Feline compulsive behaviors such as wool sucking, over-grooming, and pica cause welfare harm. Understanding triggers and providing appropriate outlets reduces suffering.
Compulsive behaviors in cats represent a failure of the environment to meet the cat's behavioral needs. Over-grooming to baldness, sucking fabric obsessively, or consuming inedible objects causes physical harm while indicating significant psychological distress. The welfare response is to identify and reduce stressors, enrich the environment with hunting opportunities, social interaction, and complexity, and where necessary use anti-anxiety medication to reduce the compulsive drive. Punishment is never appropriate and worsens welfare.