The cat's out of the bag
Indifference is just an act
UNITED STATES: ‘‘The wildest of all the wild animals,’’ Rudyard Kipling wrote in the Just So Stories, ‘‘was the cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.’’
Even today, nine millennia after its first members were domesticated, and more than 600 years after the invention of the cat flap, the species manages to project an air of indifference to its surroundings.
For most cats, however, this is just an act.
Researchers have found that they tend to prefer the company of humans to food, catnip and even the smell of their fellow cats.
Three academics led by Kristyn Vitale Shreve, a PhD candidate in animal behaviour studies at Oregon State University in the US, took issue with the many scientific papers that have described the animal as difficult to train.
They used a test that involved putting a cat in a room with a range of objects and measuring how much time they spent contemplating each one.
Vitale Shreve and her colleagues took 23 pet cats and 22 from animal shelters. They worked out each cat’s preferred kind of human interaction, food, scent and toy. In the last section of the study, every cat was placed in the middle of a cross surrounded by its favourite items from each of the four categories and allowed to roam around at will.
The results, published in the journal Behavioural Processes, show that 19 of the 38 cats that got the hang of the experiment spent the most time hanging around the human, while only 14 dwelt on the food.
Four of the remaining five went for the toys, while only one opted for a squirt of scent.
‘‘The idea that cats have not been domesticated long enough to show preference toward human interaction is not supported by these data,’’ the researchers wrote. They conceded, though, that some cats might be friendlier than others. - The Times