What Cats Think About People

Cats have lived with humans for over 9500 years, but they have not lost their feline instincts for this. So much so that, often, we wonder if they really love us or if they take advantage of us. For this reason today we want to answer the question: ” What do cats think of people?”

Many people choose cats when deciding to adopt a pet. Just think that over 80 million cats live in American homes and that, according to statistics, there are three cats for every dog ​​in the world.

However, there are still many things to discover about these beautiful felines and one of them is knowing once and for all how they feel for their owners.

To answer this question, a team of researchers from the Institute of Anthrozoology of the School of Veterinary Clinical Science at the University of Bristol observed the behavior of a group of domestic cats for some years. The study concluded that cats, unlike other pets, interact with people by referring to specific social behaviors that have nothing to do with, for example, those of dogs.

Conclusions of the research

The study was based on analyzing the behavior of cats to try to understand their social structure.

Through this careful observation, scholars have come to the conclusion that cats develop different dynamics according to the particular contingencies of each one’s life.  For example, substantial differences in behavior were found between stray cats and cats living in shelters.

Scholars have examined, for example, play patterns (or the form in which cats manipulate games) and have studied the variations in behavior of felines over the course of twenty-four hours. One of the interactions that has most intrigued the researchers is that of cats with humans. While it is evident in dogs that they do not regard people as their fellowmen, and therefore their behavior changes, in cats this is not the case. The behavior of cats in relation to people, in fact, is not so different from what they assume when they relate to other cats. When the cat lifts its tail, or rubs itself against our legs or sits next to us, it is reproducing the same patterns of behavior that it assumes with its peers.

What cats think of humans

In light of the game dynamics observed during the study, it was concluded that:

• Cats understand that owners are different from them because they recognize different body sizes, but they don’t understand that humans belong to a distinct species from their own. For this reason they treat people as if they were their own kind (in fact they rub against humans as they would with other cats, they would not do it with animals they consider inferior).
• They may come to think that, as playmates, humans are too slow and therefore get nervous or bored right away.

• They feel good around people once they get used to their presence. So much so that  their mental and physical health worsens if they are removed from their owners. 

In fact, it has been shown that cats separated from their owners show symptoms of stress and develop skin problems and urinary tract disorders.

• They are also able to provoke different reactions in owners depending on the meow they emit. Cats use vocalization to communicate their needs to people.
• They treat each family member differently, depending on the benefit they can derive from each.
• They maintain a relationship with their owners very similar to what they would maintain with their mother: they knead, raise their tails, rub on each other and purr. 
• They believe that they are the owners of people, and not vice versa, and therefore licking or rubbing themselves are nothing more than ways to “mark” objects or people.