Fig. 2

Response duration and response frequency of domestic cats to cat-attracting plants. Box and whisker plots showing the total response time, median response duration, and the total number of responses of 6 domestic cats to 5 cat-attracting plants. Each dot represents the data of one cat; the middle line in the bars shows the median value. Each cat-attracting plant was available for 100 h, the control (green tea) was available for 500 h (100 h for each of the 5 plants tested). A Data shown per plant. Note the large spread of the data points, indicating large variation in response duration and frequency to the various plants between the cats. Differences between the 5 plants (total response duration, median response duration, and response frequency) were not statistically significant (P > 0.05, mixed-effects repeated measures ANOVA and Tukey post hoc test, corrected for multiple comparisons). We obtained 5 instead of 6 data points for V. officinalis since cat H was unable to participate due to medical reasons. For the statistical analysis of the paired data with missing data (cat H), we used a parametric test (mixed-effects repeated measures ANOVA). Therefore, for the analysis we used the average values (both the average response time to a plant for each cat and the average of the cats for each plant) instead of the median. Using either the average or median data did not affect the outcome of the statistical analysis. B Differences in total response time, median response duration, and response frequency between cats. Colors represent the fur color of the cats. Response duration and frequency differed significantly between the cats (Kruskal-Wallis). P values shown in the graph are from Dunn’s post hoc tests. *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001