Cat Sex

I was going to have this in the same article as last week's, but I decided against it for one very obvious reason.

This is definitely the steamiest post I have written here to date.  If you are not either zoo yourself or else are heavily desensitized to zoosexuality, please just skip this post.  It's for the zoos and the zoos alone.  Don't worry: I don't plan on making a habit of this, and we shall return to less romantic things next week.

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Let’s give the queasy folks some space.  Here, I’ll be talking to you zoophiles who want to be more sexually intimate with your female cat but always heard it wasn’t possible, are afraid of doing it wrong, or have done it wrong.

Let me make it clear that penetrating your cat, male or female, does not work.  Don’t do it.  If you do, I will have to come to your place and shove a two-by-four up your ass, because that’s basically what it is.  What will be discussed here are tactile and oral stimulation.

Tactile stimulation – that is, fingering – is best done, in my experience, when kitty is lying on your chest and facing you, and you’re lying down.  This way, you can wrap your arms around her and be all romantic-like, and face her, and also keep an eye on her reactions because you are bigger than her and you don’t want to be making her uncomfortable.  This position also seems to be the most reassuring for your cat, who is given the real impression that she’s got the power here, and can leave whenever she likes - or lead you into a different position.  Mine will go from my belly to sprawling on her back on the floor to crouching with her butt on the air to crawling right back into my arms - important to remember throughout this article is that cats are all very different from one another and the best thing to have is a keen awareness of kitty's body language.

Before I go on, I'm going to assume you're a complete imbecile and tell you to ensure your hands are washed and clean.  So, first of all, regardless of what you're doing, foreplay is important.  It even occurs in nature, and it gets both of you ready both psychologically and physiologically.  Pet her, rub her, talk to her, give her her space for at least a few minutes.

It’s good to be petting/massaging/grabbing her scruff and scratching her rump simultaneously.  You can tickle the side of her tail to let her know what’s going on.  If she’s glad about that, her tail will be off to the side, her bum will be raised slightly, and her face will be a very happy one.  If you don’t know cat expressions, expect heavy eyelids and forward whiskers.

From here, your finger has access.  Which to use depends on how big your fingers are.  It’s best to start with the pinkie, because even it is going to be larger than a male cat’s phallus.  Experiment a little, though, very tentatively, because some queens like a bit of extra breadth.  Whichever finger you’re using, the rest of your hand should be relatively relaxed, wrapped comfortably around her rear, or over the base of her back.

What you are doing with that finger should be extremely tentative.  Because she’s on top, she actually has a lot of control, so starting out you really should be doing little more than just tickling her vagina.  Don’t do anything with the other opening unless she wants it, and she will show you this by moving it onto your hand.  Most cats don’t like it, and certainly not on the first time, and if you so much as brush it you’re going to be left alone on your couch or bed very quickly.  In any case, as you’re tickling, she may move back, she may move around, and your job is to exercise your empathic skills and get what she wants.  Does she want you to tickle lower?  Does she want you further in?  Zoophiles are some very empathetic people, according to one psychologist Beetz (2000), and this is why: we don’t have the luxury of someone telling us what to do while having sex, and we have very picky partners.

For this reason, don’t be upset if she leaves early.  Just stay put, or go the opposite direction as her.  You can see her again in a bit.  Don't worry about it.  A lot of cats will like to crawl around and stuff while having fun, and if you stay put or go she might immediately come after you wondering why you don't get the point.  In cases like these, you can chase her, put a bit of pressure on her back and continue on the ground.  As her arousal peaks you might find the almost masochistic resilience of a lot of female cats; some aren't satisfied towards the end of a round until you've got one hand massaging her neck and shoulders, and the other knuckling both holes as she holds her butt high in the air.

It’s kind of neat, because she knows exactly how to get you where she wants you to go, but if you actually try yourself, presuming she doesn’t hop away and hide, you’re never going to get there anyway.  She has the power, and inside you can feel her moistness, erogenous zones throbbing, her heart beating and her muscles drawing you in.  We don’t usually think of tactile stimulation as terribly romantic, but all this coupled with your other hand stroking her neck and back and her eyes gazing amorously into yours, it can be an incredibly rewarding experience.

