Your cat really does prefer your voice to that of a stranger

Unlike dogs, which often enthusiastically respond to everyone, cats choosily respond lone to their owner’s dependable with an summation successful definite behaviours

Life 25 October 2022

By Christa Lesté-Lasserre

Cats respond preferentially to the dependable of their owner

Adene Sanchez/Getty Images

Indoor cats respond erstwhile their owners talk successful a high-pitched “kitty voice” – specified arsenic by moving their heads and ears much – but not erstwhile strangers bash so.

Unlike dogs, which respond to code directed astatine them whether it is from their owners oregon from strangers, cats lone look to respond erstwhile the talker is their owner. This whitethorn suggest that cats and their owners enslaved done their ain unsocial signifier of communication, says Charlotte de Mouzon astatine University Paris Nanterre successful France.

De Mouzon and her colleagues tested the behaviour of 16 cats, 9 males and 7 females, surviving successful workplace apartments either arsenic azygous pets with a pistillate proprietor oregon arsenic pairs of cats with a heterosexual couple. The cats ranged successful property from 8 months to 2 years old, and their owners were each veterinary students astatine the National Veterinary School successful Alfort, adjacent Paris.

The squad recorded the owners calling their cats by sanction successful a high-pitched voice, arsenic they would normally. The owners besides made a connection successful French relating to 1 of 4 contexts. These included: “Do you privation to play?”, “Do you privation to eat?”, “See you later!” and “How are you?”. The squad past recorded the favored owners saying the aforesaid phrases to people, present utilizing the benignant of code they would typically usage with friends oregon big household members.

Sixteen women – not known to the cats – besides had their voices recorded arsenic they said the aforesaid 4 things to big humans oregon to cats that they saw successful videos successful de Mouzon’s laboratory.

The cats heard each the recordings successful their ain homes, with their owners contiguous but not interacting with them. When they heard the voices of their owners, the cats tended to interrupt their behaviour and statesman doing thing else, specified arsenic looking around, moving their ears and tails, oregon adjacent becoming wholly still.

Even erstwhile they heard strangers speaking to them successful an affectionate manner, calling them by sanction and inviting them to play oregon eat, the cats fundamentally ignored them, says de Mouzon. However, that could beryllium related to the information that each the cats were exclusively indoor pets, with fewer opportunities to interact with strangers, she says.

The findings supply further grounds that cats person developed beardown societal cognitive skills and that they are “sensitive and communicative individuals”, she says.

“We cognize that they respond to this benignant of code and it’s a bully mode for cats to cognize that we’re addressing them,” says de Mouzon. “So, we should consciousness assured astir speaking to our cats with this benignant of ‘baby talk’.”

Journal reference: Animal Cognition, DOI: 10.1007/s10071-022-01674-w

Sign up to Wild Wild Life, a escaped monthly newsletter celebrating the diverseness and subject of animals, plants and Earth’s different weird and fantastic inhabitants