Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page.
Resting feline face, perhaps?
Cats might appear aloof and cold but they grieve after losing a companion, a new study found.
A recent study determined many showed signs of grief after losing a companion, with some sleeping more and playing less.
The study, published in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science, set out to see if cats mourn when another animal in their household passes.
Researchers and co-authors Jennifer Vonk and Brittany Greene, from Oakland University in Michgan, studied 412 felines and noticed they showed behaviours that are typically associated with grief.
Cats are known for spending more than half the day sleeping, but the kitties in the study instead made yowling noises and sought attention from their owners in a bid to cope with the loss of a furry companion.
Some cats even refused to play their favourite games, while also appearing to search for their deceased animal friend.
“It made me a little more optimistic that they are forming attachments with each other,” Jennifer Vonk, a professor of psychology at Oakland University and co-author of the study, said, according to NPR.
“It’s not that I want the cats to be sad,” Vonk continued. “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.”
The researchers noted that animals, including dogs, horses and elephants, have been known to express signs of grief, but less is known about the emotional state of domesticated kitties, noting only one other study looked at their grief.
RECOMMENDED VIDEO
“For me, the most compelling finding is that when cats were reported to change their behaviour in ways that would be consistent with what we would expect for grief,” Vonk continued.
“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.”
Vonk noted to the U.K. Times that cats are often seen as being antisocial, but they are just as capable as dogs of feeling things.
“Unlike dogs, we tend to think that cats are aloof and not social,” she told the publication. “I think we’ve been mischaracterizing them.”