When Montreal cat behaviour expert Daniel Filion speaks at conferences in Canada and France, he often gets asked the same question: Do our cats love us?
Mr. Filion, who founded the company Éduchateur in 2007 and goes by the Cat Educator in English, used to answer bluntly: No.
“But the reaction I got from people was very, very negative,” he says, including one woman who marched angrily out of the room in protest.
He has since learned to play philosopher. “What is our definition of love?” he now asks when the subject comes up before an audience of veterinarians, shelter staff or cat owners. If we mean the kind of sacrificial love where you put the interests of another before your own, he says, “then no, your cat doesn’t love you at all.”
But if you mean the love where you value the person who adds something to your life – security, tuna, a warm lap – well then, he says, “your cat loves you very, very, very much.” He wraps up his talk to applause, and cat owners depart much happier.
In truth, how cats really feel about humans is far from settled. But in recent years, the number of published studies exploring feline intelligence and sociability has grown exponentially, helped along in part by an increasing number of accessible study subjects in cat cafés around the world. That science is challenging long-held theories about the cognitive abilities and natures of humanity’s most enigmatic housemate.
Academics have a richer understanding of dog behaviour and how it can be shaped to human use. Murphy, for instance, is one of the therapy dogs trained to comfort students at Carleton University.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Cats have been living with humans for about 10,000 years, but it’s only lately that they’ve become creatures of diligent scientific inquiry. In Canada and most of Europe, they are now more popular pets than dogs; in other countries, such as China, they are closing in on their canine cousins. According to Agriculture Canada, 40 per cent of Canadian households share personal space with 8.9 million cats versus 8.3 million dogs. Yet, the cat remains inscrutable – even, as recent experiments have found, to the most experienced owners.
Ask someone to describe a cat, and they might say aloof, independent and antisocial. Maybe even wicked.
Consider how poorly the cat fares against its No. 1 rival for coddled domesticity. A dog knocks the expensive vase over because he’s deliriously “happy to see you”; a cat swats the vase in spiteful revenge over a less-than-satisfactory meal. And unlike the loyal dog who will starve to death before eating their dead owner, a cat will happily indulge even before your body is cold – or so the story goes.
In popular culture and historical record, dogs get the choice role: stalwart sidekick to the brave – i.e. manly – hero who saves the world. Cats, meanwhile, are the familiars of witches, lonely weirdos and, more recently, the “childless cat ladies” who, according to U.S. Vice-President JD Vance, are leading his country into ruin.
Cats in adjoining cages touch paws at a Toronto animal shelter, a place where cats are statistically more likely to end up than dogs.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Stereotypes and superstitions have indeed brought bad luck – to the cat. Roughly twice as many cats are relinquished to shelters by their owners as dogs, according to a 2017 Humane Canada analysis. The year before, about 10 per cent of stray cats in shelters were reclaimed by their owners, compared with 68 per cent of dogs – even though the percentage arriving with identification tags was about equal in both animals.
Since the pandemic, Humane Canada says that the number of cats – and dogs – being given up by owners is even higher than cited in the original study. Once locked in a shelter cage, cats stay on average about twice as long as dogs. And they’re euthanized at double the rate of their canine counterparts. Black cats may be the unluckiest of all – a 2017 analysis at a municipal shelter in Ontario found that they were more likely to be euthanized than cats with lighter-coloured fur.
But then, cats also come more cheaply than dogs; just open your door in the winter in a Canadian city, Mr. Filion says, only half-joking, and you’ve adopted one. The Humane Canada study found that roughly half of owners either found their cats as strays or acquired them for free.
And as for their reputation for devouring dead owners, that’s just more anti-cat propaganda. Studies have found that both cats and dogs – and even the family hamster, incidentally – will make that unfortunate choice under the right circumstances.
An overstocked item at bargain basement prices with a questionable backstory is easy to neglect, says Lee Niel, an associate professor at the University of Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College, who researches companion animal behaviour and welfare. As a society, “we don’t value cats as much as we do dogs,” Dr. Niel says. “They’re more disposable.”
All things considered, who could blame a cat for revenge-smashing a vase or two? The true misfortune, Dr. Niel says, is that our cat-shaming culture has prevented an intelligent animal from reaching its full potential – and optimum happiness. We’ve done cats wrong. Guided by science, we need to make up for it.
Grace Hodges is straightening chairs on a Friday morning in Montreal, preparing to open the doors of Café Chat L’Heureux, a.k.a. the Happy Cat Café, when she spots Gustave lounging on a table.
“G.G., my babe,” she coos, offering a scratch. When North America’s first and longest-running cat café opened in 2014, allowing diners to mingle with the resident felines, Gustave, now 12, was among the original arrivals. For Ms. Hodges, he stretches handsomely, savouring her attention.
When I reach out my hand to do the same, however, I receive claws and a swat.
“He’s our grumpy old man,” Ms. Hodges says in apology. But it’s my fault for breaking the café’s first rule: Don’t go to the cats, let the cats come to you.
