Any cat parent has heard the usual comments about felines – that they’re aloof, or selfish, or unloving.
Of course, we know that our cats can be precisely the opposite. Have you and your feline ever had an amazing time playing with one of the best cat toys, or have you seen your cat play with a kitty friend, for example? We bet the answer is yes. And now, it looks as though science is on our side, too.
Indeed, a study released earlier this month has indicated that cats can grieve the loss of other pets, including dogs. You might have asked the question, ‘Should I let my dog play with my cat?’ in the past, but it turns out that they can become good friends, and mourn each other when they die.
Researchers from Oakland University in Michigan decided to find out if cats can mourn an animal who lives in the same home as them, and shared their findings in Applied Animal Behavior Science.
They surveyed over 400 cat parents about their cats’ behavior after losing another cat or dog, and found that they showed behaviors we tend to associate with grief, like eating less and playing less. Cats also spent more time alone, slept more, looked for more attention from their parents, and seemed to search for their late friends.
Jennifer Vonk, who co-authored the study with Brittany Greene, said, according to NPR: “It made me a little more optimistic that they are forming attachments with each other.”
Vonk, a professor of psychology at Oakland University, added: “For me, the most compelling finding is that when cats were reported to change their behavior in ways that would be consistent with what we would expect for grief. It’s predicted by things like the length of time that the animals lived together or the amount of time that they had spent together engaged in various activities or the quality of their relationships.
“It’s not that I want the cats to be sad, [but] there is a part of us, I think, as humans that wants to think that if something happens to us our pets would miss us.”
We know that some animal species can express signs of grief, like dogs, horses, and elephants, but we’ve never known as much about cats and whether they grieve and mourn. Vonk said that she only knew of one other study on grief in domestic cats, released in 2016.
Nobody wants to think about losing a pet, but it’s a sad fact of life that we are likely to outlive our animal companions. If it’s something you’re dealing with at the moment, you might find these seven things nobody tells you when your pet dies helpful to read.
