Originally posted by Digitalis The Ginger Kitten is settling in nicely, though I have never observed this behavior before with cats, but now I have been inexplicably landed with two cats that do this with their tails:
in this shot the Kitten (Sunny) is playing hide and seek with my Cat Tigger.
It's an interesting phenomenon, I've seen some cats do that, too. Apparently, it serves a couple of purposes: it makes the cat's overall profile larger and therefore more threatening and better defended in appearance presented to potential attackers; and also creates a distraction/diversion to potential cat-eating predators. Better to lose a bit of your tail and stay alive than to fight tooth and claw and end up a dead kitty. Presumably cats that did that tail-fluffing thing lived to reproduce, while others got 'et.
I've observed something else: cats' personalities seem to be heavily influenced by the fur colors, skin colors, and patterns. Brown tabbies are timid and have to be in control of contact with humans; orange tabbies are laid back if not downright blobby - and instead of fluffing the tail, they fluff up their neck and shoulders - but since they tend to be larger than other cats, I guess that's threatening enough; the black-and-white "Sylvester" kitties have terrific reflexes and are superb hunters, curious, alert and playful, if not downright naughty; gray tabbies are feisty and aggressive and are natural cat-family leaders but are very responsible about managing their mignons; and calicoes tend to be one-person kitties and want nothing to do with anyone other than their own person. All just generalizations based on my own anecdotal observations.