When cats rub up against your legs, they're really marking you as their property. It's their world, we just live in it!

Cats are always seen as cold, unloving creatures, but that stereotype couldn’t be more incorrect. Love is built into their biology. Anyone who knows cats knows that they live their life mostly through smell. It is only natural, then, that they should also have the ability to release special kinds of pheromones–a type of communication via scent.

When a cat rubs on you in greeting it is actually performing a complex social task that confers a sort of family connection to its beneficiary. Each cat carries its own unique smell. When it mixes that special identifier with that of another creature a group scent is created. Your cat presses its soft side against you to pass its pheromones on to you and to further strengthen the scent of your and its group scent.

In other words, your cat is letting you know that it belongs to you and you belong to it—a rather romantic notion in comparison to the current image created by the stereotype of the cold, unfeeling feline.

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