Letters to the Editor
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One thing
Cats are not necessarily solitary in the wild. Feral cat populations are extremely social and have complex hierarchies.
One of their more enigmatic behaviors is technically termed "allorubbing." It just means cuddling--they'll sit around for hours and rub and nuzzle each other. (We had to watch video of it in animal behavior class in college.) But it's puzzling, because at a huge energy cost, it seems to serve no purpose in terms of reproductive success. Ethologists previously thought that it must only be done for warmth; that was the only justifiable explanation, in terms of natural selection, for why they'd commit so much energy to doing it. But no, it was found that they'll do it in the hottest summer weather. They'll even do it if they're starving. For reasons still not fully clear, maintaining social bonds in this way is so important to them that they'll expend immense quantities of energy that could be used in more obviously advantageous ways to do it.