The inner world of cats and dogs

Thomas R. Verny is a clinical psychiatrist, academic, award-winning author, poet and public speaker. He is the author of eight books, including the global bestseller The Secret Life of the Unborn Child and The Embodied Mind: Understanding the Mysteries of Cellular Memory, Consciousness and Our Bodies.

“Cats Bond Deeply with Women & Manipulate Men, Research Shows” read a recent e-mail that showed up in my inbox. What an inspired headline, I thought. I wondered whether it was true so I started to investigate.

I discovered that the story (from the Your Tango website) was based on research from Ankara University in Turkey published as “Greeting Vocalizations in Domestic Cats Are More Frequent With Male Caregivers.” A much more prosaic title.

The academic paper has no reference to cats bonding to women or manipulating men. It is based on video footage of 31 participants who recorded the reactions of their cats as they returned home. Male cat owners elicited an average of 4.3 vocalizations (meows, purrs, or chirps) during the first 100 seconds of entering the room, and female owners evoked an average of 1.8 vocalizations.

“Our results showed that cats vocalized more frequently toward male caregivers, while no other demographic factor had a discernible effect on the frequency or duration of greetings,” commented the researchers. [1]

Yasemin Demirbas, the lead researcher, suggested the large difference between the way the cats in the study responded to their male caretakers compared to their female ones was because female caregivers are generally more verbally interactive, more skilled at interpreting feline vocalizations, [2,3] and more likely to mimic the vocalizations of their cats. [4] It is therefore possible that cats have learned over time that to attract their male caregiver’s attention, they need to engage in more directed and frequent vocal behaviour.

What is life: The long ascent from matter to mind

Socialized cats display what might be called “friendliness to humans,” which in turn affects human attachment to the cat. [5] Studies have shown that women speak and interact more with cats than men do. Cats respond in kind. Consequently, women have been noted to enjoy closer relationships with their cats than men. [6] However, I am sure there are many men who have a warm, affectionate relationship with their cats and many women who do not. The cats that feel emotionally neglected will greet you more dramatically, their vocalizations signalling, “Are you happy to see me?”

Another factor when considering the greeting behaviour of cats is the length and quality of the relationship with the caregiver and prior experiences with humans. In other words, early bonding and attachment is as important in cats as it is with us humans. [1]

A recent study examining owner-cat interactions found that oxytocin responses differed depending on the cat’s attachment style. Securely attached cats behaved differently toward their owners and showed distinct hormonal changes and increased oxytocin production compared to cats classified as insecure, suggesting that “feline affection” has complex roots. [7] Like humans, when stressed, many cats seek comfort from a familiar person, using them as an emotional anchor rather than merely a food source. [8]

Cats have long carried a reputation for aloofness, a kind of velvet contempt. A dog’s love is considered deep; a cat’s love is regarded with suspicion. Some of the most suggestive research doesn’t even require vocalization. Studies using non-invasive brain-imaging techniques have shown that cats’ temperaments and interaction styles measurably influence human emotional states and physiological responses. [9]

The mere presence of a cat in the household (as well as interactions with the animal) reduces anxiety, depression and introversion. Depressed owners initiate fewer interactions with the cat but usually respond favourably to the cat’s behaviour marked by vocalizations, and head-and flank-rubbing. Women’s moods are lifted more by cats than men’s. [10,11]

Dogs started to live with humans about 30,000 years ago. Therefore, it is not surprising that they acquired outstanding skills in the social-cognitive domain. [12] These skills involve the way dogs communicate with humans, their sensitivity to human attention and perspectives, and their motivation to co-operate with humans. [13] Their inner world, insofar as we can infer, seems built for alliance. (Cats developed into something subtler: cohabiting predators who can live with us without quite joining us.)

Learning to unlearn negative thoughts and behaviours

Ethologist Marianna Boros used brain scans (fMRI) to see how dogs respond to real words, made-up words and meaningless sounds. What she found was striking: dogs don’t seem to hear human speech as just noise linked to rewards. In the scanner, their brains reacted differently when a familiar object word was followed by the correct object versus the wrong one. In other words, at least some dogs appear to expect a match between the word and the thing itself – and they notice when that expectation is violated. [14]

Other studies go a step further. When dogs hear action words, areas of the brain involved in movement light up along with hearing centres. This suggests dogs may grasp not just the sound of a word, but the action it refers to. Dogs may understand more of what we say than their outward behaviour sometimes reveals. [15]

Dogs also offer researchers an unusual gift: co-operation. They will lie still in scanners, tolerate electrodes, and generally assist in experiments that would make most cats dart into the furthest corner of the room. This has allowed scientists to examine biological reciprocity in dog-human relationships. Using simultaneous neural recordings, research has shown that human and animal brains actually synchronize when engaged in shared activity. [16,17, 18]

Studies from many areas of science suggest that regular contact between children and dogs can influence social development, emotional regulation, learning and physical health. A comprehensive review of child–dog relationships found that children interacting with dogs often show greater social confidence and reduced fear of social rejection, partly because dogs provide non-judgmental companionship and facilitate conversations with others. [19]

Experimental and observational studies indicate that children who develop strong attachments to pet dogs often show better emotional regulation and fewer behavioural problems, with the quality of the child–dog relationship mediating these outcomes. [20, 21]

However, researchers emphasize that the quality of the relationship, rather than mere dog ownership, is the key factor determining whether these interactions produce beneficial outcomes. Experts recommend parental supervision, education about dog behaviour, and proper training of both the dog and the child.

