The Head-BUTT

Cat owners know that the way cats "kiss" is by the notorious head butt.   You will see it on TV, greeting cards, and many YouTube videos. They greet other kitties, family pets, and even strangers with this gesture if they are comfortable enough and wish to let you know they are pleased with you and feel happy in your presence.  There is no mistaking the body language here: genuine affection and acceptance.  They may also use the head butt to get your attention at times as a method of needy begging if the traditional meowing and pawing at you hasn't charmed you enough. Tigger is the head banger champion in our home and if I'm watching TV or doing something and he wants me to drop everything, literally, he will climb all over me and use his head butt with such force that he has knocked drinks out of my hand, phones off my shoulder, and even given himself a mild concussion.  He LOVES me.  So when I see the precious cat commercials where the owner leans in for that sweet cat kiss, I giggle and know that Tigger never learned appropriate head butt etiquette.

It's especially obnoxious at night when he wants to wake me up.  After he's used his best efforts to walk on me with his dagger paws, he will use the fierce head butt combined with his noisy wheezing purr which sounds like a pigeon with a sinus cold.  It never stops.  Between the noise and the physical assault I can't sleep, so we leave him to head butt the furniture or the other cats during the night.   In order to compensate for being deprived of midnight kisses I am met in the morning with a head butt combo with lots of drooling and scratchy tongue licks.

Our other two cats, Toonsis and Pepper, have interesting head butts, because they both angle their faces and combine the head butt with a sideways face wipe/toothy kiss.  They will open their "lips" enough for us to see their snaggle-teeth and gently drag them along so we are suitably marked after we are gently rubbed by a soft furry head.  I prefer the head butt of the girl kitties over Tigger's forceful vigorous kisses, but sometimes these ladies can add a little chewing action and make me wonder whether this is actually affection they are displaying, or something more aggressive.  Everywhere I go there are face wipes and head butts.  I look down and there will inevitably be a cat following me and wiping its face along the molding or the chair leg and looking at me affectionately as if to say, "yeah, this is MY chair leg, this is MY table, this is MY bag of groceries..."

I know that cats possess numerous glands on their bodies which they use to secrete pheromones which are left behind with their many different postures and will mark us and other animals or objects to show their level of possession or dominance.  So one of these glands exist on their foreheads, but I'd like to pretend they just do it because they love me.  I think it's kind of cute that my cats compete over who loves me the most when they try to out-stink each other with all the head butting and mouth wiping on me.  I belong to these cats for sure.  And the head butt is the greatest because I can look at my cat in the eye and he can look at mine just like with another person, before we lean in and touch foreheads.  It's as intimate as a person kiss.  It's a pretty highly evolved way to express affection if you ask me.  So after I finish writing this, I'm going to go find a cat and give it a kiss.  And if I'm lucky the kitty will respond with a slow blink and a head butt in return.