Cats Recognize Names

Despite being one of the most popular pets, house cats remain mysterious to many. It is apparent when they are hungry, but at other times, it is unclear that they are paying attention much. Now, researchers in Japan say that the famously aloof creatures may connect their feline housemates with the names they are called. They may even make this association with humans, too.

The researchers looked at cats living in homes with two or more other cats, and at cats living in cat cafes, usually in bigger groups. Each cat was shown an image of a cat they know while correct and incorrect names were called. When the name did not match the cat they were looking at, house cats tended to look for longer. This reaction indicates that cats were not seeing and hearing what they expected. In other words, they were experiencing some confusion.

Cats that live in cat cafes did not react in the same way. The researchers suggest that this is because cafe cats get called a variety of names, meaning there is less opportunity for the cats to hear one name repeated, and therefore to learn it.

The researchers also tried to find out if cats know human names. The results were not as clear, but the cats that had lived with a group of humans for longer seemed to have connected faces with names better. Until a mind-reading tool is invented, we won’t know for sure what cats think about, but at least it seems like they associate names with faces after hearing them enough.