Development is not merely preparation for adult life since the young animal has to survive. Some behaviour seen in early life is an adaptation to the conditions in which the kitten is living at the time, the most obvious example being suckling--a specialised means of obtaining nutrition from its mother. As some patterns of behaviour drop out of the kitten's repertoire, others come in. The changes are almost like those seen in the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly.

	Thinking Point
	Various 'innate' behaviours can be recognised in kittens. Which of the behaviours exhibited by human babies can be said to be truly innate?

The development of behaviour clearly depends both on inherited factors (primarily genes) and non-inherited factors (primarily environmental influences). However, to look at a cat's behaviour and ask: 'Is it genetic or is it learned?' is to ask the wrong question. All behaviour patterns require both genes and an environment in order to develop. They emerge as a result of a regulated interplay between the developing cat and the conditions in which it lives. Moreover, like the records in a juke-box, different genes may be expressed in different environmental conditions. For that reason the cat's behaviour cannot be divided into two types--those patterns caused by internal factors (often referred to as 'genetic' or 'innate' behaviour) and those caused by external factors ('acquired' behaviour). Many actions, such as suckling, are clearly present at birth (the strict meaning of 'innate') and many other behaviour patterns, such as some of the motor patterns used by the cat for catching prey, appear without opportunities for practice or for copying from other individuals. Nonetheless, even such unlearned patterns of behaviour are often modified by learning and by other forms of experience later in development. And other environmental factors, such as the quantity and quality of nutrition, can have general effects on behavioural development.

The dynamics of the developmental processes generate behaviour in the individual cat which sometimes remains unchanged once formed and sometimes changes a great deal. These processes may often seem complicated, but it is becoming apparent that relatively simple rules for development can generate the variability found at the surface. For instance, at a particular stage in its development the kitten has something almost equivalent to a hunger for learning about certain kinds of things. However, once the knowledge is acquired, the kitten is resistant to further change. The most striking example of this is the way preferences are formed for social companions (which in the case of the domestic cat often include humans). Once formed, their preferences can be hard to change.

While cat owners tend to focus on how different individuals are from each other, development is such that cats ends up behaving in similar ways despite remarkably different histories. The same skills found in adults have often developed in distinctive ways. The example considered at some length in this seminar was predatory behaviour. While cats show many of the components of stalking and catching prey without obvious previous experience of doing such things, they also greatly improve these skills. They may do so as a result of play or as a result of watching their mother. But if all else fails, they may become as good as other cats with plenty of early experience as the result of catching prey when they are forced to fend for themselves. Examples of versatility such as these demonstrate how adaptable is the cat and how able it is to thrive in different environments. They serve to explain the similarities as well as the differences that are found in cats living in utterly different climates and conditions.