Eventually, though, you’ll want to stop, or she will - if you’re good, and she’s having a good time, this might not be for a while - and after that, although you might think it best to give her a cuddle and mutter sweet nothings to her and all that, you actually want to leave her be for a bit.  You can sit around nearby, or even just stay right there, and she may well come back later from getting a drink to let you know that she appreciates it, whereas you might make her a little nervous and feel boxed in if you trail her or try to pet or cuddle her.  That’s just how cat sex works.  The moral to all of this is that everything is on her dime.

An interesting thing to note is that I know cats outside of heat, and even spayed females, who like a little tactile.  Of course, you have to be even more receptive and careful during this, but there can be mutual enjoyment even if hormones aren’t flowing.  I don’t believe I can in good conscience recommend this, because I just know some moron is going to read this and then think it’s A-OK to rape an undeveloped feline, but as a stupid youth I tried masturbating a spayed queen who belonged to my family.  She of course left, disgruntled, and I of course felt like absolute shit for not keeping my own hormones in check, this being at a time where I hated myself for even being zoophilic, let alone acting on it.  I left for a week, though, and when I saw her again, the first thing she did when I lay down on the couch was jump up on me and lower her bum right onto my hand, so we actually ended up developing something of a relationship.  Oddly, too, this little cat also liked her anus dealt with.  TMI, perhaps, but there’s a little story about cats and fingers.

Oral is tougher.  There are two ways I know of: either her planting her butt on top of your face, which seems to be something smart and forceful queens do, or else as she’s lying down on her side or belly (or back, or all over the damn room if she's like mine) and you’re lying next to her.  Anything else is too awkward, because she’s small and quadrupedal.  Many cats don’t want to have anything to do with oral.  And who can blame them, our mouths are disgusting.  Make sure to rinse very well.  And if your cat doesn’t want you going there, don’t go there.  Simple.  Maybe someday in the future.

Important: you should actually not brush your teeth or, for that matter, eat crunchy foods at all beforehand.  Either of these will cause tiny lacerations in your mouth which opens you both up to greater transmission of bacteria and other icky things.  I'm not saying this because oral sex with cats is particularly dangerous for either of you, I'm saying oral sex in general is kind of not really the most healthy thing you can do, even with humans.  So... if you're reading this and going, "Eh, I think I'll stick to humans," at least you can take home a lesson here.

Anyway, most of the things I say about tactile stimulation apply to oral as well.  To start, though, you want to give her a sniff.  This will not only let her know what’s up before anything actually happens, so she can decline if she likes, but it will also let you know what she smells like and are you sure you want to do this.  I would hazard that cats are... stronger than most women, although it’s just your tongue tip that’s going to have to deal with that, based on the fact that missing and accidentally getting her bum may be more palatable.  Fair warning given.  But of course, as I like to say, if you love someone, you love every bit of them: every way in which they stimulate your five senses.  So as bold adventurers, we press on.

I once read somewhere that if you want to become an expert cunning linguist, you can practice on a rose, trying not to ruin the flower.  If that’s the case for women, then perhaps we might say for a girlcat you might want to think of it as one of those tiny blue flowers.  Or foxglove. (I kid.) Cats are, as I have iterated, sensitive, and you just barely want to tickle to start out with.  You can eventually escalate, but do not expect to be able to shove your tongue anywhere.  If you’re using force, you’re using too much force.  And don’t forget to stroke her.

That’s all I have to say on cat sex, for now.  Hopefully you got something out of it.  And hopefully you didn’t get here by accident, ignored the warning above, and now look a little like this:

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Good luck to you and yours.

How to Help Your Horny Girl Cat Without Being Gross

A little while ago I talked about neutering your pets, and specifically, why you shouldn’t do it.  It’s been one of my most successful posts so far, so I’m doing a bit of a follow-up.  In that post, I said that there are means of satiating your female cat who is in heat without being gross.

