Feliway is a lineup of products that use pheromone-like scents to adjust your cat’s behavior. Find out how Feliway products work today in our review.
What is Feliway?
Feliway is a cat care product manufacturer. The company’s products use pheromones and other scents to solve various cat behavior problems.
Feliway products are available through Amazon, Feliway.com, and other retailers. They’re typically found in the “spray repellants” category.
The company’s most popular product is the Feliway Behavior Modifier Spray. That spray is sold in a 75mL container and is priced at around $75. All Feliway products use the same basic pheromone liquid.
Feliway is a subsidiary of Ceva, one of the world’s largest and best-known animal healthcare companies.
What Kind of Behavior Problems Can You Solve with Feliway?
Feliway claims to help you solve all sorts of common cat behavior problems, including problems related to all of the following:
- Spraying
- Scratching
- Visiting the Vet
- Moving Home
- Travel
- Over-Grooming
- Hiding
- Visitors
The company claims that using Feliway products “can help your cat feel more safe and secure during times of change.”
How Do Feliway Products Work?
How do Feliway products actually solve your cat’s behavioral problems? You place a Feliway diffuser (or apply the spray) in the area your cat frequents the most. This helps the cat adjust to a specific smell, letting them know it’s a safe space.
You can also spray Feliway on certain furniture or parts of your home to let the cat know it’s safe.
This can help cats when you’re moving to a new home. Your cat might have trouble adjusting to its new environment. Feliway is one easy way to ease the transition.
Whether you’re moving or not, Feliway can be a helpful product. Customer reviews online for Feliway indicate that people like using the product after moving, re-decorating, or even just re-arranging furniture.
Cats who are stressed and nervous may exhibit symptoms like hiding, mischief, scratching, or even urine spraying. If that’s the case with your cat, then Feliway may be the solution.
Scientific Evidence for Feliway: Why Does Feliway Work?
The official Feliway website has a full page dedicated to the science behind Feliway.
Essentially, Feliway products work because they use pheromones – chemical signals that are widely used by animals (including humans) for communication. You release pheromones unknowingly throughout the day, giving various subconscious signals to the world around you.
The point behind pheromones is that messages sent by pheromones affect your cat’s behavior. A cat might rub its face on a piece of furniture to indicate that he owns that piece of furniture, for example, or that the furniture is a safe space.
Different parts of the cat produce different pheromones. Feliway specifically identifies five different sources of cat pheromones, including:
- Facial Area
- Foot Pads
- Mammary Region
- Perianal Area
- Urogenital Region
Pheromones are detected by a specific organ within the cat’s nose. Pheromones activate receptors in that organ. The organ then relays that information to the brain, causing the cat to go through rapid behavioral and physiological changes.
What’s the exact pheromone used in Feliway products? The makers of Feliway have created a synthetic version of one of the feline’s facial pheromones. Remember up above when I said cats rub their faces on furniture to mark their territory, or to create a safe space? Feliway uses the same science in its sprays.
In any case, Feliway is clinically proven. The makers of Feliway cite one study called “Evaluation of the Efficacy of a New Pheromone Product Versus Placebo in the Management of Feline Aggression in Multi-Cat Households.” That study was presented at the Veterinary Behavior Symposium in 2014. You can read the full study here.
Researchers in that study tested the spray on housemate cats separated into groups as part of a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. These cats were in 45 multi-cat households, and each household had reported aggression for at least 2 previous weeks. The pheromone group showed a lower “Oakland Feline Social Interaction Scale” (OFSIS) score, which indicates that the cats were less aggressive.
In other words, the spray was tested in a clinical setting, where it was shown to reduce aggressive interactions between cats sharing the same household.
Separate studies have been performed on Feliway, including one where it led to a 90% improvement in scratching and urine spraying behavior.
Feliway Products
Feliway products include all of the following:
-Feliway Diffuser MultiCat: This product consists of the Feliway liquid mounted below a diffuser. You plug the diffuser into an electrical socket, then wait for the pheromones to be diffused throughout your house. It’s an effective way to ease tension when you have multiple cats living together.
-Feliway Diffuser: The Feliway diffuser looks identical to the MultiCat diffuser. It’s just smaller and designed to make single cats more comfortable in their surroundings. The diffuser can cover up to 700 square feet of space for 30 days before you need to buy a refill vial.
-Feliway Spray: The Feliway Spray is the spray bottle version of the Feliway formula. You spray 8 to 10 pumps of the liquid on doorways, cat-flaps, furniture, and other objects around the house. The effects of the spray last 4 to 5 hours. Re-apply the spray as needed until the behavior stops.
-Feliway Wipes: This is the wipe-based version of the Feliway liquid. It’s designed to be a portable option – like if you go traveling with your cat. The wipes come in a single-use, individually-wrapped packet. You can even take them on planes. Many cat owners will wipe the Feliway Wipes in their cat carriers before transport, for example.
What Do Customers Have to Say About Feliway?
Feliway products have been sold on Amazon for nearly a decade. At the time of writing, there are thousands of customer reviews available for different Feliway products online. We’ve read through those reviews to come up with the following list of pros and cons:
Feliway Pros
-Effectively prevents cats from engaging in unwanted behavior
-Works even for fussy cats with emotional or physiological problems
–Can help cats recover from emotional trauma (one reviewer used the spray after their cat had been bitten by a dog)
-“Aromatherapy for cats”
Cons
-Doesn’t work for all cats
-Some cats have a bad reaction to Feliway, and will have the opposite of the intended reaction (they may begin avoiding sprayed areas instead of feeling safe in the sprayed areas, for example)
Overall, Feliway is one of those products where customers either seem to post a 5 star review or a 1 star review. It works very well for some cat owners – and not at all for others. In general, the products have a 3.5 to 4 star rating across Amazon (specific ratings vary between products).
Feliway Pricing
Feliway is available through authorized retailers around the world, including stores in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
You can find authorized retailers for your country here: http://www.feliway.com/us/Buy
Alternatively, certain Feliway products are available from Amazon, including the following products and prices:
-Feliway Behavior Modifier Spray 75 ml: $74.88 USD
-Ceva Feliway Plug-In Diffuser Refill for Cats (3 Pack of 48 ml Containers): $66.08
-Comfort Zone Feliway Diffuser Kits and Refills: $20.28
Should You Use Feliway on your Cat?
Feliway is an advanced cat care product that uses the power of pheromones to help solve your cat’s behavioral problems. Feliway is made by Ceva Corporate, one of the world’s largest animal healthcare companies.
Reviews for Feliway online are generally good. Reviewers seem to say that Feliway either works as advertised – or not at all. As you might expect, the spray works on some cats, but not others. Overall, the spray seems to have a good success rate – but don’t expect it to work in 100% of all situations.
If your cats are having behavioral problems, or if they’re adjusting to a new home, then Feliway spray may be the answer you’re looking for.
