What does it mean if your cat is a southpaw?

IS your cat easily spooked, or skittish around strangers? Then there’s every chance that its left paw is to blame.

Animal experts found cats can be left or right-handed – and that it affects their response to stressful situations.

Whether playing with their food or slinking down the stairs, most have a preferred paw.

Male moggies are most likely to be a ‘southpaw’, a term used for left-handed humans. Female cats are more likely to be righthanded, like girls and women. Dr Deborah Wells, co-author of the study by a team at Queen’s University Belfast, said: ‘Righthanded animals are more governed by the left hemisphere of their brain, which is more responsible for processing positive emotions.

‘But left-handed animals are more likely to use the right hemisphere, which processes more negative emotions. It may therefore be the case that a left-limbed cat reacts more strongly to stressful situations…gets frightened by loud noises or lashes out at the vet.’

The study looked at 24 male and 20 female cats and recorded their behaviour at home over three months.

The results, in the journal Human Behaviour, show 60 per cent of female cats used their right paw to go down stairs and more than 45 per cent of males used their left. When fishing out hidden food, almost 75 per cent favoured a paw for the task.