DO CATS EXPERIENCE GRIEF? NEW RESEARCH SUGGESTS THEY MIGHT

Do cats grieve the loss of a human or another animal close to them?

This was the question a team of researchers from Oakland University in Michigan aimed to answer. They surveyed hundreds of cat owners about their cats’ behavior following the death of another cat or dog in the household.

The data revealed that cats often displayed behaviors associated with grief—such as reduced eating and playing—after the death of a companion animal, suggesting that they may indeed mourn their loss.

“It gave me a bit more hope that cats form meaningful attachments with each other,” said Jennifer Vonk, a professor of psychology at Oakland University and co-author of the study published in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science.

“It’s not that I want the cats to be sad,” Vonk went on, “[but] 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.”

While animals such as elephants, horses, and dogs have been observed displaying signs of grief, less is known about the emotional experiences of domestic cats. Vonk mentioned that she was aware of only one other study on grief in domestic cats.

For their research, Vonk and her coauthor, Brittany Greene, surveyed 412 cat owners about their cats’ behavior following the death of another pet in the household.

They discovered that, on average, cats exhibited behaviors associated with grief after the loss of a companion animal. These included seeking more attention from their owners, spending more time alone, appearing to search for the deceased pet, eating less, and sleeping more.

Vonk noted that while they didn’t observe “huge changes,” the behavior alterations they did find were consistent with those previously observed in dogs, which are more socially evolved than cats.

“For me, the most compelling finding is that when cats were reported to change their behavior in ways consistent with grief, it was predicted by factors such as the duration of time the animals lived together, the amount of time spent on shared activities, or the quality of their relationship,” Vonk explained.

Vonk acknowledged that there are some caveats to the research. An owner may have been projecting their own feelings of sadness on their surviving cat when reporting their symptoms, or the cat may have been trying to console the grief-stricken human. (Cat owners who felt more grief themselves reported more grief in their surviving cats, researchers found.)

Vonk also noted that the changes in behavior observed in the cats might be related to the new dynamics in the household with one less pet.

The researchers emphasized that further studies are needed before drawing definitive conclusions. However, Vonk, who is a cat owner herself, indicated that the data collected by her and Greene suggest that cats may experience emotions similar to grief and sadness in ways that were not previously understood.

“It makes me consider that it’s more likely than I previously thought that cats do indeed have such feelings,” she said.