Daily behavior and interaction of cats ( Felis catus ) with humans at a canteen in IPB University

. Understanding feral cat behavior can be one of the aspects that is necessary for proper management and taking policy action in controlling the cat population. This study aimed to observe the daily activities of feral cats and see the correlation between the number of visitors on cat-to-human interaction at a canteen in IPB University. Observation of cat’s daily behavior was conducted by scan sampling method and cats’ interaction with humans was conducted by ad libitum sampling. Our results showed that self-care (66.27%) dominated the daily behavior of cats followed by negative behavior (20.83%) and affiliative behavior (12.9%). Correlation test showed there was a significant negative correlation between the number of visitors and frequency of affiliative behavior ( p = 0.024). The number of visitors also shows a positive correlation to self-care ( p = 0.034). No significant correlation between the number of visitors and negative encounters behavior ( p = 0.27). The highest frequency value of cat-human interaction was approaching human (A) 28.15%, followed by vocalization (MV) 28.15% and eye contact (KM) 22.71%. Cat-human interaction behavior did not significantly correlate with the number of visitors ( p >0.05). Our result implies that the feral cat’s use the canteen as a place to rest, not a place to find food and daily activities and human-cat interactions were specific for each study site. Therefore, in the management of feral cats, it was necessary to pay attention to the conditions of their respective habitats.


INTRODUCTION
In recent decades, domestic cats (Felis catus) have become increasingly popular as pets worldwide [1]. There are three categories of domestic cats: companion cats, stray cats, and feral cats. The definition of various domestic cats used is based on the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee [2]. A companion cat is a common domestic cat who lives with humans as pet and relying entirely on human for their care and welfare. A stray cat is a former pet cat that has been lost or abandoned by its owner, or choose to leave the household because competition between other cats. Thus, stray cat lives as a stray or stays in a community cat. Stray cats indirectly depend on human and residential centers. They tend to interbreed with fellow unneutered companion cat. Meanwhile, feral cat does not live in residential centers. The size of the feral cat population does not depend on human and is not related to the companion cat population. Feral cat can adapt to the presence of humans if they have socialized with humans from a young age [3].
An increase in the feral cat population leads to an increase in zoonotic diseases spreading and predation on wild animals, humans, and feral cats [4]. Thus, proper and good handling is needed to control the feral cat population. Understanding feral cat behavior can necessary for the appropriate management and implementation of policy action in controlling its population [5].
A study on the daily activity and foraging behavior and its relationship with cat-to-human interaction was conducted [6] by observing the behavior of feral cats in two canteens at IPB University. This study found that feral cats mostly did self-care behavior. The highest cat-to-human interaction was approaching humans and there was no significant difference between observation time, such as morning and daytime and cat-to-human interactions. However, a previous study by [6] did not consider the number of canteen visitors. Furthermore, it is still unclear whether the daily activity of feral cats is the same for each habitat. Thus, this study wants to know the daily activities of feral cats and the correlation between the number of visitors on cat-to-human interaction at a canteen in IPB University.

Data Collection
A total of 42 hours observation of feral cat's behavior was observed in March 2022 at a canteen in IPB *Corresponding Author: kanthiarum@gmail.com University. Four observers take turns monitoring the cat's behavior ( Figure 1). This observation was carried out for seven days, starting at 10.00-16.00 WIB (GMT +9). During these observations, all cat behavior data were collected by direct observation, not video. During observations the researchers kept a distance from the cat and did not engage in any behavior that attracted the attention of the cat. This is done by the researchers in order to avoid bias at the time of observation.
Individual identification was made by distinguishing morphological characteristics, including hair color patterns, body size, wounds, and body shape [6]. The research subjects consisted of eight individual cats with three females and five males.

Data Analysis
Information on feral cat's behavior was recorded based on the ethogram (Table 1 and Table 2) and recapitulated for the identification process.   The method used in this research is scan sampling method and ad libitum sampling [7]. Scan sampling method was used to observe the daily behavior of cats with 5 minutes intervals. The daily behavior observed was divided into 3 categories (affiliative behavior, self-care and negative behavior). The ad libitum sampling method was used to observe feeding behavior and cat-to-human interaction to obtain food.
Statistical analysis was conducted using Microsoft Excel and R studio version 4.1.3. In order to examine the correlation between daily behavior and cat-tohuman interaction, the Spearman correlation test was applied.

Cats' daily behavior
Majority of the feral cat's daily behavior at a canteen in IPB University was self-care behavior were (66.27%), followed by negative behavior (20.83%), and affiliative behavior (12.90%), as shown in Table  3.
This result was similar with previous studies that showed self-care behavior in feral cats had the largest percentage [8,6]. Self-care behavior is a basic need of the body of every animal including feral cats, such as eating, drinking, and sleeping [9,10]. This result was different from previous study which showed that the percentage of affiliative behavior was higher than the negative behavior [6]. From the results of this study, it can be seen that ( This study predicted that the difference might happen because the cat has felt full, therefore it was freeze behavior even though there was leftover food around. This result also indicated that there was a possibility that the feral cat's use the canteen as a place to rest, not a place to find food. The analysis results (Table 5) showed a significant positive correlation between the number of visitors around and frequency of self-care behavior (p = 0.034). There was a negative correlation between the number of visitors around and frequency of affiliative In this study, we calculated the total number of visitors per day regardless of the existence of the cat. Thus, there were possibilities that the number of visitors was likely to be high when the cat was not around.
The relationship between foraging and eating behavior towards visitors shows a negative correlation, though not significant (Table 6). It means that an increase in visitors decreases the foraging and eating activity of cats. It might happen due to COVID-19 which most visitors chose to take away instead of eating it in the canteen, thus they did not provide food for the cat. This also indicates that cats do not use this canteen as a main source of food. Since cats prefer closed habitats such as this canteen structure to shelter and resting, this canteen is likely used as a cats' rest area [11].

Cat-human interaction
The observation of cat-to-human interaction showed that feral cats mostly approach humans (A) 30,44%, followed by vocalization (MV) 28.15% and eye contact (KM) 22.71% (Table 7). This result was similar with previous study [6]. This might happen due to previous visitors' behavior that often give food to the cats. Thus, the cat might associate visitors with food and make the cats approaching human.
Cat-to-human interaction behavior was not significantly correlated with the number of visitors (Table 8), since visitors tend to avoid interactions with feral cats, including feeding interactions and direct physical contact because of the risk of disease and parasite transmission [12]. Based on our findings, daily activities and human-cat interactions were specific for each habitat. Therefore, in the management of feral cats, it was necessary to pay attention to the conditions of their respective habitats.

CONCLUSION
Our results showed that self-care dominates the cat's daily behavior followed by negative behavior and affiliative behavior. The result of observing cat-human interaction showed that the interaction with the highest frequency value is the approach to humans. However, the behavior of cat-human interaction was not correlated with the number of visitors.