The misread cat: A guide to interpreting feline behavior

Cats are often misread by their owners and sometimes by the veterinary professionals treating them. Tiffany Tupler, DVM, CBCC-KA, HABc, a veterinarian at Chewy Health who focuses on behavioral education, has built much of her career around changing that. At the 2026 Fetch dvm360 Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, Tupler delivered a lecture on feline behavior. dvm360 sat down with her to talk through some of the highlights, including reading cat communication, breed-specific behavioral tendencies, and how veterinary teams can help clients understand what their cats are actually trying to say.

Editor’s note: This dvm360 Q&A has been edited and consolidated from a verbal interview to better fit a written format while retaining the substance of the original conversation.

dvm360: Your path to veterinary medicine is anything but traditional. Can you walk us through it?

Tupler: My background is kind of odd and all over the place. I actually started as an opera singer. I did political science and history, and I did not think medicine was on my trajectory at all. I ended up beginning my career as a credentialed veterinary technician, working…with surgeons in recovery [and] really focusing on client communication and helping people understand basic medical information. When I got to vet school, I thought I was headed toward a specialty or board certification, but I ended up going into shelter medicine. Community medicine was right up my alley—very hands-on, especially with owners and pet parents, and a very large population of people who genuinely wanted to help their pets but just didn't know how. That's why I gear so much of what I do toward behavioral and nutrition education, and toward making it simple for people to understand the questions they want to ask. Pet parents don't come to the vet every year asking which rabies vaccine to get; they're asking what they should feed their cat or why their dog digs in the backyard. Those are the questions that engage them. And when the big, scary stuff comes around—surgery, serious illness—they already trust you because you've been answering their everyday questions all along.

dvm360: When it comes to feline behavior, where is the line between normal and something that warrants clinical concern?

Tupler: It really comes back to educating on what's normal. Take cats jumping on counters, [for example]. For decades, people have been using scat mats, aluminum foil, [and] spray bottles [to prevent this], but cats, as a species, like to be high up. Even though they're prey animals and we think of them like tigers hunting in the woods, they're still small, domesticated cats, so they can still be preyed upon. Being elevated is how they actually engage with their environment. They want to observe and then decide what action to take. That's a completely normal behavior.

Inappropriate elimination is another big one and a major reason cats get surrendered. We, as owners, tend to want heavily scented litter tucked away in some corner of the house. But cats want the opposite: a large, open, clean space with unscented litter. It's not unlike how we want our own bathrooms—clean, accessible, comfortable. When we confine them to a small box that we clean maybe once or twice a week, we're setting up conditions that can actually drive behavioral problems. The key is educating owners early about good litter box habits, because if they're doing everything right and the cat is still eliminating outside the box, that becomes much more likely to be a medical issue.

And that leads to the broader answer: The most reliable way to distinguish normal behavior from a true concern is to look for sudden changes. If a cat has jumped on the counter its entire life and suddenly stops, that's not a behavioral problem, that's a medical red flag. It could be arthritis, painful joints, [or] any number of things. Sudden behavioral changes are usually medical in nature first.

dvm360: How much does genetics actually shape a cat's behavior, and how should that factor into how veterinary teams counsel clients?

Tupler: Genetics play a real role, and I think a few breed examples make it very concrete. Take munchkins, [for example]. We've genetically altered them to have stunted limbs, which puts them at higher risk for arthritis, hip and knee issues, [and] joint disease. That means a behavior that's completely normal for cats—jumping up high—is something they physically struggle to do. We haven't changed anything mentally; we've just changed them physically. So when you see behavioral shifts in a munchkin, you have to factor in what their body is actually capable of.

Bengals are on the other end of the spectrum. They're essentially a working-class breed—more like collies than your average house cat. They need steady enrichment, something to do. Without it, they get into trouble, which is a big reason so many end up in shelters. People adopt a cat expecting it to sleep on the couch, and Bengals have very different needs.

Then there are Siamese, who are extremely vocal. That can be a wonderful trait if it's what you want, but if you have 6 roommates or neighbors in a thin-walled apartment, a cat talking to you at 4 AM is a different experience. Genetics can sometimes be modified with training and environmental management, but not always. Making sure clients understand that before they adopt is a big part of what we can do proactively.

dvm360: Cats communicate constantly, but a lot of owners miss it. How do you coach veterinary teams to help clients tune in?

Tupler: Cats communicate just like we do—body signals [and] visual cues. They have a lot of tactile communication signals, even though we don’t think about that in the clinic because we only see one version of the cat. I think it’s very important that veterinarians and their teams actually train pet parents on how cats communicate. Because they were self-domesticated, it's not in their nature to make it easy for us to read them. It’s up to us to learn their language, not the other way around.

One thing I teach a lot is what friendliness actually looks like in a cat. When a cat head-bunts you—what we call allorubbing, where they rub against your legs—that's not an invitation to pick them up or pet them. It's more like a handshake. It doesn’t mean you’re best friends, but it means that the cat is accepting of you. It’s sort of like hanging out for a little bit, and as the relationship develops, you might start to have a longer-term relationship and continue to build trust.

Cats have long-term memories, so every interaction builds or erodes trust over time, and you never want to exceed their trust.

Pheromones are equally important. For cats, it’s their sense of smell. It's how they're going to communicate. As humans, we don't smell these pheromones. When a cat is rubbing on a wall or a piece of furniture, they may be leaving signs that say “Hey, I need my space,” or “This is my area where I want to be alone.”

If other animals or people—including kids—keep entering that space, it becomes a stress trigger. And stress in cats, especially over time, can turn into serious medical conditions, like a urinary blockage.

We want to make sure that we're teaching people how cats communicate because it's how we are able to identify stress signs before they become very serious medical conditions.