Homosexuality in Cats

I'm asking about this out of curiosity, not out of any desire to poke an issue that's volatile when applied to humans. One of my parents' male cats tends to hold down another, smaller male cat and try to mount him. Apart from the concern of him hurting the smaller cat, this is fairly normal cat behavior, just not as far as the genders involved.

Most of the references I've read to homosexuality in the animal kingdom are part of a larger argument to justify / refute it in people, and conflicting evidence is offered toward those ends. This doesn't really interest me. I just want to know if any of you have observed this in your own cats - is it consistent? Do any of your cats seem to 'prefer' other cats of the same sex? Or are they really just not aware of what they're doing at the time?

more often than not when it comes to animals, if a male appears to be mounting another male it is a dominance thing. As if to say who is in charge.

All the accepted wisdom on cats says that this behaviour, which is not uncommon, is connected to dominance and neutered cats will do it with cats of either sex. My Wellington, who is neutered, does it with the females and with me and used to try it with his brother (now RIP) when they were playfighting. What I find more interesting are the great friendships and displays of affection which occur between cats - I often wonder what makes them choose particular cats to be friends with - I mean, they can't talk about common interests, can they?

Its a form of dominance - not sexual in nature. I've heard this before and its one of the stupidest things people say to justify human relationships. Its nothing more then dominance.

The only other time is might be sorta sexual is if its a group of males with a female in heat and some are just over anxious to mate - but its not homosexual.

I agree it's about dominance. My Zissou, who is female, has tried to "mount" a boy cat before (he rejected the show of dominance and she got smacked in the face, but nonetheless this pretty much proves it's not sexual).

Then again, how do we ever know what's going on in their little minds?

We are already one of the very very few species that has sex for any reason other than reproducing, so any comparison between sexual habits of animals (some of which can spontaneously change sex) and sexual habits of people is a false comparison regardless of what the people are trying to prove or disprove.

What your question does illustrate nicely is the tendency of people (myself included) to apply human ideas/morals/behaviors to our pets' actions, something that often results in a lot of frustration for us. Our pet pees on the rug-- we see questions on here all the time asking if the pet is seeking revenge for some oh-so-human slight, when in all reality the cat doesn't like her litter box or has a UTI. I find it hard to remember occasionally to treat Zissou like an animal, rather than a child whose language I can't understand...

Yes - it's dominance behaviour. Jaffa does it to Mosi a lot - showing him who's boss!

It's a dominance thing. My cats, all altered, do this.

I don't know about cats, but in many animals it's a completely normal behaviour, for example I DO know a lot about birds, and a bird will often bond with a bird of the same sex, even in the wild, usually most common in species where a bird forms a lifelong monogamous bond with a partner you will find birds of the same sex bonding as mates! Very common in parrots and penguins in the wild and in captivity.

I would think that because cats don't form lengthy partnerships with their mates, but just meet up for a 'quickie' (sorry) in order to produce offspring, that what you are seeing is more likely to be dominance behaviour. With species of animals that form longer bonds, you are more likely to see same-sex pairing, because there is an element of personality and long-term ability to co-habit involved in what is found attractive in a mate, rather than just the need to reproduce.

And a male cat wanting fulfillment may well choose a spayed female, a male, a blanket, or a cushion if his desire to procreate cannot be fulfilled with an intact female. Cat matings are short and without emotion or thought of the future!

Originally Posted by GoldenKitty45

I've heard this before and its one of the stupidest things people say to justify human relationships. Its nothing more then dominance.

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If that's the case then how do you explain the trait in monkeys and other animals. Specifically monkeys, because they do not mount, and proceed to have sex with a same sex monkey over dominance issues. They have a completely different way of showing dominance.

Well I have seen 2 male cats mount each other...un-neutered so I have always assumed they can be homosexual. It was a gagging sight for me personally since they traded places afterwards but hey, thats nature i guess...to think i was only like 7 when i saw this lol. Discovery Channel live.

The only way an un-neutered male would be "homosexual" is if you had a few females in heat in the same room and he continued to only mount the unneutered male..........which would not happen........why do people try to make animals like them?

An un neutered tom will hump just about anything

I agree with Epona's take on this. As far as I can tell sexual activity among cats is purely functional and cats dont' form emotional attachments with sexual partners. They're driven by their hormones and the need to reproduce. That would make homosexual behaviour redundant. That's not to say that cats can't form emotional bonds with other individuals, but there's no reason for them to choose a same sex partner when it comes to sexual activity.

denial much? 

It is dominance.  While behaviors like this are found among animals and often pointed to as 'homosexual', there are no homosexual animals (animals that decline to mate with members of the opposite sex 100% in favor of mating with same sex.)  Animals will hump anything.  Turtles will hump rocks.  Rhinos try to mate with cars.  Animals try to hump dead animals.  Dogs hump coffee table legs.  Hump hump hump.  Humping coffee table legs doesn't make them legosexuals.  To think otherwise is anthropomorphizing them. (Anthropomorphism is a transference that causes us to see in animals, human traits that aren't really there.)   When animals hump non-species, inanimate objects etc, its just because the reproductive urge is so strong that they will hump anything.  Mindless rutting beasts who will hump anything have no relation to humans...unless that human happens to also be a mindless rutting beast that cant control itself. 

It is unhelpful and a bit ridiculous to compare homosexual humans to mindless rutting beasts that will hump anything close at hand.

But when many species 'mount' others in a display of dominance like this, this dominance behavior has no relation to procreation or sex.  They don't try to mate--- they just mount and go through a few motions to get their point of dominance across and then they stop.  We often see cats sit on their prey as a show of dominance in the same way, as there are many types of dominance displays.

Remember, that animals mate out of their prime directive; to reproduce their species.  Its only humans who tend to make their sexual relationships more complicated than their biology and science dictates.  Humans are not animals.  Well, some might be.

My boys were doing this to each other for about a week before I had them neutered.  That was my cue that they were going through puberty early and I needed to get them neutered now rather than next month when their vet comes back from vacation.  Which is why I'm broke because the only vet who could do the procedure was ridiculously expensive - especially for this area.  But I didn't want these behaviors to become habits that would be hard to break.  And I didn't want them to start spraying.

It's a dominance thing.  Connor was usually the one mounting Murphy.  He would pin him and bite him while Murphy whimpered.  And 10 minutes later they were grooming each other.  I swear, my cats were having "teenage" mood swings.  But Connor was obviously the more dominant male.  He's all muscle while Murphy is more soft.  They were neutered Wednesday and they haven't been pulling any more dominance crap since.  Thank God.  It was getting on my nerves.

@GoldenKitty45  There's a study where that happened with sheep, actually. 

I've never seen two male cats mount each other, but I agree that it'd be nothing more than dominance or just wanting to hump something.. I'm not too wild about unneutered males