners who do not frequent such groups. It is therefore likely that the respondents do not constitute a representative sample of French cat owners. In addition, we estimated cat predatory activity using a semi-quantitative measure of how often they bring prey home, as observed by their owners. Although cat predation rates are frequently estimated by the prey brought home method (e.g., Woods et al., 2003; Lepczyk et al., 2004; Tschanz et al., 2011; Krauze-Gryz et al., 2017), this approach has limitations. In particular, cats only bring home a fraction of the prey that they capture. For example, Loyd et al. (2013) monitored free-ranging pet cats in a suburban area of the southeastern USA for 1 year using KittyCam video cameras and showed that only 23% of the prey captured by cats were brought home, while 49% were left behind and 28% consumed. Furthermore, the proportion of prey brought home varies between prey groups, especially in terms of how palatable they are (Krauze‐Gryz et al., 2012). Similarly, Seymour et al. (2020) recently showed that in Cape Town, South Africa, 82% of pet cats’ prey was not returned home, again with very different proportions of prey returned by taxa. For these reasons, owner surveys of prey brought home by their cat markedly underestimate the amount of prey captured depending on the type of prey. However, in this study, we were interested in determining which personality factors contributed to the variations in predation rates between cats as opposed to the absolute amount of prey captured by the animals. These limitations are therefore not supposed to impact the results of the present research.

Conclusion

The major influence of cat personality on the frequency of birds and small mammals brought home could potentially help mitigate predation by domestic cats. Pet cat predation rates are strongly associated with the amount of time spent outdoors, although other factors are also important (Cechetti et al., 2021a, 2021b). While the situation varies from country to country, several authors have shown that owners’ decisions about whether or not to allow their cats to go outside are rarely motivated by a consideration of their cats’ impact on wildlife (Crowley et al., 2019; Foreman-Worsley et al., 2021). Foreman-Worsley et al. (2021) showed that in several countries, the main reason for owners keeping their cats indoors was to protect them from traffic, especially in urban environments, whereas the main reasons for allowing them to go outside are the perceived mental health benefit or because the cats wanted to go outside. Crowley et al. (2019) showed that British cat owners who wanted to manage their cats’ predation were often concerned that it would compromise their pets’ welfare. The same authors (Crowley et al., 2020b) also recently observed that the majority of surveyed owners “valued outdoor access for cats and opposed confinement to prevent hunting.” Taking into account the personality of the cats having an outdoor access, for instance by promoting the adoption of cats (or breeds) that are by temperament less likely to hunt (cats with low extraversion and dominance, but high neuroticism and high agreeableness), could therefore potentially allow owners to reduce the impact of their cats on wildlife in places where there are strong biodiversity preservation issues.