In popular culture – movies, books, comic strips – dogs usually get the best part: the loyal sidekick to the brave hero or heroine. Cats, meanwhile, are cast in rather different roles. They perch beside witches, keep watch over graves, and, in a recent political jab, have been linked to impending demographic doom, in the memorable phrase, “childless cat ladies.”

The complex crisis facing men today

Amalia Bastos and colleagues Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego, investigated whether domestic dogs trained to use augmentative interspecies communication devices, better known as soundboards, understand the referential meaning of the words produced by the buttons, rather than merely responding to contextual cues from their owners. The study represents one of the first controlled experimental tests of soundboard-trained dogs.

The findings showed that dogs responded in ways consistent with the meaning of the words at rates significantly above chance. For example, when hearing “outside,” dogs oriented toward doors or engaged in behaviours typically associated with going out, even when contextual signals were minimized. Similarly, responses to “play” reflected play-oriented behaviours rather than generalized arousal. To isolate word meaning from environmental or human prompts, the study used controlled conditions in which recorded button words were played without the usual situational cues or owner behaviours that typically accompany those activities. [22]

Methodological biases rather than cognitive limitations have constrained scientific research on the cognition of the domestic cat. Kristyn Vitale and Monique Udell at Oregon State University, in a review of cat cognition research, have argued that cats discriminate visual and auditory stimuli with precision, recognize their owners’ voices, and retain long-term memories for tasks and environments. They can learn through rewards and consequences, pick things up by watching others, understand that objects still exist even when out of sight, and even make simple judgments about “how many” of something there are.

Importantly, cats show social flexibility: they form attachment bonds with humans, respond to human attentional and emotional cues, and can use certain social signals, such as pointing. [8].

It is evident from the studies cited here that pet-caregiver relationships are reciprocal, in the sense that owner’s behaviours influence pet behaviours and bonding. Nothing surprising about that.

What is unexpected is new pioneering research from Gerlinde Mertz at the University of Lethbridge.

In one study, researchers examined whether the biological sex of a human experimenter affects stress and anxiety responses in laboratory rats. Female rats consistently showed heightened anxiety behaviours and increased body temperature, as associated with higher circulating corticosterone and lower oxytocin levels, when exposed to male experimenters. These stress responses intensified with repeated exposure and were further amplified under experimental stress conditions. Notably, similar effects occurred when rats were exposed only to a T-shirt worn by a man, suggesting that both visual and scent cues contributed to the response. [23].

Near-death experiences suggest that our consciousness may not die when our bodies do

In a subsequent experiment, they demonstrated that the sex of the pet and the sex of the pet owner make a difference to the relationship. In other words, a male cat-male human, male cat-female human, female cat-male human and female cat-female human are important variables in the pet-owner dyad. [24].

We may never know what it is like to be a cat or a dog in the strict psychological sense. What scientific research has clearly shown is that cats and dogs enrich our lives and keep us healthy physically and mentally. Or, as one of my friends said, cats and dogs are the nicest people.

References

1. Demirbas, Y. S., Kerman, K., Yildirim, T., & Şimşek, S. (2025). Greeting Vocalizations in Domestic Cats Are More Frequent With Male Caregivers. Ethology. 132(2), 87-94.
2. Turner, D. C. (2021). The mechanics of social interactions between cats and their owners. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 8.
3. Prato-Previde, E., S. Cannas, C. Palestrini, et al. 2020. “What’s in a Meow? A Study on Human Classification and Interpretation of Domestic Cat Vocalizations.” Animals 10, no. 12: 2390.
4. Pongrácz, P., J. S. Szapu, and T. Faragó. 2019. “Cats (Felis silvestris catus) Read Human Gaze for Referential Information.” Intelligence 74: 43–52.
5. Turner DC. (1988). Cat behaviour and the human/cat relationship. Anim Fam. 3:16–21.
6. Mertens C. Human-cat interactions in the home setting. Anthrozoös. (1991) 4:214–31.
7. Chang, H., Zhang, J., Deng, B., & Zhang, L. (2025). The effects of owner–cat interaction on oxytocin secretion in pet cats with different attachment styles.Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 283,
8. Vitale, K. R., Behnke, A. C., & Udell, M. A. R. (2019). Attachment bonds between domestic cats and humans. Current Biology, 29(18), R864–R865.
9. Nagasawa, T., Ohta, M., & Uchiyama, H. (2020). Effects of the characteristic temperament of cats on the emotions and hemodynamic responses of humans. PLOS ONE, 15(6), e0235188. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0235188
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12. Huber, Ludwig. How dogs perceive and understand us. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2016; 25:339–44.
13. Marshall-Pescini Sarah, Dale Rachel, Quervel-Chaumette Mylene, Range Friederike. (2016). Critical issues in experimental studies of prosociality in non-human species. Animal Cognition. 19:679–705.
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15. Boros, M., Rácz, D. S., & Andics, A. (2025). Action instruction word processing in the dog brain entails both auditory form identification and meaning representation. NeuroImage, 318.
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18. Nagasawa, M., Mitsui, S., Mogi, K., & Kikusui, T. (2015). Oxytocin-gaze positive loop and the coevolution of human-dog bonds. Science, 348(6232), 333-336.
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