When a Cat Licks Another Cat, It’s Not Always a Friendly Gesture. New Study Reveals They May Just Want Their Own Space

Classic feline behavior could be a passive-aggressive maneuver to get what they want.

July 17, 2026 8:59 a.m.

an orange cat licking another cat — Cats lick each other in different contexts, and they're not all friendly. Image by wirestock on Magnific

It’s not uncommon for a cat to lick another cat. Owners with multiple cats probably see the behavior, called allogrooming, in their home, and everyone else witnesses it in their social media feed. The behavior might seem friendly, but new research suggests sometimes it’s more sinister than it might appear.

The study began when Morgane Van Belle, a veterinarian at Ghent University, noticed something in her furballs’ interactions. “One of my cats would be [lying] by the window and the other would approach and lick their neck. This would be quickly followed by some biting and the original cat leaving the spot by the window,” she tells PEOPLE’s Adam England.

To investigate the matter, she and colleagues collected allogrooming videos from 53 two-cat households. They studied the characteristics of both the cats and their allogrooming, as well as behaviors linked to allogrooming, and detailed their results in a study published in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science in May.

“It became immediately clear from the analysis that mutual grooming does not mean the same thing in all contexts,” Van Belle tells the New York Times’ Taylor Mitchell Brown. The team identified two main allogroming contexts: social bonding, but also social tension.

When ats are in the mood for a snuggle, or really any physical contact, researchers found that 41 percent of those occassions were followed by allogrooming. If the two synchronized their positions—such as both sitting or both lying—it pointed to a positive dynamic. In this context, a cat will frequently groom the other on the head or ears. Their ears are very sensitive and have scent glands nearby, so the grooming is pleasant. What’s more, cats sometimes used allogroom to start play, and in these cases the licking usually took place in the area of the cat’s neck, which is also where the felines often bite when they play together.

Did you know? Allogrooming in the natural world

Many other species groom each other, including primates, horses, birds and insects.
Among primates, mutual grooming is almost exclusively performed by chimpanzees and ring-tailed lemurs. Other primate species are more likely to engage in unidirectional grooming.

The study also revealed that allogrooming can alternatively be used to send a tense message without escalating to full-on conflict—a more delicate form of aggressive communication. An example of such a context could be if a cat wants a sunny spot that’s already taken by another. The videos revealed that, in these social tension situations, allogrooming—frequently taking place on the neck—usually caused the receiving cat to flatten its ears in a signal of displeasure. Another sequence saw the cat swiping, biting and scratching.

Furthermore, the team recorded a significant number of understated clues pointing to stress in allogrooming. These included headshaking, licking its lips, yawning or scratching behind the ears, and especially took place when the cats were not in the same position.

“For me, it shows that they are quite elegant in the way they resolve conflict,” Van Belle says to The Times’ Rhys Blakely. “They could walk over and swat another cat in the face to get the blanket it is lying on. Instead, they lick it a little and fuss around. They have these very subtle ways of resolving conflict. To me, that shows they are intelligent and flexible in their behavior, rather than simply being jerks.”

“I am always excited to see empirical work that increases our understanding of the social dynamics of cats,” Ashley Elzerman, a veterinary behaviorist at the animal health company Zoetis who did not participate in the study, tells the New York Times, “especially in multicat households where subtle, chronic tension can be hard for owners to identify.”

So next time you’re sitting in the sun and your cat starts licking you, it might be time to move over.

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