Territorial marking through scent and scratch deposits is a natural cat behavior that can become a welfare problem in multi-cat households where competition for resources causes chronic stress.
Multi-cat household management is a significant welfare challenge because cats are not obligatorily social — unlike dogs, cats did not evolve to live in structured social groups. Forcing incompatible cats to share space and resources causes chronic social stress that manifests as disease, particularly feline idiopathic cystitis, inappropriate elimination, and overgrooming. The welfare impact of poorly managed multi-cat households is often invisible to owners who interpret the absence of overt fighting as social harmony. Genuine feline social compatibility requires compatible individual personalities and sufficient resources and space that cats need not compete. Managing an overcrowded multi-cat household with insufficient resources is one of the most common causes of preventable chronic welfare problems in companion cats.