Kim Mills: You know that you love your cat, but does your cat love you back? Cats have long had a reputation as standoffish pets, especially compared with dogs. But many cat owners will tell you that the cat-human bond can run deep. In recent years, research on cat behavior has begun to back up that intuition. Scientists are studying the relationships we form with our cats and are gaining new insight into cats' social and cognitive abilities. They're finding that cats may be far more socially smart than they usually get credit for.
So how do researchers study cat psychology? How do we know whether our cats are as emotionally attached to us as we are to them? What about individual differences among cats? Why do some cats love to play with humans while others prefer to hang out under the bed most of the time? How much of those differences are due to nature and how much to nurture? Finally, how can you use what researchers are learning about cat behavior to make your cat's life better? And of course, how can you train your cat not to scratch the couch?
Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills.
My guest today is Dr. Kristyn Vitale, an assistant professor of animal health and behavior at Unity Environmental University, where she studies domestic cat behavior and the cat-human relationship. She received a PhD in animal science with a focus on experimental psychology from Oregon State University. She also spent time as a visiting research fellow at Kyoto University in Japan where she conducted cross-cultural research into cat-human social interaction. Her research has been published in many peer-reviewed journals and covered by media outlets including Science magazine, National Geographic, the BBC, and The New York Times, as well as the Netflix documentary Inside the Mind of a Cat.
Dr. Vitale, thank you for joining me today.
Kristyn Vitale, PhD: Great, thanks for having me.
Mills: Let's start with this reputation that cats have for being standoffish and independent, especially when you compare them with dogs. You've done some research that's found that cats actually do form strong emotional connections to their humans. Can you tell us about that research?
Vitale: Yeah, well, we've got a few different studies that show this idea that, this whole idea that cats are standoffish and aloof is kind of just a myth. One of these studies was basically looking at the sociability of cats, and we ran basically the exact same experiment that had already been done with dogs and we look at how a cat reacts to a person, how long they're going to spend near to them, and we saw that cats spent basically equivalent amounts of times with people as we saw with the dogs.
So what we see is that there are some cats who are very, very social and spend almost all of the time with people, some cats who are somewhere there in the middle. They spend some time with people but not the entire time. And then we've got cats with lower sociability who spend basically no time with people. But this is really the same distribution that we see in dogs. Not all dogs are hypersocial the way that's kind of been presented. So really that distribution of sociability is not that different between dogs and cats.
And in terms of attachments, that bond that cats and dogs displayed toward their owner, we're really seeing basically the same styles of attachment in both dogs and cats. And they're the same styles of attachment that we actually see in human infants as well.
Mills: Are cats that easy to do experiments on? I mean, will they cooperate when you're trying to get them to do things?
Vitale: Yeah, so one thing to consider is some of the tests we run, you don't really need the cat to do anything besides what they're already going to do. So for example, that sociability test I mentioned—the cat doesn't have to do anything. If they choose not to come spend time with the person in that circle, that's just a 0 score for sociability. If they choose to spend 100% of the time in the circle, that's their choice. So some of these tests we do, we don't really force the cats to do anything, we just put them into situations and see how they react.
But then there are some tests where it's more of that discrete trial, such as something like a pointing assessment where you point at a location, have the cat approach, reset them, put them back behind the start line, have them approach again. We do find with those kind of repetitive trial type tests that not all cats will participate in that kind of thing, and we'll have some cats drop out. But that's actually something we're looking at right now is, well, why do some cats drop out when dogs, for example, might do very well with that kind of testing methodology? And part of that could be differences in life experience that we're giving dogs and cats and not really species differences—rather how we're treating these animals.
Mills: Those of us who have had both cats and dogs kind of have a sense, though, that dogs are trying to somehow please their humans. And cats really don't care. I mean, is that the case?
Vitale: Well, I don't think we can really say that from a scientific perspective. Is a dog trying to please their owner or are they trying to receive a reward for doing behavior that they've experienced in the past? And that's not to say dogs are not attached to their owners or anything like that, but not every motivation to do a trick or do a behavior is because the dog is trying to please the owner. It could be because they're trying to earn a reward. And with cats we find that most people don't train their cats. And so there's not kind of that of reinforcement between the owner and the cat. And I think that is playing a bigger role in what we see these differences between cats and dogs—more than just inherent qualities of cats and dogs, if that makes sense.