It’s not surprising that dogs evolved into the perfect companion animal. For at least 15,000 years and likely much longer, they have been deliberately bred and trained to work and live well with people.
Their ancestors enjoyed the easy meals that early humans left in garbage on the edge of camps. Mutual fear became amiable appreciation. Dogs learned to protect people, pull them around and help them hunt, and eventually became today’s typically unemployed, entirely dependent fur babies that take long naps on our beds and bark to be fed.
Dogs and cats were familiar companions to the Egyptians, among other ancient peoples.Enric Marti and Nariman El-Mofty/The Associated Press
But cats are more of a puzzle, says Peter Pongracz, an animal biologist at the Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, who was one of a few scientists studying cognition in cats back in 2005. “Cats had to take a much longer journey,” he says, to find their way into our homes and hearts.
Unlike the social wolf-like animal that became the domestic dog, a cat’s ancestors were “miserable, solitary animals who hated other cats,” Dr. Pongracz explains. But cats more comfortable with humans encountered humans more comfortable with cats. They became revered (and were also sacrificed) as divine creatures in cultures such as ancient Egypt, and valued, over the centuries, for their skill at dispatching rats from kitchens and ships. But aside from a few pedigree breeds, most kittens are still the result of random hook-ups, and cats have retained their wild independence.
As Dr. Pongracz puts it, cats do not need us – unlike dogs, if we vanished tomorrow, cats could hunt to survive – but they are content to benefit from us. “Dogs perfectly adapted to the human environment,” he says. “Cats perfectly incorporated humans into their environment.”
As he chats on Zoom from his home office, a cat named Crumble claims her evening perch on his lap. He ponders her motives: Is it love or exploitation? “If I was being a little bit mean,” he concludes, “I would say she prefers to sit in my lap because I am sitting in her favourite chair.”
As a cat lover, he hopes he’s wrong; as a scientist, he’s still investigating. But studying cats isn’t easy. They are often reluctant to leave home to hang out in a strange lab. During experiments, they get bored quickly and wander off. This makes cat cafés handy for providing a group to study in one familiar setting.
When they can be persuaded to co-operate, however, cats have been challenging the dog’s unique people-whisperer status – even to the surprise of cat-owning scientists such as Dr. Pongracz. In a significant finding in 2001, for example, members of his research team confirmed that dogs could reliably follow directions when a human pointed. Five years later, Dr. Pongracz was co-leading a similar experiment using cats as a reference for how dogs performed, and discovered, unexpectedly, that the cats could also follow finger-pointing to find hidden food.
Dogs and cats can learn their own names. This chichuahua is called Kimba, but at 2023's 'Pet Gala' in New York, he was dressed as Choupette the cat. Actor Jared Leto had recently gone to the Met Gala dressed as the pet of fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld.TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images/AFP/Getty Images
Cat research has since surged ahead. Studies suggest that cats know their own names, as well as the names of their pet siblings. They can distinguish their favourite person’s voice from a stranger’s and learn new words quickly. They recognize and respond to human emotions, such as anger and happiness. And, like dogs, when presented with two bowls of food, cats will typically go first to the one a person last touched, even if they watched it being emptied, a sign that they’re taking cues from humans.
While some studies suggest cats may like all people about the same, in 2019, American researchers tested cats with a version of the Strange Situation test, a classic psychological experiment used to observe a child’s reaction when a parent leaves them briefly in an unfamiliar room.
Monique Udell, director of the Human-Animal Interaction Laboratory at Oregon State University and one of the study’s co-authors, says that two-thirds of the cats searched for their owner after they left, greeted them upon their return and then relaxed – a rate of secure attachment similar to children and dogs, and a good sign, she says, “that they not only love us, but have also come to trust us.” The other one-third either clung anxiously to their owners when they came back or ignored them, examples of insecure attachment also seen in other bonded animals.
Even the idea that cats are strictly solitary, Dr. Niel says, merits re-examining. When food is plentiful, she suggests, cats actually prefer to live in a social group, which is why you see them happily snuggling with their animal co-habitants in all those TikTok videos. A study published in January found that domestic cats also tended to mimic the expressions of their fellow felines – a behaviour common among humans and other animals that’s meant to signal goodwill.
All this research raises a salient question: What if we invested in cats the way we do dogs? For starters, Dr. Niel says, we would not let them outside to run freely – a practice that endangers the cat, to say nothing of birds, and increases unwanted litters. Instead of attaching nefarious intentions when the cat pushes over the valuable vase, we might assume the cat wants our attention and has learned their favourite human will come when they make a crash.
Most importantly, we’d get better at asking, “Why is that cat unhappy?” says Dr. Niel. “What’s happened to them that we need to change in order to improve their welfare and have a better relationship with us?”
A few minutes after my encounter with Gustave, I’m sitting on a couch by the café’s front window when Luciole saunters over and settles into my lap as if I am a throw pillow. The provided “Meet Our Cats” pamphlet describes her as an endearing hipster. A white stripe under her nose looks like a mustache.
