Cats are often considered aloof, independent and fickle in their affections. But, research suggests, they also show signs of mourning after the death of another pet in the same household – even when it’s the family dog.
Some cats had trouble sleeping, went off their food, or made anxious noises. Others were more needy around their caregivers or abandoned their favorite games, owners reported.
The team behind the work said the findings challenged the view that cats are antisocial and suggested that the psychological experience of loss may be universal.
“They Animal behaviour,Cats,Animals,Science,Pets,World news,Life and style,Biology less engaged in sleeping, eating and playing, but more in seeking attention from humans and other pets, hiding, spending time alone and appearing to search for their lost companions,” the authors from Oakland University in the USA wrote in their study, which was published. in Applied Animal Behavior Science.
Mourning is an established phenomenon in the animal kingdom, with elephants, dolphins and chimpanzees, for example, performing complex behaviors such as guarding the body of a companion after death. A recent study by Italian researchers suggested the phenomenon extends to dogswhich showed behavior changes when another dog in the household died.
However, according to Oakland University’s research, it was less clear that a cat would show signs of mourning.
“While dogs, being descended from pack animals, may reasonably react more strongly to the death of a conspecific, cats under human care have adapted to live among conspecifics and their ability to respond to the loss of a companion warrants further study,” wrote the authors.
In the latest study, the caregivers of more than 450 cats who had another pet, either a cat or a dog, who had recently died, were asked about the living cat’s behavior. In about two-thirds of the cases, the deceased pet was another cat and the rest were dogs.
“Unlike dogs, we tend to think of cats as aloof and not social,” Prof Jennifer Vonk, a comparative/cognitive psychologist at Oakland University and a co-author of the work, told the Times. However, she noted, in the wild cats tended to band together and form hierarchies. “I think we mischaracterized them,” Vonk added.
The study suggested that cats were more severely affected the longer they lived with their fellow pet, but the sight of death and the number of pets in the home had no impact.
“Time companion animals spent together in daily activities predicted greater grief-like behavior and fear, while more positive relationships between the surviving and deceased animals predicted decreases in sleeping, eating, and playing,” the study said.
While the results support the idea that cats grieve, an alternative possibility is that owners are projecting their own grief onto the surviving pet. “Consistent with this hypothesis, caregivers who experienced greater grief were more likely to report increases in their surviving cats’ sleep, time spent alone, and hiding after death,” they wrote.