One thing to remember here, first of all, is that all cats are different.  There are differences in sensitivity, so yes, you’re going to have to be incredibly careful, very observant of responses, and willing to take some time to experiment.  One method or the other may not even work at all.  Just as importantly, kitty may not even want to have anything to do with you, period, in which case, you’re SOL.  Build your cat’s trust, spend some time with her, and then come back.

Assuming, though, your cat is OK with (or, more likely, is highly anticipating) your approaching her tail-end while she’s in heat, scratching her back… when you try petting her, especially if it’s her first heat, or you tend to avoid her while she’s in heat, or if she’s just that sort of cat, she may lash out at you.  This is pretty normal, so long as she doesn’t turn away and glare at you, in which case, yeah, trust, liking, etc.  More likely, though, she will immediately go back to flipping around and doing stupid horny cat things again.  She’s basically testing you, and you’ll need to persist a few times more in this case.  I can’t stress enough, though: if it’s clear she isn’t just testing you and seriously just wants to have nothing to do with you, see last paragraph.

The first method is beating your cat up.  OK, I’m joking, mostly.  It’s definitely the simplest of these two methods, the safest, and the most difficult to screw up.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t work with all cats, and it may take a bit of experimentation to figure out exactly how to do it.

What you’re doing is basically coming up behind kitty and petting her, quite heavily, starting from the neck and going down her back.  Always gravitate back to the neck; it’s sort of a universal cat fetish.  You’ll want to get more vigorous and putting more ‘petting energy’ into her lower back, where her tail starts.  Take it slow and take it easy; if she’s receptive, and you’re doing it right, she’ll present.

Still keeping a hand at or grabbing her neck, you sort of want to pulverize her bum.  Rhythmically pat her back and her hips.  You’re not doing anything with the business end she wants you to do things with, but what you are doing is you’re sending strong, rhythmic vibrations through those sensitive sexy areas, which is good enough for many cats.  Some cats prefer to be rubbed, so just kind of knead her hindquarters, though be careful because kitties in heat are... ahem, a tad messier than human women in heat, for their size, so a vigorous rub right over her backside might make this a certifiably "gross" method.  Just a warning.

In any case, she may orgasm or she may not, and I won’t describe it here because for our purposes it doesn’t matter a whole lot if she does.  What matters is that she’s satisfied and she’s quiet, and she’ll bounce off and do her cat thing.

You may be raising an eyebrow at this because patting her lower back and bum is something you might do regularly to kitty even if she, or even he, is not in heat.  Some cats like getting the crap beat out of their butt.  Yes, this is in fact because it is sexually stimulating.  If your cat likes this when she’s not in heat, chances are doing it with that extra bit of vigour will make her happy while she’s in heat.

The second method is the infamous q-tip method.  It’s definitely the grosser of the two methods I have labeled as non-gross, and it’s infamous because people are idiots and don’t do it properly.  Let’s make sure we know what we’re doing.  So… yeah.  Get a fresh q-tip.

Especially the first time, you’ll want to be doing something with the scruff of her neck.  Some cats, a vigorous little massage with your first two fingers will do fine.  Others, you’ll actually need to grab it, but don’t be too rough.  Either way, until things are finished, you’ll want to stick by that neck.  What you’re looking for is for her bum to come up and her tail to go to the side.  Yep, take a peek.

There are two orifices there.  I can’t believe I need to explain this, but experience with aforementioned idiots tells me I do.  The top one is cat-bum.  The chocolate starfish.  You’re familiar with this one, as it shows whenever kitty is feeling happy and energetic.  The bottom one is one you don’t see quite as often, and is maybe just a piece of discoloured fur anytime else.  This time, since she’s aroused, it’s a little more obviously cat-vag.  That’s the one you want to be looking at.

