Cats don't ignore owners as believed

Cats, who seem to try to hide their feelings, do pay attention to their owners, a study has revealed.

The study revealed that cats may not obey their owners but they usually adore their human caretakers, Discovery News reported.

Co-author Atsuko Saito of The University of Tokyo said that dogs have evolved, and are bred to follow their master's, however, same is not the case with the cats, which is why they appear aloof sometimes.

Co-author Kazutaka Shinozuka of the University of South Florida College of Medicine said that previous studies had suggested that cats evolved to act like kittens around their owners, and humans treated their pet cats similar to the way they treated babies.

He said that to form baby-parent like relationships, owner recognition may be important for cats.

For their study, the researchers played strangers recordings, as well as of the cats' owners, to the felines, however the cats could not see speakers.

The felines reacted to human voices, not by orienting behaviour and not by vocalizing or moving their tails.

They also sometimes displayed pupil dilation, which could be a sign of powerful emotions, like arousal and excitement.

These reactions happened more often when the felines heard their owners, or after they became habituated to, or familiar with, strangers' voices.

The researchers explained that after cohabitating with humans for 10,000 years, domestic cats now have are able to communicate with humans, who seem to understand them mostly.

The study is set to be published in the July issue of Animal Cognition.