Understanding cat behavior

Abstract

As pets becoming more common in the household, owners and their pets begin to share an emotional dependence on each other to the point where household pets become more essential in managing each other's emotions. However, most owners miss the signs of possible sickness by ignoring the cat's behavior. The previous research coming from designers lack a standard to fully visualize the behavior of cats and raise the awareness of cats' behavior and their implications. This thesis explores how information design helps cat owners understand their cats by creating a notational system that describes cat body language and behavior. The designed new notational system, based on an arrangement composed of over 10,000 photographs, provides an opportunity of creating visualization for the behavior of cats. The thesis also examines the cat's behavior based on the feline's head movement and its body expressions. In the end, the thesis builds a bridge between cats and owners by forwarding a better understanding of their behaviors and the awareness of pets' emotions. The outcome of the thesis makes cat owners be able to communicate with their cats in a way that the existing methods don't support.--Author's abstract