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Cats are like cuddly soft pillows that are full of knives. When those knives come out, upholstery and household calm tend to suffer.

So if you’re a cat person, you might have already sought out ways to address problem behaviors, like the slickly marketed sprays and plug-in diffusers that claim to help via science. But you might be wondering just how much a thing you stick in a wall socket can really do to keep your favorite chair from being clawed to pieces.

These products are based on sound science and the secret chemical communications between cats that we humans can’t perceive. But will they really turn Fluffy into a model citizen? Let’s look at the evidence.

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In addition to their more direct communications strategies, like standing on your chest at 5 AM meowing about their food dish, cats also send messages more subtly – through pheromones.

These complex chemical cocktails are released by individuals of a given species and can modify behavior in other individuals. Cats release their own special elixirs through various body parts, including their facial glands, toes - and, yes - their pee. Commercial pheromone products mix up these complex cocktails in a spray or plug-in, and usually the results aren’t perceptible to us.

But our furry friends supposedly get the message loud and clear. And there is some research into how well these products work, but there’s an asterisk. Cats can be tough to study at the best of times, and some of these papers leave out things you’d normally want to see – like blinding the investigators and including a control group. So keep that in mind.

First up, let’s talk facial pheromones. Spend time around cats and you’re guaranteed to catch them rubbing their faces on just about everything, from furniture to your pant leg. While a number of their facial pheromones remain a mystery, one called F3 is deposited on objects where the cats spend most of their time. So it’s likely a major player in identifying their own personal space and allowing adult cats to claim their favorite chair. The synthetic version claims to improve anxiety as well as reduce scratching and spraying, because there’s no place like home.

One 2021 study of 150 cats looked at the use of these synthetic pheromones for relieving stress during short distance transport; you know, cramming the angry gremlin into a box and driving to the vet? "I’m sorry! You have to go! Please stop yelling at me!" This study showed a significant reduction in stress behaviors of cats exposed to synthetic F3 during their travels, compared to a placebo group.

And a paper from 2017 showed that salivary levels of the stress hormone cortisol were reduced in 75% of cats while using an F3 diffuser. No control group for this one, though. And given that another study showed no significant difference in the stress levels of cats sharing spaces in a shelter, this tells us we probably shouldn’t rely too heavily on F3 products to save the day when Mittens is feeling stressed. At least not until we know more about how well they work.

Now, statistically speaking, if you’re a feline-friendly household, you probably have at least two. But once they reach adulthood, cats are pretty solitary creatures. Unless they’ve been buds since early kittenhood, putting two strange cats together can create a furry tornado of claws and hisses. That’s where momma-cat pheromones come into play. The "feline appeasing pheromone" is one secreted by female cats for the first two or three months that they’re nursing their kittens.

It’s likely that this pheromone is promoting social bonds during this critical time. So if we want bonding to take place well into adulthood, and even between unrelated kitties, it makes sense to mimic this good vibe elixir. A similar pheromone from nursing dogs has already been synthesized and used effectively for helping pooches feel more peaceful, and a synthetic cat version has now hit the market.

And one controlled, double-blinded experiment of 45 multi-cat households showed it worked to decrease aggression. The participants, who each had a range of two to five cats at home, tracked aggressive behaviors in daily diaries and through weekly questionnaires. The cat households that used the synthetic pheromone saw a greater dip in conflict behaviors over the 4 week period of the study, so this may be a promising addition to other tactics to bring battling cats to harmony.

But even in households where cats are living in relative peace and harmony with each other, there are still some behaviors we’d rather live without– like scratching furniture! Cats’ teeny toe beans do more than make us melt from the adorableness. They also release and deposit pheromones called "feline interdigital semiochemical," or FIS.

FIS can send social and territorial cues to other felines who might pass by. The synthetic version is supposed to promote scratching, but importantly where you want, as in, not the sofa. One study of 19 cats showed that while individual cat sensitivity to the synthetic FIS varied, overall it did increase the duration and frequency of their scratching sessions in treated spots. That said, a review of this study and two others concluded that evidence for the effectiveness of FIS was weak overall. Given the presence of some confounding factors like catnip, more research here would be nice.

Finally, while perusing the pet aisle you might run into a supposedly supercharged cat pheromone therapy that claims to do all of the above: decrease urine spraying, unwanted furniture scratching, fear, and cat fights. It’s called "feline pheromone complex," and supposedly, it’s based on naturally occurring pheromones, but engineered to bind to scent receptors more strongly. And, it kinda sounds too good to be true.

And, see, the lone study we could find was carried out as an early evaluation of the new commercial product. As in, those designing the pheromone for sale are the only ones with research published on it so far. And although their results were promising, with over 69% of cats reducing their unwanted behaviors as well as dramatically reducing the intensity of their bad habits, independent research needs to be done to be sure of its effectiveness.

So that might sound a bit weak sauce in the end. But as we’ve discussed, the evidence doesn’t only reflect the quality of products, but the quality of the studies. The theory behind this stuff still totally checks out. These products aren’t magic, and they won’t produce a 180 in Mr. Mistoffelees’ behavior. However, harnessing the power of synthetic hormones may be one more way to expand a pet owner’s toolkit to reduce stress and promote a happy household.

Either way, it’s pretty interesting to know about all the secret messages cats are sending to one another, messages we’d never detect for ourselves! So now we know that cats are sending secret messages, but how do we really know that we know what we know? That’s what the Brilliant course "Knowledge and Uncertainty "is all about.

This online course runs through the fundamentals and formulas of interpreting information, from Bayes Rule to Monty Hall. We at SciShow are totally aligned with Brilliant when it comes to the importance of this course, because you can’t just take new information at face value. That’s why we’re glad to have Brilliant’s support on this video. So you can take this course and then come back to look through any of the sources provided under any SciShow video. You’ll have the tools to determine for yourself how strong the conclusions from those experiments were. To get started with your first 30 days free, you can go to Brilliant.org/SciShow or click the link in the description down below. That link also gives you 20% off an annual premium Brilliant subscription. Thanks for watching and staying curious with us!

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