Research Suggests Cats Like Their Owners as Much as Dogs

The internet loves cats.

We love cats when they're grumpy,

we love cats when they're sweet,

we even have a bizarrely high tolerance

for cats performing in musical numbers.

♪ It's so easy to leave me ♪

But do cats love us?

Can these aloof, fair weather creatures

actually form attachments to the humans that own them?

Researchers recently attempted to answer this question

through a study that quantified

cats' attachments to their owners.

To learn more, I spoke with Kristyn Vitale,

the lead author on the study.

I'm a researcher at Oregon State University

in the human-animal interaction lab.

And your latest study was about

this much-debated topic in the world of cats,

which is, do cats actually like humans?

Tell us a little bit about what you looked at in that study.

What we're looking at is, does the cat use their owner

as a source of security in an unfamiliar place.

And we found that the majority of cats

do use their owner as a source of comfort and security,

which is something that I think a lot of people

wouldn't think a cat would do.

How do you test for that?

So what we do is bring the cat and owner into

a place that they've never been before, which is our lab,

and for two minutes, they're in a room together.

And then the owner will actually leave the room

and the cat will be alone for two minutes.

And that two-minute alone phase is,

it's kind of a mild stressor for that cat.

So we see that when the owner comes back,

how they react to that return.

So how exactly do we know when a cat is under stress?

We measured three vocalizations.

When the cats were alone,

we measured how many meows they produced, basically,

and then when the owner came back, we looked at, again,

the number of meows, so if those went down.

And we found that when the owner was gone,

there was high rates of vocalization,

so high rates of separation distress,

which then were relieved once that owner came back.

There's definitely other behavioral measures,

the lip licking, the tail twitching,

which are things we didn't actually measure in the study,

but we just noted in the cats.

And on those metrics, how do cats compare

to dogs or even humans?

We see that the majority of cats react in a secure way,

which means that when their owner comes back to that room,

they go to their owner, they get attention,

and then they go back to exploring the new environment.

And so there's this contact/exploration balance,

but an insecure cat will actually

either excessively cling to their owner

or excessively avoid them.

The majority of both cats and kittens

were securely attached, around 65%.

And these are the exact same responses

that we see in dogs and humans, and at similar rates.

That sounds like something a cat lover would say.

Hey, that's what we found.

[laughing]

So when you were sourcing cats for the study,

where did they come from?

We recruited from the general public.

So they came from our community,

they came from Oregon State University students

and employees, and word of mouth through different shelters.

So just all over the place.

Ooo, I bet some of those people were super happy

to hear that their cats genuinely missed them

when they were gone.

Yes, there were a lot of people

who were excited by this, for sure.

The study was relatively small.

You have sort of just over 100 cats running around your lab.

And for someone like me who's not a cat owner

and has had a lot of aloof experiences with cats,

it makes me wonder, you know, is that atypical

or am I just sort of not experiencing

these kinds of attachment bonds

because I've never had a cat myself?

Actually, in a previous study,

we looked at cat sociability.

And what we found was just a really great range

in how social cats are.

So we do see cats like you're describing

that are really independent

and maybe don't prefer social interaction,

but then we see, you know, cats that kind of prefer it,

cats that usually prefer it,

and the cats that are really highly social.

So we see everything in cats.

And I think this current research really indicates that,

even if your cat is fairly independent,

they still seem to depend on you as a source of security.

So even though they might not be

love bombing you all the time,

they're still viewing you as that comforting factor.

Then why are cats so mean sometimes?

It's just like people, it's just like dogs, you know,

you have some individuals who are

more mean or more aggressive,

but you have plenty of individuals who aren't.

And I do think some of it comes down to

people maybe misreading cat body signals

or maybe not knowing how to interact as well.

Cats don't have as many facial muscles as dogs do,

so I think that sometimes they look

maybe more upset than they may seem,

especially if we're comparing them to dogs,

who, you know, have their mouths open and their tongues out.

I think it's easier for people to kind of

read that body language than with cats.

So what do we actually know about

what's going on in a cat or a dog or any other animal's head

when we're studying them in this way?

Like, can we say definitively that

a cat is feeling one thing or another,

or are we sort of just making our best guesses

based on previous studies in humans?

You don't want to assume too much.

And we don't really know what love

in a non-human fashion means.

You don't wanna anthropomorphize

or attribute human traits to the animal,

you always wanna be careful of that.

So it's really through reading their body language

that we can say if they're behaving

in a secure or insecure way.

But we can't really say what that means for them,

that if they behave in a secure way,

that means they love their owner.

It might mean that, but we can't really say that

because we can't ask the cat.

So in light of what you've sort of discovered recently,

what are some future research questions

that we still have around cats

and the way they relate to humans?

So in our current study, we only looked at

the behavior towards the owner.

Other attachment studies also look at

the cat's behavior towards a stranger, an unfamiliar person.

So that's something we're doing right now.

We're looking at, basically, how much time with a person

a cat needs in order to form this secure bond with them,

how familiar that person has to be.

And we're actually also looking at

cats' bonds with one another.

So if two cats share a social bond the same way that

a cat shares a social bond with their owner.

And are there any other broad implications

of this kind of research, like do you hope that

it spills over into veterinary medicine

or that it encourages more people to become cat owners?

Yeah, I think both.

There's some argument as to whether or not

cats form attachments or form separation anxiety disorder,

so I think that more research definitely needs to be done.

And I think that this definitely can be applied

to just owners better understanding their cat,

understanding that their cat

does see them as a source of security

and that their behavior can definitely

impact their cat's behavior.

So let's say I'm a dog person.

What's your best case for why

I should give cats another chance?

There's just so much variability in cats, as I mentioned.

It's all about matching up those personality types

when you're looking to adopt an animal.

And you'll see dogs that are fairly independent, as well.

And so it's not necessarily that one species is this way

and the other species is this way,

but more that you just need to find

an individual that you match up with.

So go to the shelter, find a cat

that's been rated as highly social,

if that's something you're looking for,

and try it out and see how it goes.

Well, thank you so much for sharing

all of your cat knowledge with us, Dr. Vitale.

Great, thank you for having me.

[upbeat music]