Mills: I think some of our listeners may be surprised to learn that there's such a thing as a cat psychologist. How did you get into this field and are there many people doing this kind of research?
Vitale: So it was kind of a wild ride, getting to here. I have a very interdisciplinary background, so my background is actually in the biological sciences. I did zoology for my bachelor's and then I actually moved into environmental science where I studied how environment impacts the social behavior of cats living outdoors. And then from there I progressed to my PhD in animal science where I worked with Dr. Monique Udell, who is a psychologist. And that's really where I got my psychology training, especially in experimental psychology. And really with that, what we're doing is exploring the minds of cats, what factors impact their behavior, how they perceive social partners, what their social abilities are. And in terms of how many people do this, I would say there's not a lot of people doing this, but there are some, especially in Japan, as you mentioned. I went overseas and studied in the psychology lab over at Kyoto University and there are people over there doing this kind of work. So I'm not the only one, but it's fairly uncommon.
Mills: Do you think there's so much less research on cats because scientists find them less interesting or harder to study, or is it something else?
Vitale: I think there's a few factors. I do definitely think that idea that cats are difficult to work with or they're untrainable, that kind of has found its way into the scientific community. And actually a few years before I did my PhD, there was an interview with a cat researcher who said goldfish are easier to work with than cats. And kind of gave off this idea that cats are just way too difficult to work with. But that really hasn't been my experience with them. So I think that's one part is just kind of the stereotype: They're difficult to train, difficult to work with.
Another one I think is funding. I think that a lot of people see the benefit to funding, especially dog research, because dogs can be in working roles. We can have them as livestock guarding dogs, bomb-sniffing dogs. They’re service dogs. There's a whole wide range of utility that dog research could potentially fund that I think people don't really see in the cat work. But I think that's beginning to change now, especially with things like emotional support animals and cats being involved more and more in animal assisted interventions. So I am hoping that some of this is beginning to change and people are going to more and more begin studying cats and funding that work.
Mills: Those of us who have had cats know that they have distinct personalities, if I can use that word. Some are trusting, some are fearful, some are cuddly, and some are aloof. How much of this do you think is inborn versus due to how a cat is raised?
Vitale: Yeah, so with personality, we can basically say those are relatively stable behavioral traits that an individual shows. So cats definitely have personalities. They're definitely individuals with their own individual behaviors. Now how much of that is inborn and how much of that is life experience? I think it's a mix. We know that kittens only a few days old are already showing differences within their litter. So already off the bat, kittens are behaving differently just at a few days old. But then we see as cats progress that life experiences kind of build off those initial behavioral traits a kitten’s born with—to really further develop that personality. So life experience does play a huge role in developing personality for cats. And again, personality is relatively stable. So even in people personality traits can change over time. But one thing that I'm very interested in is that impact of experience on animal behavior and cat behavior specifically. And we do see a huge impact to cats.
Mills: So for listeners who might be getting cats or thinking about getting cats, is there a right way to socialize a cat?
Vitale: Yeah, start early. So we know that kittens are in a sensitive period for socialization within two to seven or two to eight weeks of age. And what that means is that that's a time of their life where kittens are especially sensitive to learning about social partners. So it's really important that they are exposed to other cats, to other species, humans, dogs, and that they receive positive socialization as well as socialization with multiple different people in multiple different ways. And we know that cats that lack the socialization experience are unsocialized and will display a lot of fear toward people later in life. And we actually call these cats feral cats to people. And the exact same thing happens with dogs. If dogs are not socialized during that sensitive period in their life, they also will be afraid of humans and not display socialized dog behavior. So for both species, life experience and socialization, especially early on, is very important.
Mills: Let's talk about differences on a broader scale. As we said, you spent some time doing research in Japan. Does cat behavior vary by country? Does human culture affect cat behavior? What are cats like in Japan? Are they different from cats in America?
