How important is enrichment?
When I started studying cat behavior last year, I did not expect it to have an impact on my work with the Museum's raptors. What could solving litter box problems have to do with wild birds? On the surface, they are very different. But by digging deeper I have gained a new lens to view our raptor care and training.
For one example, I've already written about applying pattern games (commonly used with dogs and cats) with Otto the Great Horned Owl.
Cat behavior has also given me the idea of enrichment to mull over. I have had the opportunity to observe many client meetings with a Certified Cat Behavior Consultant and there is one thing that stands out across these sessions. In every case - whether the cat is peeing on the carpet, fighting with other cats in the home, scratching the couch, or waking them up at 3am - part of the solution is enrichment. Each client is prescribed the task of scheduling daily play sessions and providing one new thing for their cat to explore each day. Sometimes that's enough to take care of the behavior problem on it's own. A lack of enrichment may actually be causing these behavior problems to begin with!
It got me thinking: if enrichment is so important for a cat's wellbeing, is it that important for raptors? I've always known that enrichment is an integral part of caring for all of the wild animals that I've worked with. But cats have given me a new perspective on what can happen if animals don't receive adequate mental and physical stimulation: they will find other (problematic) ways to meet their needs. Could behavior problems in our raptors be mitigated by increased enrichment?
Take the case of Carson the Red-tailed Hawk. Every fall, she feels the need to prepare for migration and starts acting ridiculously hungry. She'll fly at food before our hands are out of the way. It's a safety issue for us, and I also don't want her feeling the negative emotions that must be associated with such desperation. Each year, I increase her food allowance to help her feel satiated, but she still acts hungry even after her weight has skyrocketed. What else could we do to help her take the edge off?
My cat training mentor, Laura, explains that "cats in our homes don't have much to think about, so they think about food constantly." No wonder my cat Calypso starts meowing for dinner an hour or two before mealtime and dives on it the second the bowl hits the ground. I know she's not actually starving because she has a bowl full of dry food sitting out for her to enjoy any time. She's just acting desperate because she's been thinking about her canned meal all day. The same could be said for Carson the hawk - maybe she just has too much time to think about food.
I started to consider what hawks would be doing in the wild each fall. Yes, they would increase their food intake to prepare for migration. But they might also be more active as they're migrating and looking for a place to spend the winter. I've already addressed Carson's uptick in food requirements, but maybe I need to address her activity level, too. Would increased enrichment help give her something else to think about and reduce her desperate dives at food? That's a theory I'm going to test.
Cat expert Dr. Mikel Delgado expressed her dislike for the word "enrichment" in an interview earlier this year. "'Enrichment' implies it's extra," she says. But in fact, "these are necessities. Just like your cat needs a clean litter box, they need food and water, they need medical care, they need things to do. ... It's just as important as the other stuff." She prefers the term "environmental necessity" for those daily things that will make an animal think and use all of their senses. The phrase doesn't roll off the tongue quite as nicely, but I'm going to try using it to see if it helps shift my priorities.
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