why does to many people hate cats?

[Pedro's Klinefelter]

 

CATS do recognise their owner's voice when called - they just choose to ignore it.

A new study by the University of Japan has confirmed what many cat owners have long suspected – that their cat is willfully ignoring them, the Independent UK reports.

The study, published in Animal Cognition, tested twenty pet cats in their homes. Researchers sent the cats’ owners out of sight, then played the cats recordings of three strangers calling their names, then a recording of their owner calling them, and then another stranger.

Researchers recorded the cats' responses, watching for ears, tail or head movement, meowing or others noises, eye dilation or movement such as shifting their paws toward the sound.

The cats did respond to their names, moving their head and ears to try to discover where the sound is coming from even when called by strangers. The cats respond more clearly when they heard their owner calling them - but even that was not enough to motivate them to get up and move toward the voice, researchers found.

"These results indicate that cats do not actively respond with communicative behaviour to owners who are calling them from out of sight, even though they can distinguish their owners’ voices," write the authors. "This cat-owner relationship is in contrast to that with dogs."

Cats’ laid-back response and refusal to come when called may be because they were domesticated differently from dogs, researchers say. While humans actively domesticated dogs and taught them to reply to commands, cats likely moved in with humans in search of rodents. Unlike dogs, cats “domesticated themselves”, the authors

 

 

“Historically speaking, cats, unlike dogs have not been domesticated to obey humans’ orders. Rather, they seem to take the initiative in human-cat interaction,” the study says.

However, it seems their cool and collected nature doesn’t harm their relationship with their owners. The study also found that while dogs are seen as more affectionate, “dog owners and cat owners do not differ significantly in their reported attachment level to their pets.”