Does your cat actually love you?

The oldest joke about cats is that you are a very tall food bowl. A cat can ignore you for hours and appear at the sound of a can opener, and that looks like proof. It is not a full account. Researchers have now tested cat–human attachment in the same broad tradition used with children and with dogs, and the results are not the joke.

This article talks about attachment and preference, not about a feeling we can name from the inside of a cat. “Love” in the title is the question people actually type. The evidence answers a more careful version: does your cat use you as a source of security, and does it sometimes choose you over food?

A secure base, in kittens and in adults

In 2019, Kristyn Vitale, Alexandra Behnke, and Monique Udell published a short report in Current Biology. They ran a secure-base test: two minutes in a new room with the caregiver, two minutes alone, two minutes of reunion. Of 70 kittens whose behavior could be classified (nine more were unclassifiable), 64.3 percent were securely attached and 35.7 percent were insecurely attached. Among the insecure kittens, most were ambivalent; a smaller share were avoidant or disorganized.

A six-week training and socialization class did not produce a significant shift in those proportions. At follow-up, 68.6 percent were secure and 31.4 percent insecure. Once a style was in place, it appeared relatively stable over that interval.

The same pattern showed up in 38 cats aged a year or older: 65.8 percent secure, 34.2 percent insecure. The authors note how close that split is to the familiar figure for human infants, often given as about 65 percent secure. A secure cat, in this test, can use the person as a base and then go back to exploring. An insecure cat may cling, or stay away, and show more signs of stress.

That is attachment behavior. It is not a promise that every cat will greet you at the door.

Sometimes they choose you over the bowl

A few years earlier, Vitale, Shreve, Mehrkam, and Udell (2017) offered cats a choice among four kinds of reward: social interaction with a person, food, a toy, and scent. In the published paper, social interaction was the category most often preferred, ahead of food, with a lot of individual variation, and with some cats interacting with nothing. Secondary reports disagree slightly on the exact sample size (figures in the 38-to-55 range appear in different write-ups). The direction of the result is consistent: many cats, given a fair choice, go to the person first. Not all of them do.

The smaller signs people already notice

A meow is not a word. Nicastro and Owren (2003) found that people classifying the context of a meow did only a little better than chance, did better with a run of meows than with a single one, and did better if they had experience with cats. You understand your own cat in part because you have learned its patterns, not because the sound carries a dictionary.

A tail held straight up is one of the clearer visual signals. In work beginning with Cameron-Beaumont’s 1997 thesis, cats approached silhouettes with a raised tail faster and with less hesitation than silhouettes with a lowered tail. Cafazzo and Natoli (2009) described the tail-up display as a friendly intention signal, often before rubbing.

Cats also look at us when something new appears. Merola, Lazzaroni, Marshall-Pescini, and Prato-Previde (2015) placed cats in front of an unfamiliar object (a fan with ribbons) and found that most of the cats alternated their gaze between the object and their person, and that their behavior changed with the person’s positive or negative reaction. In summaries of that paper, about 79 percent of the cats showed this social referencing. We keep the “about” because the figure is taken from those summaries.

The slow blink, tested by Humphrey, Proops, Forman, Spooner, and McComb in 2020, belongs in the same family of signals: 45 cats, in two setups, were more likely to narrow their eyes or to approach a hand after a person slow-blinked at them. It is a useful thing to try. It is not, by itself, a love test.

Sources

• Vitale, K. R., Behnke, A. C., & Udell, M. A. R. (2019). Attachment bonds between domestic cats and humans. Current Biology, 29(18), R864–R865. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.08.036
• Vitale Shreve, K. R., Mehrkam, L. R., & Udell, M. A. R. (2017). Social interaction, food, scent or toys? A formal assessment of domestic pet and shelter cat (Felis silvestris catus) preferences. Behavioural Processes, 141, 322–328. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2017.03.016
• Nicastro, N., & Owren, M. J. (2003). Classification of domestic cat (Felis catus) vocalizations by naive and experienced human listeners. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 117(1), 44–52.
• Cafazzo, S., & Natoli, E. (2009). The social function of tail up in the domestic cat (Felis silvestris catus). Behavioural Processes, 80(1), 60–66.
• Cameron-Beaumont, C. (1997). Visual and tactile communication in the domestic cat (Felis silvestris catus) and undomesticated small felids. Doctoral thesis, University of Southampton.
• Merola, I., Lazzaroni, M., Marshall-Pescini, S., & Prato-Previde, E. (2015). Social referencing and cat–human communication. Animal Cognition, 18, 639–648. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-014-0832-2
• Humphrey, T., Proops, L., Forman, J., Spooner, R., & McComb, K. (2020). The role of cat eye narrowing movements in cat–human communication. Scientific Reports, 10, 16503. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-73426-0

CritterWhy explains published research for curious readers. It is not veterinary advice and does not replace a conversation with a qualified veterinarian. If your animal seems unwell, or a habit changes suddenly, ask your vet.