Allogrooming is when animals of the same species engage in social grooming behavior. It’s largely considered a positive thing, indicating affection or just helping a friend out in tending to hard to reach places. This is why we were all ecstatic when an adult macaque monkey at Ichikawa Zoo finally started grooming lonely baby Punch! (Who’s thriving now, by the way.) Even among the cool, aloof floofs known as cats, allogrooming is seen as an altruistic gesture… Until now!! A cat behavioral scientist in Belgium named Morgane Van Belle observed that her two cats weren’t always grooming each other in the most caring manner. Van Belle wondered if this behavior was common among cats or peculiar to her knuckleheads, so she called on the greater public to submit videos of their multiple pet felines interacting with one another. Because when you’re a cat behavioral scientist, watching cat videos is legitimate work! The results of the study were just published and confirm that cats indeed sometimes engage in allogrooming that’s intended to be annoying or irritating, because of course.

Mutual grooming, known as allogrooming, is common among many species, and usually involves the parts of the body that an animal may struggle to reach on their own, like their neck or back.

However, lead study author Morgane Van Belle, a cat behavioral scientist at Ghent University in Belgium, noticed something interesting when her own cats, Fabio and Giovanni, would fight over a popular place to nap in the sun.

“Allogrooming is commonly described as a friendly behavior,” she told PEOPLE. “In my own cats, I saw it was sometimes not so friendly, and htis curiosity led to the study.”

She continued, “For example, one of my cats would be laying 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.”

This would then give the cat doing the licking the chance to take their place.

Van Belle was inspired to find out if the same thing happened in other multi-cat homes, and got people with two or more cats in 53 households across Europe to submit videos of their pets’ interactions with each other.

Remarkably, researchers discovered that some cats were grooming each other in a manner akin to bullying.

In some of the videos, the cats behaved as expected. They licked each other on the head, neck and ears, and would mimic each other’s posture, either cuddling together or sitting alongside each other.

However, in other footage, licking was a precursor to conflict. Here, the cats differed in body language and posture, and the licked cat would display signs of stress, including staring, yowling, swiping and licking their lips.

Licking may be a way for cats to express their displeasure with each other without getting into an actual fight, similar to staring.

“For me, it shows that they are quite elegant in the way they resolve conflict,” Van Belle told The New York Times.

“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.”

[From People]

Can I just say, right off the bat, that everyone’s name here is fantastic! If I were writing a script with a cat behavioral scientist character, I would name her Morgane Van Belle, it’s just so perfect. And then her pet cats are Fabio and Giovanni? Stop it! (Don’t stop.) And speaking of Fab and Gio, this quote from their mama on their tetchy grooming antics: “To me, that shows they are intelligent and flexible in their behavior, rather than simply being jerks.” That’s right! Cats aren’t simply jerks… they’re passive aggressive primadonnas who’ll use a loving gesture against you until you submit to their will! LOL. No wonder cats have no time for dogs — these are layers of sly mind games more akin to humans than canines! When my pup My Guy gives me licks, there are only ever two reasons: he’s giving me kisses, or he’s picking up salt from the lingering sweat of this dog-awful heatwave. It is never, ever a prelude to conflict. And to anyone who tries to raise the objection, “But Kismet, you and My Guy are not the same species,” I say HOW DARE YOU.

Note by CB: My cats Bokii and Tess used to do this all the time! They barely tolerated each other. Here are some of the only photos I have of them together. They passed over 10 years ago. 😭

Photos credit: CB’s mother-in-law, rest in peace, Nicolina Nedelcov on Pexels