You’re going to be stimulating her with the q-tip.  Please, for the love of god, don’t just stick it in.  And oh dear really keep a freaking hold on it.  It’s not that hard.  Get a grip on yourself; you clean her urine and feces every day, you watch her washing yourself, you let her sleep on top of you.  This isn’t that weird or difficult, and it does not make you a zoophile or in any way perverted: you’re doing what needs to be done, you’re doing it in a healthy fashion, and you’re doing it because you love your cat and don’t believe in removing her semi-vital internal organs because you don’t like how loud she is.  Just thought I would remind you.  You’re welcome.

You want to just brush the q-tip around and over it.  She’ll get pretty visibly excited.  As you insert it – just a few millimeters is all you need, no further than the length of your index fingernail when it’s cut and probably a lot less – she may start to make noises that in other situations you might find distressing, and she may start to rock back and forth on her haunches.  This means you’re doing something right.  Not all cats do both or even either of these things, however, so just be aware of body language in general.

An alternative method to the q-tip, by the way, is just tapping her there with a finger.  Grosser, yes, but I thought I would point it out anyway.  Other than that, it’s the same method.  If she doesn't respond to that, gently using your knuckles and rubbing them up and down between her hindquarters (not all the way to her anus) as if strumming a very delicate guitar...with your knuckles...should work very well.  No, I'm not a guitarist.

However you do it, it will only probably take a few seconds, and what happens after is quite variable.  Kitty orgasms involve a whole lot of vibrating.  Eyes narrow, and there may be vocalizations, sucking, or just clicking noises like they make when they see a bird.  Alternatively, there may be no orgasm and she might just bounce off to do whatever.  Some cats, if you’re really doing a good job at making her feel comfortable, might last quite a bit longer and through multiple orgasms.  You can take this as either a good thing or a bad thing.

Either way, that’s finished.  No muss, no fuss.  Chuck the q-tip, enjoy the peace, and think about how happy your cat is right now.  Or just go and watch TV.

Terminology

There's a lot of discussion in the zoo community and interested parties about what certain words mean.  Generally, it is said that because said community is disorganized and often less than stable, there is no agreement on what means what.

I'd like to change that.  We don't have a definitive lexicon, so I'll attempt to put one here.


Anthrosexuality
A sexual orientation towards humans.  The opposite of zoosexuality, although the two are not mutually exclusive.

Bestiality
The sexual use of animals.  Bestiality and bestials/bestialists, unlike zoophilia and zoophiles, give no regard to the emotions or desires of the animal, and there is no emotional attachment.  First used in the seventeenth century, it's now the usual term used in legal documents.

Faunoiphilia
Sexual arousal from watching animals mating.

Fence-hopping
Having sexual interactions with an animal that is not yours, without the permission of the animal's legal owner.

Horse-ripping
Rather explicit abuse of horses in an often sexualized context that has unfortunately become common enough that it has its own term.  Unfortunately one of the big reasons zooerasty is still illegal in many places.

Zooerasty
Zoosexuality in practice, ie the act of a human having sex with an animal. cf pederasty

Zoophilia
(1) A romantic attraction to animals.  An emotional attachment is necessary (-philia meaning love) and a sexual attraction is generally implied.  It does not, however, need to be present, nor does an individual need to have had a partner to be a zoophile. cf nyctophilia, etc.
(2) A paraphilia involving animals, used in a clinical context. cf necrophilia

Zoosadism
Bestiality, but above and beyond a simple lack of concern for the animal partner in being explicitly physically abusive.

Zoosexuality
A sexual orientation towards animals.  May cover either zoophilia or bestiality, but, like zoophilia, does not necessitate an existing relationship.  Sometimes used today to mean someone who prefers animals, as opposed to someone who will orient towards animals but prefers humans.

Animals Can Consent

Animals do not initiate sexual intercourse with people.

Actually, they do, quite a bit.  Whether it’s a cat in heat rubbing her butt in your face, or a male dog bouncing all around you with an erection, animals make the sexual desires well-known, and often those sexual desires involve people.  All it takes is a quick search on YouTube (here's my personal favourite) to see what this can look like.  It's a heck of a lot more overt than any self-respecting man or woman.

