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Humans communicate with each other through language, which enables us talk about things beyond time and space. Do non-human animals learn to associate human speech with specific objects in everyday life? We examined whether cats matched familiar cats’ names and faces (Exp.1) and human family members’ names and faces (Exp.2). Cats were presented with a photo of the familiar cat’s face on a laptop monitor after hearing the same cat’s name or another cat’s name called by the subject cat’s owner (Exp.1) or an experimenter (Exp.2). Half of the trials were in a congruent condition where the name and face matched, and half were in an incongruent (mismatch) condition. Results of Exp.1 showed that household cats paid attention to the monitor for longer in the incongruent condition, suggesting an expectancy violation effect; however, café cats did not. In Exp.2, cats living in larger human families were found to look at the monitor for increasingly longer durations in the incongruent condition. Furthermore, this tendency was stronger among cats that had lived with their human family for a longer time, although we could not rule out an effect of age. This study provides evidence that cats link a companion's name and corresponding face without explicit training.
This makes me sad. My late mum had 16 cats, with some coming and go over the years, but always a “continuum of cats” for the last 30 years or more. Since she passed away, with only two people left —and increasing health problems— to take care of them, we’ve been downsizing, giving them away wherever possible. We’re now down to 6+2, with 6 staying at home, and 2 smart enough to always find a way over the fence and roam around, sometimes not coming home for several days on end.
Just today, one of the roaming ones came home, went to eat something… then started going all around the house and meowing, looking for something, and no amount of petting would calm him down. I bet he’s missing his “family” of cat friends. Ultimately he went to sleep on top of a wardrobe, with the other 6 staying on the terrace, even though it’s raining. It’s pretty depressing to see them like this.