Vitale: Yeah, so we conducted research on both cats living in houses and cats living in cat cafes in both the U.S. and Japan. And we also surveyed the public as well as owners in both countries. And what we found was that cats in the U.S., both cats living in homes and the cat cafes were more social than cats living in Japan, which was very interesting—significantly more social, spending more time with both a stranger and with their owner. And then in terms of public perception, we found that in general, people in the U.S. view cats as pets more favorably than people in Japan. But despite those differences, there was no significant difference in level of attachment to the cat. So owners in both countries were both strongly attached to their cat despite the significant differences in their cat's behavior. So that was super interesting and it's something we're hoping to study further to really get at what are the exact factors that are causing these differences between the two countries.
Mills: Switching back to cat's social cognitive abilities, how much do they understand of what we're trying to communicate with them? For instance, do cats know their own names? Will they look at something when we point at it like a dog?
Vitale: Yeah, actually many of the sociocognitive traits that have been studied in cats match those in dogs. I actually just presented this summer on a comparison on cognitive traits in cats and dogs and cats display many of the same abilities at the same level. So for example, pointing—cats will readily follow a point to a location the same way as a dog. They'll actually even follow more subtle cues such as the direction of your gaze. So just looking to one side or the other, cats will follow that very subtle cue as a directional signal and they are able to pick up on our emotional states, our moods, they're able to adjust their behavior in response to our own behavior. So yes, there's many abilities cats have that, again, they're rivaling what dogs are doing, and for many years we just thought cats didn't have these capabilities, but we just weren't studying them to see if they were there.
Mills: I was involved in volunteering at an animal shelter a few years ago and I was taught how to approach dogs—and you don't look at them directly and you kind of come at them from the side. I think one of the things that I noticed, found very intriguing in the documentary Inside the Mind of a Cat was that description of the slow blink that you might use to communicate with cats. What is that? What are they responding to? Why should people do that? How should you best approach a cat?
Vitale: Yeah, so the slow blink is this idea that when you close your eyes very slowly and then open them slowly, you're kind of signaling to your cat that you are in a content mood and that potentially your cat is reading that as if it's a bonding moment. So your cat may slow blink back at you. Now, there's not been a lot of research on this besides work showing that cats that slow blinked, I believe were more likely to be adopted from the shelter. So we don't really know a whole lot about that communication style, but there does seem to be something to it, at least on the human end, responding to that slow blink from the cat. But in terms of approaching them, you really want to be slow, kind of exactly like you talked about with the dog. You don't want to approach from overhead, you want to go slow, let them sniff you before even touching them.
For cats and dogs, olfaction is a really big sense, so they want to be able to smell you, they might rub you, and that's really a key is kind of letting the cat dictate the interaction. So instead of, oh, a cat picking them up and starting to pet them, put your hand out, let them smell it, see if they rub against it. If so, give them a pet on the head, see how they react. A lot of cats will go for that and they might flop over and solicit for more petting, but other cats might respond by turning away, and that's a sign that they're done with the interaction. So much of this is kind of again, getting at that individual variation and seeing how that individual cat responds to the interaction and adjusting your behavior and response.
Mills: So I have a question for you that comes from one of my colleagues at the APA who grew up in England. She says that growing up, the general feeling was that it was kinder to let cats have the freedom to roam outdoors. But here in the U.S. many people think it's better to keep cats indoors because it's safer and it also protects our dwindling songbird population. Is there a right answer? Is it better for the cat to be an indoor cat, an outdoor cat, or does it just depend on the cat?
Vitale: Yeah, this is a really complex issue and it's not really an easy question because it kind of depends what perspective we take. If we look at this through the lens of cat welfare, then I would say that it's in the cat's best interest to be allowed to go outside. Now whether that's free roaming or in a contained way such as on harness a leash or in a cat enclosure, that—there are options besides just free roaming, but cats in terms of welfare, they need to be able to engage in behaviors that are natural to them. It's natural for a cat to walk around and patrol their area, to scent mark, to scratch, to smell unfamiliar things, to watch animals and prey animals. So it is important for them to get outside at some level. But like you just said, it's a complex issue because they are predators, they impact our native wildlife populations.
