Sometimes cats can exhibit strange behaviors, leaving their puzzled owners wondering: “What is the cat trying to say, what does he want?” These weird cat behavior “mysteries” often have quite logical explanation.

Lets look at one of the fairly common cat behaviors that almost all cats do: pushing their heads into objects and then rubbing their cheeks. You may have noticed your cat rubbing against the table legs or other pieces of furniture. Or when you had visitors over at your house, he may have been brushing against their legs.

There is a common belief that cats are particularly attracted to people with allergies or those who don’t like cats and then come up to brush against their legs to annoy them. However, this is a myth, by rubbing their cheeks on their legs the cat is actually just trying to make the visitor belong at the house.

Cat rubbing his head against objects is simply saying: this belongs to my territory, this belongs here. So it is a form of territorial behavior where by rubbing his cheeks, a small amount of saliva is deposited onto the object or a person marking it with a familiar scent. In your cat’s mind, he owns what he puts his saliva on.

Sometimes, this natural cat behavior can be quite annoying, especially if you have visitors which don’t like cats, and even more so if someone has an allergy to cats. In the last case you should keep the cat out of the room – the glycoprotein contained in cat saliva and sebaceous glands is a strong allergen that can trigger a severe allergic response (from sneezing to life-threatening asthmatic attacks).

Your cat sees the visitors in your home as strange or weird. By brushing his face against them, marking them with his scent, he will try to make them belong in his territory. When your visitor wipes the saliva off, the scent will be gone and the cat will go back and try to do it again. So now when you understand why is he doing it, explain it to your guests and if they agree, allow the cat to rub on their legs couple of times. That is usually all it takes to make your cat content and he will then leave your guests alone.