While most cats take great care of themselves, some also take an active interest in grooming the hair of their owners. A “beautician cat” could sit on the back of a chair or above your head in bed, using its paws and teeth to comb through your hair. If you move out of the cat’s reach, it will occasionally even hold your head steady or object.
Grooming habits in cats can have both social and physical consequences. A cat’s behavior and reactions are influenced by their instincts, emotional and physical well-being, and other factors. This can be compared to the H.I.S.S. Test, which stands for symptom solvers, health, stress, and instinct.
Well-being
Skin and fur are kept clean and healthy through grooming. Cats groom themselves for a significant amount of their waking hours.
innate
When kittens are young, they start grooming themselves. While the environment plays a role, instinct plays a major role in grooming behavior. There’s a good chance that the babies will develop tidy “cattitudes” if their mother is an organized person. However, unkempt mother cats could teach their kids to ignore their grooming. In addition to grooming their young to keep them clean, mother cats also groom one another and share scents.
Emphasize
Cats who groom themselves to decompress also do so. Self-grooming as a stress reliever can be likened to a human receiving a soothing massage. In other situations, cats may employ “power grooming” to scare other cats and drive them from a preferred area.
Signs, Symptoms, and Remedies
Your cat is probably using hair grooming as a social behavior if it is doing it on you. When cats in a family group get along well and have friendly relationships, the cats will groom each other. Cats that sleep together and groom each other also smell similar because of the scent that is spread through licking. As a result, a kind of “family perfume” that designates one another as secure and amiable is produced. If the cat starts acting strangely, it’s possible that she enjoys the scent of your recently purchased shampoo.
Your cats don’t care to give you the perfect feline hairstyle when they groom you—well, maybe some of them do. Cats that attack an owner’s hair are probably just reacting to their “furry part” and attempting to spread the family scent through proper grooming.
It’s possible that the cat will get reinforcement of some kind, which will motivate them to repeat the behavior. When grooming the cat, do you converse with it and give it a pet? If you move away, it might be sufficient for your cat to tap your head to get you to come back into range.
When repeated, the behavior may get a little annoying. Similar to how they can overgroom themselves out of stress, some cats will pull out or chew off their owner’s hair. The pulling and chewing behavior might be a continuation of the wool-sucking behaviors that Oriental heritage cats frequently exhibit. In rare instances, that behavior might result from a nutritional deficiency. In the event that your cat ingests lengthy strands of human hair, hairballs may result. It’s a good idea to take your cat for a checkup at the vet if it appears interested in eating your hair.
To avoid being snatched bald, you can offer your cat an alternative, like a fuzzy stuffed animal, and shoo them away from your head. However, most of the time, a cat grooming a human’s hair is seen as a great compliment and a loving gesture—the feline version of a petting session, really. Fear not—the cat won’t expect you to transform into feline beauticians with just a promise and a lick. Petting is acceptable.
