Even if your cat doesn’t see you, it knows exactly where you are. This is apparent from experiments in which scientists apparently placed owners in a different corner of the house from one moment to the next.

Forget Big Brother. your cat is watching you. And he doesn’t even have to see you for that, researchers write in the magazine PLOS ONE. By means of experiments described in the research article, the scientists show that cats are able to mentally map out exactly where you are based on the sounds you make.

Experiments

The researchers collected a number of cats and their owners for the study. They were subjected to various experiments in their own home, in which a leading role was played by two speakers placed on either side of a room.

Voice of the owner

The cats were placed in the room and a few minutes later their owner’s voice blared from one of the speakers. Just seconds later, their owner’s voice sounded again from the same speaker. The cats were not surprised. It was different, however, when the researchers apparently teleported the owners and just seconds after the voice from the first speaker had reverberated, the same owner’s voice was heard from the other speaker. Now the cats reacted very surprised. “Mostly they looked at the speaker,” researcher Saho Takagi tells Scientias.nl. Their body language – which the researchers had to assess by the owners – clearly showed amazement.

A purring fellow

The researchers repeated the experiment, but this time they did not work with the owner’s voice. Instead, the cats were told the purr of a familiar congener. Remarkably, the apparent teleportation of that ilk did very little for the cats. “Cats didn’t look surprised when a familiar congener was seemingly teleported,” the researchers write.

Non-social stimulus

In a third experiment, so-called ‘non-social’ sounds were heard from the speaker, ie sounds that were not linked to a person or animal. The researchers opted for electronic sounds. This also simulated a teleportation by having it sounded first from one speaker and very shortly afterwards from the second speaker. The cats didn’t flinch. “The results show that cats were surprised when their owner appeared to have been teleported to a new, unexpected location, but they did not respond in the same way when we worked with non-social stimuli,” the researchers wrote. “These results suggest that cats have a mental image of their invisible owner and map their owner’s location using his or her voice.”

The relationship between humans and cats

The research further questions the notion that cats are not such social creatures. “Cats have evolved a social nature,” Takagi says. “It has also been shown before that they develop a bond with people. This study shows that cats really care about people.”

New questions

At the same time, the study also raises new questions. “I find it very interesting that the reaction to humans was very different from the reaction to another cat’s purring,” Takagi noted. “There are still many points to be explored, but it seems that cats use a different type of communication for humans than they do for congeners.” It is an observation that requires further research. And there are still more follow-up questions to be formulated. “With this study, we have shown that cats can mentally map their owner’s location based on that owner’s voice. Since I am very interested in the auditory skills of cats, I would also like to investigate further their understanding of human language.”

There is still plenty to investigate, so the house cat will still have something inscrutable. We can’t say the same about our location, because chances are your cat – no matter how gently and gracefully you move around the house – will still know exactly where to find you.