Each situation is different, most cats are independent and able to take care of themselves, where dogs generally have a pack mentality and as such will attach themselves to an owner.

My cat follows me everywhere, scratches at the door when separated from me and greets me at the door when I return from work. When visitors come over, he avoids them at all costs and stays close to me during the visit as well.

In the end it all depends on how you treat the animal.

Emotionally, dogs are relationships, cats are booty calls.

Dogs live WITH you. Cats simply just happen to live in the same area.

My cat, Kahlan, was a dog.

Honestly though, she was very attached. When she heard me come home, she would run to the door, jump on the couch, then jump on me. She chose to sleep in bed with me, not my girlfriend, who was the one who brought her home. She'd sit on my shoulder or arm when I was on the computer, and would go walking with me.

Then I had Casey who wouldn't let anyone but me pet him. My friends called I'm the Devil Cat. He'd hiss, growl, claw etc at everyone else. He once tore my dad's arm up. I walked over, picked him up, and he acted like an ashamed child to me.

But then I had Bagheera, he was a slut. He didn't care who you were, so long as you were giving him attention.

Tony (the Tiger) . . . well, he was el suavé. He was the typical cat. He defined cat. It was always on his terms, and if you wanted to pet him, it was up to him if that was ok. Kahlan would come to me when I chirped at her, but Tony . . . yeah, you should fire off a shotgun and he wouldn't even bother acknowledging your existence.

So yeah, it really depends on the cat and owner.

This is pretty funny for a lot of reasons, the biggest being all the people involved are so obviously not cat owners nor have they even bothered to understand cat behaviour.

First of all, the snarky comments at the end of the video, actually, it's not about wanting to believe my cat needs me, I'm very well aware it doesn't need me, that has no correlation to loving me. I appreciate that's just the person writing this script but it puts an underlining tone that cat owners are delusional and sets people up to believe the experiment was a "success", even with the little bite about it not being conclusive.

Not all cats are the same, the beauty of them is precisely their individuality! Breed also plays a very large factor and so does upbringing, not to mention social behaviour of the animal in question. Let's ignore that cats are evolutionarily independent and dogs/babies are not.

Why would a cat care if its owner left momentarily? It is not built to care about such a frivolous event, it takes notes of it (which btw, no other animal was capable of and the narrator incorrectly says the cat is distracted while it distinctly watching the owner leave) and carries on, the situation pans out.

Likewise when the owner comes back, the cat again takes note of this and because it was rather brief, it resumes carrying on its business. This wasn't some "OH MY GOD WHAT DO I DO WITH MY LIFE!??!?!" drastic event. Quite frankly, the cat has the most intelligent behaviour.

The reason it check outs the stranger is because it's an *unknown*, cats don't immediately trust *anything* until they've inspected it. If they had replaced that stranger with a paper bag, the reaction would have been the same. It's not that it is ignoring its owner, it's that it knows its owner is safe. It is inspecting a potential threat.

Cats are simply not basic enough to compare in this experiment and their evolutionary traits are directly opposed to these rather bias tests of affection.

*science

Adding video to channels (Science) - requested by ant.

All this shows is that cats don't act like babies. Try devising a test with someone who understands how cats behave.

Speaking from my own experience, so skip if you need facts..

Depends on a cat but the ones that are brought up in an environment where it hasn't suffer any major traumas (note, i don't mean neglect or abuse, even a cat living in best possible conditions can get in accidents that change their behavior) tend to inspect everything new as priority one. Basically, if it's not with kittens, it's gonna check any new things or people as soon as possible. The difference how dogs behave is dramatic, they tend to keep owners as reference. Cats don't do that and it's all about pack mentality.

When the cat is rescued or had a accident, they tend to associate owners as more of a mother figure and sometimes are almost incapable to handle separation. I've had a few cats as guests and for healthy cat it's few seconds to touch, few minutes before it sits on your lap and few hours before it trusts you to pick it up. Even in the worst cases by day four you are among the humans it trust but it might require some trust building exercises.. (One that does the trick well is if the cat sits in owners lap, stranger sits beside the owner, humans interact normally, in calm voice, no sudden movements and don't take notice of the cat, sometimes for hours. Every time it's inborn curiosity wins.