And also for the cats themselves, it can be dangerous. There's cars, there's other cats, there's other species that pose risks to them. So at the same time, it can be damaging to their welfare to let them outside from a health perspective. So it's really kind of this balancing act. But I will say that I always suggest cat owners get their cats out in some way. It does not have to be free roaming, but through a cat enclosure, through walking or even just a window ledge where they can sit at the window and smell the outdoors, that's going to be really important for the cat's mental health.
Mills: Well, let's talk a little bit about cat training. How do you train a cat to stop a behavior that you don't like? Say, as I said in the intro, like how to stop them from scratching your couch and focusing on the scratching post you got them, right?
Vitale: Yeah, actually, research has shown that typically the biggest indicator of inappropriate scratching behavior is just the owner not having a scratching post in the house for the cat or not having that scratching post in an appropriate location. And so I'll talk to owners a lot of the time where their cat is scratching on the couch and they're fed up. I ask them, okay, do you have a cat tree? They say yes. And then I ask, well, where is the cat tree and does the cat use it? And they'll say, oh, it's in the basem*nt in the corner. And no, the cat never uses it. Well, we know that cats like to scent mark around socially important areas. So the couch is a perfect example. Everyone's hanging out on the couch. There's a lot of smells on the couch. So the cat's just trying to add their smell to this socially important area by scratching—and if their cat tower’s all the way in the basem*nt, they're not going to go down there and use it.
So a lot of it is about moving those to appropriate locations for the cat. So if the cat is scratching right next to on the sofa, move the cat tower next to the sofa and then praise your cat when they do use the cat tower, seed it with catnip, put treats on it. There are multiple ways that you can then redirect your cat to that area to scratch. So that's my major suggestion. You don't really need to train your cat not to scratch. It's more about training them to redirect that scratching behavior to a different location.
Mills: What about training cats to do tricks, for lack of a better word? The Netflix special that we've talked about a little bit that you participated in, it profiled two cat trainers who could train cats to do amazing things like jumping through a paper covered hoop. Were those just unusual cats or is there something that anybody could do with a cat to train them if they understood the proper way to motivate a cat?
Vitale: I think it's a little of both, coming back to that individuality of cats. It's just like people, some cats are faster learners than others. Some cats might be more interested in engaging in training than others. So a lot of that is personality based. But in terms of the actual capabilities of cats, all cats, unless there is some kind of health issue going on, all cats should be able to learn using the same learning processes that dogs learn from, that humans learn from, that all animals learn from. And so there's no reason that we shouldn't think that most people could do some basic level of training with every kind of cat.
I mean, cats are always learning from you even if you're not actively training them. Training is just the direct application of conditioning principles. So cats are always learning from their environment whether we're actively training them or not. So I do believe most cats can learn, but whether all cats can learn to do those complex, very agility based things is probably going to be a personality dependent trait.
Mills: And why is it that cats might have no interest in those expensive toys we buy for them, but they'll spend hours playing with a box or a paper bag? I mean, should we even bother buying them toys and just give them bags and boxes?
Vitale: I have totally experienced that exact same thing. Yeah, I think part of it is this idea that especially for indoor only cats, they don't have a lot of change to their environment. And so when something new comes like a box in the middle of the floor, it's kind of like, oh, this novel enrichment item here that I'm going to check out. So I think some of that fascination with those things is just the fact there's been a change to their environment.
And I tell this story a lot, but one time my husband and I were going to the beach and we pulled out our cooler and set it in the middle of on the floor to pack it, but we leave the room and come back and our two boys are in the cooler smelling all around the cooler investigating it. Now is it because they love coolers or because it was something novel in their environment? So I think that's something owners should keep in mind. It's not about having all the best cat toys in the world, it's about providing a rotation of things to keep the environment interesting for the cat.
Mills: I'm going to ask you something that maybe is unfair, and I'm not even sure that it's measurable, but are cats more or less intelligent than dogs, or should we even try to compare the two species?
