Your cat may not need you as much as you need it
Your cat may love you, but it may not need you.
That鈥檚 according to by animal behavior specialists at England's University of Lincoln, which confirms the old trope about our feline friends: that unlike dogs, which perceive their owners as a safe base, adult cats don鈥檛 necessarily rely on others to provide a sense of protection.
鈥淭his is not about whether cats love their owners,鈥� Daniel Mills, a professor of veterinary behavioral medicine and co-author of the study, . But it does provide evidence that cats don鈥檛 look to human owners as a source of safety and security, and may be fundamentally different from dogs in that regard, he said.
鈥淭he domestic cat has recently passed the dog as the most popular companion animal in Europe, with many seeing a cat as an ideal pet for owners who work long hours,鈥� Professor Mills . 鈥淧revious research has suggested that some cats show signs of separation anxiety when left alone by their owners, in the same way that dogs do, but the results of our study show that they are in fact much more independent than canine companions.
鈥淚t seems that what we interpret as separation anxiety might actually be signs of frustration,鈥� he added.
To conduct their study, the researchers used the , devised in the 1970s by psychologist Mary Ainsworth. The procedure originally placed a mother or primary caregiver in a room with her baby and a few toys, and documented how the child responded when separated and then reunited with the parent. Dr. Ainsworth classified the responses into three types of attachment, depending on the range of emotion the child showed in the presence of a familiar parent figure versus that of a stranger.
The most common response was what Ainsworth called a 鈥渟ecure attachment鈥�: that is, the child explored a room and engaged with strangers more freely when the parent or caregiver 鈥� the child鈥檚 鈥渟afe base鈥� 鈥� is in the room.
Dogs develop similar relationships with their owners, treating the latter as a safe haven in the presence of threatening strangers, according to published in the journal PLOS ONE.
鈥淪imilarly to parents of infants, owners can provide a buffer against stress in dogs,鈥� the researchers wrote.
Felines, however, displayed little obvious distress when separated from their owners, the Lincoln researchers found. They observed the relationships between 20 cat-human pairs, noting the amount of contact sought by the cat, the level of passive behavior, and signs of distress caused by the absence of the owner.
鈥淎lthough our cats were more vocal when the owner rather than the stranger left ... we didn鈥檛 see any additional evidence to suggest that the bond between a cat and its owner is one of secure attachment,鈥� Mills said. The vocalization could simply be a sign of frustration or learned response, since the cats did not consistently display other signs of attachment.
鈥淔or pet dogs, their owners often represent a specific safe haven; however,聽it is clear that domestic cats are much more autonomous when it comes to coping with unusual situations,鈥� Miller added.
Still, cat lovers shouldn't fret or feel unloved: 鈥淥ur findings don鈥檛 disagree with the notion that cats develop social preferences or close relationships," he said, "but they do show that these relationships do not appear to be typically based on a need for safety and security."