Funnily, i haven't had the same effect with food which is in contrast on this study. "Healthy" cats pick up really really fast who hands out the sustenance and can ditch the owner in a heartbeat for a good meal.... If the stranger has softer lap, that's where the darn thing heads. Cat just chooses very simply the best available option and needs to be aware of all options so it's curious. I kind a like that quest for efficiency. A lot of signs of empathy are actually cat trying to do what it can so that it's owner returns to normality; you cry, it comes rubbing on you. Not because of love but simply "won't you shut the f#¤% up".

But i've seen cats with their owners and they sure do love them. It' just that cats love is inclusive rather than exclusive.

You mad, bro?
lol

This isn't YouTube, please consider trying a little harder.

Neuroscience research has shown that similar brain regions are involved when we think about the behavior of both humans and of nonhuman entities, suggesting that anthropomorphism may be using similar processes as those used for thinking about other people.

Anthropomorphism carries many important implications. For example, thinking of a nonhuman entity in human ways renders it worthy of moral care and consideration. In addition, anthropomorphized entities become responsible for their own actions — that is, they become deserving of punishment and reward.

OK, let's try this:
If we were smaller, they'd eat us.
The core brain of a cat just don't care.
There just isn't that attachment that cat, well, not owners; more like co-habitants, think there is.
IMHO.

And if they were less cute and provided decent nutrition, we'd eat them, so what?

Fighting starvation is not a great indicator of anything, you might eat another human or yourself if you were in a situation that warranted it. I don't think I need to defend against the circle of life, we're the very last species that can frown on another animal for eating something smaller than it.

Enjoying and giving affection is not an exclusive condition, you don't have to *always* and *only* love your one owner constantly. That'd just be annoying.

I believe in research, it suggests cats are quite affectionate to their owners, it is simply not displayed in ways that humans typically understand. Experiments done by people who actually want to understand cat behaviour and not just contrast it to that of a dog, find that cat expression is rather complicated and subtle. It requires long and repeated observation, cats are not suited to these 10minute experiments.

It's an ongoing study, some if it is really quite new, you can look it up or you can continue not caring, I'm not particularly fussed. Thankfully I don't need validation to enjoy the relationship I have with my cat, I don't think it wants only me and I don't have a problem with that, I do think she feels we're rather good friends. That's something I'm happy with.

Let it out mother yar, let it out.

Not to defend the study which could be flawed as any study (and many are) but your analysis ignored a part that they did emphasize in this and the original experiment with children...strangeness.

They're not at home and they introduce the aspect of a stranger intentionally to play on the social constructs that we as humans use and are thus trying to understand in the animals we keep as pets.

Being in a foreign environment with strangers present is an automatic trigger for social animals (even adult humans will tend to cling to a familiar face at a foreign social gathering) and so if that social connection exists in a similar way between cats and humans one would hope to see it manifest itself as well.

I imagine if you did this with kittens and their mothers or vice versa you would likely see the results they were looking for. Which would beg the question: how different is the relationship between the cat family and the relationship of that cat to its human owner?

In the end I don't think people are arguing that cats don't care at all but instead when compared to the relationship between human/human and human/dog perhaps it is just not the same.

Would you argue that a horse, bird, fish, or snake can "love" a human as deeply as a cat? I've seen all of those show affection towards human owners. If not then what is the scale with which we measure an animals affinity for us relative to each other if not their intense desire to associate with us specifically as their owner?

I also find it interesting that I can't recall hearing cat owners point out a showing of affection by cats that we don't find in dogs although I HAVE heard of uniquely cat methods of revenge (jaws and claws being equal I've never heard of dogs using table tops to terrify cell phones and other treasured human items). So you could almost argue that if cats don't love humans more than dogs they may dislike us more than dogs in their efforts to devise methods of inflicting pain on us.

I'd also like to point out on a personal note that even in an adult human, if I took them somewhere and they walked away, watched me leave, then come back, all the while never knowing why we were there, with whom they're now left with, or if I was ever coming back....and the person didn't even care to greet me upon my return then I wouldn't exactly say that person cared about me at all much less liked me or loved me....just saying.
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How attached are cats to their owners? has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals on that post.

*dead

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