I’m a dog person who’s never had a cat. But I understand immediately why being the soft spot for this chill and cozy creature must be the best part of living with one. It’s nothing like mornings at home when my 80-pound Gordon setter mistakes himself for a 10-pound toy poodle and flops gracelessly on top of me with his jabbing, bony elbows.
But then, Happy Cat Café is also nothing like what you’d see in Happy Dog Café. No slobber, for starters. No begging for attention. Customers speak quietly, as if nobody wants to disturb the seven feline hosts, all rescues from a local shelter who wander as they wish. The mood is very Zen.
On this morning, Charlie, the youngest at seven months, wrestles a dangling rope and leaps on the odd table to sneak a corner of a grilled cheese sandwich. (No one complains.) On the counter, Moka, who arrived at the café as a fearful, abandoned kitten, is mooning over Luciole. She has left my lap to curl up on her bed by the cash, snubbing him.
Gustave, meanwhile, prowls the place like the Lion King surveying his land, having deigned to allow the humans past the gates. “They are like gods in their own minds,” laughs Gabrielle Diab, 16, who has come for breakfast with a friend on a day off from school. An astute observation: While the owner, Clément Marty, insists his café is not a petting zoo, one species does appear to be present only for pleasure of the other.
When Mr. Marty sits to talk, Luna appears instantly for a cuddle. He demonstrates that she can sit and high-five on command, and primly ride a skateboard, which he sends back and forth with a remote control to the delight of customers. That’s the goal he has for the café – for people to understand what cats are capable of achieving, and to respect and value them more.
To Mr. Marty, Luna's high-fiving skills are proof of what cats can achieve with the right encouragement.Boris R. Thebia/The Globe and Mail
According to Dr. Udell, cats can learn pretty much anything dogs can – and often more because of their physical abilities. In classes at Oregon State University, they master the usual tricks, such as sit, stay, lie down and play fetch. The more extroverted graduates walk on leashes; one student now happily accompanies their human on kayaking trips.
And while 40 per cent of the cats in the classes are most motivated by food as a training reward, Dr. Udell says about half prefer affection or praise from their owner – a finding that also places them on common social ground with dogs.
Society doesn’t treat cats like dogs, however. People bring kittens home and keep them alone inside, missing those important first weeks when socializing them is easiest. Puppies are intentionally introduced to strangers and children, umbrellas and loud noises. “If you expect cats to be aloof, and ignore them,” Dr. Niel says, “then they’re going to be aloof.”
Maybe to cats, humans are the mercurial ones; forcing snuggles one minute, ignoring their attempts to communicate the next. Dogs, for example, will gaze into the eyes of their owners as a sign of trust and affection; cats slow blink, the feline version of smiling. Dogs wag their tails in welcome; cats flick theirs to say go away.
If we were paying closer attention, we’d notice cats making all kinds of faces. Last year, American researchers found that while dogs have 27 different expressions, cats have a whopping 276 different looks, distinguished by tiny movements such as blinks, whisker twitches, nose licks and ear flicks. More than 80 per cent of those expressions are employed for social interactions, although mainly with other cats.
Yet even experienced cat owners often miss early indicators of stress in their pets, according to research co-authored by Dr. Niel – an oversight that means cats may have to become much more fearful or frustrated before their humans notice. And according to Mr. Filion, while dog owners seek professional advice for major behavioural issues after about two months, cat owners will delay, on average, for about two years.
That’s unfortunate, he points out, because cats are usually an easier fix. After ruling out any physical health issues, he says, common problems such as peeing outside the litter box, shredding the furniture and aggression can often be remedied with a single consult. Mr. Filion, whose team does more than 700 sessions each year with cat owners around the world, estimates that 80 per cent of cases can be resolved by improving their environment – adding high spaces for quiet refuge, for example, or larger litter boxes.
Advised by Mr. Filion, Mr. Marty designed his café to have plenty of private perches and a cat door allowing escape to a back room. Staff monitor cat-customer interactions. “A café like this can be a prison for cats or a paradise,” he says, so their welfare comes first.
For now, Luna seems comfortable with patron Catherine Lessard. If Luna needs a break from human companionship, there is a back room where she can go.Boris R. Thebia/The Globe and Mail
To make the wider world more idyllic for cats, Mr. Filion believes these lessons should be more intentionally taught. He points to an increasing number of countries in Europe where local governments now require people to take short education courses before adopting dogs – a move designed to reduce cases of dog bites and attacks and the number of dogs given up by their owners to shelters, as well as improve pet well-being. Mr. Filion is currently developing a free course for Canadian cat owners. Better-educated humans, he says, make for happier cats.
And isn’t that the whole point of all this new cat science? Cats are who they have always been; understanding them better requires humans to adapt. Perhaps we should also worry less about whether cats love us, and think harder about how well we are loving them.
As Dr. Udell points out, raising and training cats with the similar care and attention we invest in dogs would improve their welfare, reduce behavioural problems and deepen the bond they share with their owners.
A new cat culture based on science, she says, “gives me hope for the kind of really beautiful relationships that people can develop with their cats.”
Boris R. Thebia/The Globe and Mail
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