Vitale: I don't think we should compare. Again, intelligence is really an individual trait. And so I'm not sure that comparing an entire species against one another is fair. There are different ways of being intelligent, and so I think it's not really fair to pit these species against each other. We could say, well, humans are obviously more intelligent than dogs and more intelligent than cats, but what does that really do for us? Does that really help us better answer any questions about our animal's behavior? So I think instead, we should appreciate individual species for their individual traits and again, recognize that within species there's individuals. So we can't make these blanket statements that all dogs are one way, all cats are one way. We really have to look at the individuals within those species.
Mills: In reading up on your work, I saw you were quoted in a snopes.com article about why cats like to sit on laptops, and I think a lot of listeners might be curious to why cats do that.
Vitale: Yeah, well, honestly, I don't remember what I said, so hopefully I'll say the same thing here, but there could be a few reasons. One is laptops are warm, so obviously it's a warm area to come hang out. But another is that we're constantly as people directing our attention to these computers and laptops. And so it could be a way that the cat's like, hey—to anthropomorphize a bit—my person is always looking at this object, so if I sleep here, hey, maybe I'll get some attention. So there could be some kind of conditioning going around that where the cat comes over by the computer and they get attention from the person always around. Could be something like that, but I can't say for sure why cats do it.
Mills: Have you always had cats yourself and have you gotten any research ideas from your own cat's behaviors?
Vitale: Oh, yeah. I've had cats my whole life since I was a little kid. And that was really what got me into wanting to do this was owning cats and really experiencing that the way that my cats behaved toward me wasn't aligned with a lot of these stereotypes I heard. And so that kind of pushed me to start asking these questions about cats. And so, yeah, I've always had cats my whole life and currently I have three boys right now. I'm sorry, was there—oh, whether they helped push some research questions?
Mills: Yeah, yeah. Just observing them as your pet. So do they give you ideas for things you want to study more?
Vitale: Oh, definitely. I'm always looking at them and observing their behavior and asking questions. And they also help serve as guinea pigs. So if we're thinking of new testing methodology, I might run it on my cats first to see how it goes. So yeah, they're always participating in some way.
Mills: One interesting thing that came out—again in that Netflix documentary—was I think he was a physiologist who was talking about cats’ purr and the sound of a purr somehow embodies the same noise, the same level of noise that we're hearing from a baby's cry. Have you looked into that and it was that legitimate? Because when you hear a cat purr, it's very deep inside of their throat and it doesn't seem at all akin to the sound of a baby crying.
Vitale: Yeah. So I have not personally conducted that research, but I'm familiar with it. And what he's talking about is a specific kind of purr known as the solicitation purr. So what happens is you have your typically low-pitched purr that you're describing, but what will happen is there's a high-frequency component, and this is how the authors describe it—McComb is the author of this—where basically it's kind of like a, I don't even know how to describe it, like a meow-type vocal. It's not a meow—go search “solicitation purr” after this because there is a clip of it, but it's basically that low-pitched purr with a higher frequency vocalization over top of it. And it sounds a lot more urgent is what the researchers found. People perceive this as being a very urgent sounding purr, and they find that cats often do it when they're soliciting for food or when they need something.
And so that high-frequency component is the aspect that he was talking about that is at the same frequency as an infant's cry. So yeah, that was a really interesting study because it kind of goes back to our attachment research where it appears there's kind of this mammalian predisposition to not only respond to these high-frequency vocalizations, but also to form attachments. And that's exactly what we're seeing in dogs and cats as well. So very interesting research and it kind of all goes together that this relationship that cats have with people is very akin to an offspring parent relationship, but obviously between two different species.
Mills: So what are the big questions about cats that you are still looking to answer? What are you working on now?
Vitale: So right now I am collaborating with Dr. Monique Udell and some other colleagues at Oregon State University. And we're doing animal assisted interventions with cats and children with developmental disabilities. So basically we're looking at if children come into OSU with their cat and go through a6-week course, are there any changes to the child or to the cat? So that's one project we have going on right now that is very interesting and I look forward to seeing how that turns out.
Mills: Well, I want to thank you for joining me today. This has been really interesting.
Vitale: Great. Thank you so much for having me.
Mills: You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website speakingofpsychology.org or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you've heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speakingofpsychology@apa.org. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan.
Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.