But why?  Evolution says they should only want to ‘do’ their own species, and interspecies sex is very rare in animals/humans.

Perhaps Darwin’s greatest failure was in assuming that people would be able to understand that evolution is not a cut and dry thing, is not a machine, and is actually incredibly complex.  For instance, sex performs many other functions other than just reproduction: bonobos, famously, use sex within their societies to lower stress levels.  Lions will mate with each other within their own sex and outside of heat to strengthen social relations.  And we, of course, rarely have sex with babies in mind.

Furthermore, interspecies sex is not rare in either humans or animals.  A fair chunk of the male population (between 10% and 30% depending on what study you’re looking at) have had some sort of intentional sexual relations with an animal at some point in their lives, and according to Zequi et al. (that study I tore into last year) the majority do so more than once.  This rate is even higher among animals.

In concluding the, “why?”: first of all, unlike humans, animals do not have culturally-embedded difficulties with interspecies relationships; secondly, they do not have the barrier of “us” and “them” as we do, which is primarily motivated by our reliance on language, and the notion that since we have it, we are very separate from and superior to other species.

Our pets, even pets that roam or have other members of their own species to interact with, often love us very much even in comparison to friends of similar species.  Our dogs may be OK when they are separated, but when we leave for an extended period, they become anxious and wait with bated breath for us to return.

You mentioned language.  A cat, dog, horse, etc. cannot say, “no,” or, “yes,” so they most certainly cannot consent!

When was the last time you had sex with your human partner?  Or, if you have not done so yet, perhaps you’ve seen it on a film.  Does either participant ask, “Would you like to have sex?” and does their partner say, “Why yes, that sounds lovely.”?  No: generally, no words are spoken whatsoever.  Words tend to “ruin the mood”.  So what do we tend to look for when wondering about consent?  We look for precisely the same things that zoophiles do: we place a hand somewhere, or do something else that is suggestive but not forceful, and our partner either responds positively and goes with it, maybe kissing us and returning a gesture, or they may move away, shift uncomfortably, vocalize (“Nuh-uh”) or even get violent; for example, the classic face-slap.  The last one, barring some interesting relationships, luckily doesn’t tend to happen unless you’re strangers, in which case, you deserve it.

An animal can’t sign an informed consent contract.

Laugh all you want, but you wouldn’t believe how often I get told this.  The problem is, I can’t find any contract to be signed by two people before they are allowed to have sex, so I’ll have to take your word for this one.  If someone could send me a copy of their own informed consent to sex contract, that would be great.  Thanks in advance.

More seriously: "informed consent" is used for legal contracts, and not for sex.  After all, idiots who have never taken a sex-ed course in their life are allowed to have sex, as are people who are intoxicated, and as I will discuss a little bit further on, we humans have a lot more to worry about than do animals when it comes to sex.

Animals are just like children: they can’t consent because they are too dumb to understand sex.

This is false on several levels.  The first level is the broad: there is no one kind of intelligence, and the idea that there is a single sort of intelligence is very old and outdated.  And before you mention it, no, IQ is only one measure of intelligence.  There are many kinds of intelligence, ie motor intelligence, working memory, spatial awareness, empathetic (your dog is many times better at reading your body language than you will ever be at reading his) and interpretation of and appropriate problem-solving regarding certain environmental cues, especially scent, that humans suck at in comparison to other species.  In fact, it seems that the only thing we have that no other animal has is linguistic ability, which has given rise to culture, complex social interactions, and the spread and preservation of information necessary for technological development.

