© Corbis Cats may be hard to read, but research shows they do pay attention to their owners.
Cats may try to hide their true feelings, but a recent study found that cats do actually pay attention to their owners, distinguishing them from all other people.
The study, which will be published in the July issue of
Animal Cognition, is one of the few to examine the cat/human social dynamic from the feline's perspective. Cats may not do what we tell them to, but they usually adore their human caretakers.
Co-author Atsuko Saito of The University of Tokyo explained to
Discovery News that dogs have evolved, and are bred, "to follow their owner's orders, but cats have not been. So sometimes cats appear aloof, but they have special relationships with their owners."
"Previous studies suggest that cats have evolved to behave like kittens (around their owners), and humans treat cats similar to the way that they treat babies," co-author Kazutaka Shinozuka of the University of South Florida College of Medicine added. "To form such baby-parent like relationships, recognition of owners might be important for cats."
Their study, mostly conducted in the homes of cats so as not to unduly upset or worry the felines, determined just that.
The researchers played recordings of strangers, as well as of the cats' owners, to the felines. The cats could not see the speakers.
The cats responded to human voices, not by communicative behavior- such as by vocalizing or moving their tails -- but by orienting behavior. In this case, "orienting" meant that the cats moved their ears and heads toward the source of each voice.
The felines also, at times, displayed pupil dilation, which can be a sign of powerful emotions, such as arousal and excitement. Other studies have found that natural pupil dilation can be directly tied to brain activity, revealing mental reactions to emotional stimuli.
All of these reactions happened more often when cats heard their owners, and particularly after they had become habituated to, or familiar with, the strangers' voices.
The feline reactions are therefore very subtle, but cats have evolved not to be very demonstrative.
Cats, for example, hide illness because "in the wild, no one can rescue them and predators pay attention to such weak individuals," Saito said. Even though a watchful owner would try to save the cat, the feline's gut reaction is to remain stoic and avoid any possible threat at a time of vulnerability.
Felines may be hard to read sometimes, but not always. Saito said some of the cats during the study and elsewhere have "fawned over me eagerly," purring and displaying affection familiar to many other feline fanciers.
The researchers point out that, after 10,000 years of cohabitating with humans, domestic cats have the ability to communicate with us, and we seem to understand them, for the most part.
Humans who have never owned or been around cats much can pick up basic feline emotions solely by the sound of certain purrs and meows, Saito said. In studies, such people can classify the cat vocalizations according to particular situations.
Kazuo Fujita is a researcher in the Department of Psychology at Kyoto University who has also studied cats.
Fujita told
Discovery News that "this is an important study" on how cats think, "which has remained mysterious due to difficulties in testing them."
Wonder what they would say about my feline?
If I ask him what he wants for dinner and say the name of 3 or 4 dishes, he chooses by lifting a paw or nudging the one he wants.
If I hold out shoes or clothing, in a gesture to offer a choice, while I am in process of making a selection decision, he chooses the items for me by way of 'eye blinks.' Typically, these choices later prove to validated by way of the usually higher number of positive comments elicited by those with whom I later come into contact.
The eye blink signals consist in his blinking both eyes for 'yes,' one eye for 'no.'
Likewise, I can signal in my mind to him a thought such as "I need you!". And, lo and behold, he'll come running, even from another room, to be with me.
Also, he generally prefers to eat in the manner of human animals, insofar as he does not prefer to sit on the floor and eat out the dish, but instead, has a predilection for waiting until being picked up to sit on a chair at a table.
Lately, he prefers to be spoon fed, pawing at me and giving a wide eyed stare with a tilt of the head to get my attention and give the go-ahead cue.
If I tell him I am going out and he is therefore in charge to watch over the place, I get back to find him in his guarding stance, a position he retains until I get my shoes off, after which he immediately gives me a hug.
When he wants to give me a kiss, he paws at my head to get me to lower it for his 'love bites,' affectionate bites to the hair expressing "I love you, Mom!"
He does purr but rarely meows, in his 14 years, I can count less than a dozen times when he has (and they come out very softly).
Over all, there are many instances when he gives looks showing intention that he has much to say if he could only articulate and coordinate his mouth, lips, and tongue to vocalize the sounds of spoken English.