Cats track their owners’ movements, research finds
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But how do I know what these little tykes really think and feel? I fear the authors of online listicles written in cursive fonts are unlikely to provide me with the latest scientific research – and are probably just saying what they think I want to hear. To truly journey into the feline soul, I will have to go to the fountainhead.
Dogs are easy to study: you can take them to a lab and they will be content. But cats are intensely territorial creatures. “The behaviour of a cat is so modified by its environment that if you move it to a laboratory,” says Siracusa, “what you’ll see is not really reflective of what the normal behaviour of the cat is.”But there is another reason that cats are under-researched. “There’s a stigma,” says Siracusa. Cats have been unfairly maligned through much of human history. In the middle ages, cats were thought of as the companions of witches, and sometimes tortured and burned. “They have been stigmatised as evil because they are thought to be amoral,” says the philosopher and writer John Gray, author of Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life . “Which in a sense, cats are – they just want to follow their own nature.” What we do know about the inner lives of domestic cats is usually determined by scientists running studies in their homes. Unsurprisingly, many of these scientists are cat owners. “Of course I am a cat lover,” says Dr Saho Takagi of Kyoto University . “When I started raising cats, I was attracted by their mysteriousness. What are these cats thinking? How do they perceive the world? These are the questions that motivate me in my research.” Takagi is holding a cat in her photo on the professional network for scientists, ResearchGate.Make Your Dog Their Own Digging Box. If your dog loves to dig keep you can keep your garden safe by teaching them to use their very own digging box.
She co-authored a paper, published last month, that found that cats mentally track the locations of their owners by their voice, even when they can’t see them. Cats participating in the study were played audio of their owners calling their names. When the source of their owner’s voice moved, they appeared the most startled. “These findings suggest that cats are quite concerned about their owners,” she says. “They may be watching their owner’s every action carefully, thinking about what will happen next.”
A common criticism levelled at cats is that these capricious little creatures only use humans for warm beds and a reliable source of protein. But “cats do get attached to people,” says Siracusa. “They get attached to other animals too.” He explains that cats often show affection by proximity, if not physical interaction, “being in the same room as you or physically close to you”. More demonstrative cats will sleep on or near their owners, or other cats. “Cats who have grown up together are more likely to be preferred associates,” he says. “But as a general rule cats do not like to be picked up, hugged and kissed. The great majority of cats don’t like this.”
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This misapprehension that cats do not care for their owners typically comes from humans who are disappointed their cats don’t behave like other humans, or at the very least, dogs. “Cats are not people,” Siracusa sighs, “and they are not dogs. Humans hug and kiss. Dogs become very excited and jump around. Cats don’t do anything like that. They are much more elegant. They approach us. They bump their heads. Then they have some contact with us and walk away.”
This is because they are descended from the African wildcat, a solitary creature. “Cats are not social,” says clinical veterinarian Karen Hiestand of the University of Sussex. “They do not need friends.” Although, in multicat households, cats may choose to exhibit affection by allogrooming – licking each other. Watching Larry and Kedi groom each other is usually the highlight of my day.
Cats retain more prosaic memories too. Takagi has conducted experiments in which cats are fed using multiple bowls of food over a period of time. The researchers learned which types of food the cats liked best and served it in a specific bowl (allowing them to create memories of what was served and when), then later switched the bowls. They found that the cats could recall if they had previously searched a given bowl when looking for a particular treat and the circumstances under which this had occurred. “This showed that it was a one-time experience that could be used and retrieved later,” says Takagi. “This type of memory is called episodic memory, and it is equivalent to memories in humans.”Is something wet? Unlike humans who sweat everywhere, dogs only sweat through the pads of their feet.
They even dream. “In practice,” says Hiestand, “there are some anaesthetic agents we use when operating on cats that are hallucinogenic. I always think, what is the cat hallucinating? Is it giant mice? Sometimes, you see their feet pedalling, as if they are running in their dreams.” She believes these dreams aren’t so dissimilar to the human experience of dreaming: “Going over the day’s events and storing things in their memory banks,” Hiestand says. “There’s no reason to think their brains would work so differently to ours in that respect.”
So what is going on in those catty little brains? “That’s a difficult question,” Siracusa says. “I think most of their thoughts are about how to stay safe. Stay away from predators. Do cool stuff, such as eat a juicy mouse. Because they live in a human world, they most likely have thoughts related to us. That new tumble dryer we bought makes a terrible noise. But most of their thoughts are related to staying safe, and happy.” He pauses, and then laughs: “But I suppose those are my inner thoughts, projected on to a cat’s inner thoughts.”
Over the course of the week it takes me to research and write this article, I become obsessed – even more than before – with the happiness and wellbeing of my charges. I observe their pointy little faces carefully, watchful for any flicker of emotion behind their translucent amber eyes. I even send videos of them to the cat behaviourist Anita Kelsey, author of Let’s Talk About Cats. “He’s excited to see you,” she says in response to one video of Kedi accosting me in the morning. “He knows his food is coming soon. There’s a burst of energy shortly after waking. It’s typical behaviour.”Americans love dogs! 62% of U.S. households own a pet, which equates to 72.9 million homes
In other words, we should stop trying to project human attributes on to these inscrutable creatures. “Cats are cats and humans are humans and we can’t become cats,” Gray says. “I think the question should really be, can we learn anything from them that is beneficial to us? I think we can. By looking at something so different to us, that lives alongside us, we can shake the more harmful habits that go with being human. Such as worrying about the future and not living enough in the present, or being content with the life we have.” Also, sleeping a lot.
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My week-long journey into the feline soul ends with me unplugging my cameras and returning Larry and Kedi to an unmonitored existence. Before I do, I fire up the camera and watch the footage one last time. I see a little kitten, reaching its paw toward the all-seeing eye of a technological interloper. And me, behind the camera, striving for the felicity that comes to our feline friends so easily.