Secondly, it is false that the law states that children cannot consent because they are intellectually incapable of understanding sex; the reason is that they are physically incapable of understanding sex.  Certain brain structures necessary for producing and regulating sexual behaviour, particularly the hypothalamus, are undeveloped.  Additionally, their hormonal cycles have not yet started; hormones responsible for sex drive and primary sex characteristics do not exist in high levels in their bodies just yet.  Neither of these are the case with animals, as is evidenced by the fact that, unlike children, they very regularly engage in consensual sexual behaviour with each other without any of the ill physical and psychological effects that very frequently occur when children are sexualized prior to puberty.

The retort to this argument tends to be that even post-pubescent children are not legally able to consent, and this is because of the aforementioned cultural and physical ramifications in human-human intercourse: we have STIs, we have social and cultural implications to sex, and as highly social animals in which sex is quite taboo, it can have some very real and tangible problems associated with it, which is the reasoning behind an explicit prohibition of sex between teachers and students.  Animals don’t have to worry about any of these things.  The exception, of course, is if the human, for instance, does not feed the animal if she refuses to have sex with him, but this is of course coercion, and is therefore abusive and does not fall within the realm of zoophilia.

Edit (Dec 2012): Due to this being a very prevalent argument against animals not having the ability to consent, I have further elaborated on it here.

Animals rape each other all the time.  They are used to it and have no idea of consent.

No, they don’t.  I talked about this in an earlier post, but I feel it necessary to reiterate it here.  In almost all animals, a female initiates sexual intercourse, and if a male comes onto a female that is not up for it, she will refuse him and may react with violence.  The reason for this is that most animals have good escape mechanisms, and they have good defence mechanisms: a cat can scratch, a dog can bite, and a horse can kick or run.

The exceptions to this are: firstly animals that have very large litters and an at least relatively high chance of pregnancy per copulation, such as some rodents, where the potential for a male to be mortally wounded for attempting intercourse or afterwards is still an OK tradeoff because he’ll spread his genes greatly even if he only sows his seed a small handful of times.

The second exception is, more simply, animals that do not have good defence mechanisms, and in which females are disadvantaged.  This is quite rare, and the only three real examples of animals in which rape is as common as it is in humans are some primates, like chimpanzees and orangutans, some birds, and in dolphins, which engage in gang rape.  For the sake of this article, I will focus on primates, because, well, we are primates.

This will get a little controversial, so if you are sensitive to this topic you may want to skip this paragraph.  The fact is that it seems female orangs seem to actually have adapted to being raped.  This actually seems to be the case with humans as well: most rapes are not reported, and the feeling that, because she didn’t resist, she is afraid that somewhere deep inside that means she was OK with it, is very commonly described to therapists by rape victims.  This may be a defence mechanism: evolutionarily speaking, the chance of a woman dying because she resisted a potential rapist is quite high, and so it would be prudent for them to be biologically predisposed towards not resisting, of course then leaving the poor girls unaware that their genes were at that point overriding the conscious fear and cognitive resistance they were feeling during the crime.  If this is true, then if anything, human females are more likely to appear to consent when in reality they do not, than are most animals that are more naturally capable of escape or self-defence.

Animals in heat are rabid sex fiends and don’t have any choice.

As any breeder will tell you, it is often very difficult if not impossible to get a female animal to mate with someone that she genuinely, for whatever reason, does not want to.  She may well mate with a preferred individual, or, in the absence of anyone she believes is suitable, may choose to not mate at all.  Additionally, although you would be hard-pressed to find an academic source for this for what should hopefully be an obvious reason, animals that are sexually abused will avoid their abuser in future periods of heat, even hiding and suppressing the behaviours characteristic of a heat.  She will be highly anxious and her physical health will take a heavy hit, as it would with any form of abuse.  This goes for both males and females.

On the other hand, of course, an animal that is in a beneficial and sympathetic sexual relationship, whether with another of the same species or with a different species, they will feel a greater attachment to that individual, have less anxiety, and their health will improve, not only due to the greater level of happiness but also due to the various physical benefits of sex, which you can look up with relative ease at your leisure.

This is all the arguments I can recall at the moment that I have been presented with.  If there are more, I will of course edit them in, and if you have more, please post them in the comments or email me with them.  Thanks!