As one of those “childless cat ladies” JD Vance is constantly “quipping” about, I can’t say that I haven’t wondered – were I to die at home – how long it would take mine to start eating me. I adore my pair of cornish rexes, Vlada and Myshka – but I’m well aware the feeling is only intermittently reciprocated. They are most enthusiastic about my presence when I am opening a tin of Applaws. If, heaven forbid, I were to be prevented by death from carrying out my duty towards them, I’ve never been certain that my extremities wouldn’t go the same way as their beloved meat-stick treats.
But I’ve been cheered by new research, suggesting they might actually register my absence, and even mourn. A recent study found that cats displayed “grief-like behaviours” after the death of another pet in the household, losing interest in food, sleep and play, isolating themselves and (rather heartbreakingly) appearing to “look for their lost companions”. The research didn’t look at how cats respond to human deaths, but they were found to mourn the loss of the family dog.
It also drew from surveys of 412 cat owners, raising the possibility (as its authors acknowledge) that they were projecting their feelings of grief on to their pets. But the findings at least call into question the persistent perception of cats as fickle, antisocial and cold (and – given their historic association with witchcraft – even demonic). “I think we’ve been mischaracterising them,” said the study’s co-author.
I used to be a bit bemused by people’s strong feelings for cats. I adopted Vlada as a compromise, after realising that it would be at least 10 years before I could responsibly get a dog. But lower effort does not mean no effort. Vlada and Myshka are indoors-only, and I work from home, meaning we are nearly always together. Often, I am obliged to take Zoom calls with one or both of them clambering all over me – which at least makes for a talking point. (Brian May seemed quite taken by Vlada during our interview, calling her a “beautiful pussycat” and calling his wife over to look.)
But this intimate, sometimes claustrophobic, relationship has opened my eyes to cats’ hidden depths. I try to avoid anthropomorphising my cats, besides idle speculation about their political affiliations and what music they would play if they were DJs (Vlada: brutal techno; Myshka: tropical house), but I can say with confidence that they have desires, moods, distinct personalities.
Vlada is more aloof than Myshka, but also more needy. Myshka is inclined to binge on food and affection. When I return home after a few days away, I am received first with deep suspicion, and then enthusiastic affection before we fall back into our usual routine. So I’d agree with the study’s co-author: we have been selling cats short with their popular image as chilly and detached. Those judgments, I think, say more about us than they do about them.
Cats may seem, to some people, less rewarding companions than dogs, but they are also less domesticated – and relatively hard to read. “They don’t have as many facial muscles as we do, or as dogs do, even,” Mikel Maria Delgado, a cat behaviour consultant, told me last year.
That doesn’t mean they don’t communicate. Last year, researchers at the University of California recorded cats using nearly 300 different facial expressions to interact with each other, deploying their whiskers, ears, pupils and other subtle movements that we don’t easily register. As with the recent finding that many more species engage in homosexual behaviours than previously thought, this suggests we’ve been unable to see the richness of animals because of our own human judgments and biases.
Now scientists are training artificial intelligence to recognise and translate cats’ expressions, so that we might take better care of them. Having Googled my cats’ behaviours more often than my own (and even experimented with a somewhat dubious cat-translation app), I can already foresee this being the most positive impact of AI on my life. That cats are less explicitly demanding than dogs shouldn’t mean we value them any less. If anything, their inscrutability means we cat owners have to pay closer attention to ensure their needs are being met.
Vlada, Myshka and I may not be the same species, but we undeniably have a relationship, not least because they are dependent on me for their care and wellbeing. In his 2014 book, Cat Sense, British anthrozoologist John Bradshaw argued that cats see humans not as essentially “other”, but as big, amiable, undoubtedly incompetent cats. In that light, Vlada and Myshka have had a lot to put up with. I’m still hopeful that they’d mourn my absence, but maybe, after a respectful delay, they’d be entitled to a finger or two.
Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist
