Every pet owner out there has likely wished at some point that they had a machine or chip that allowed them to communicate with their companion, but this seems to be especially true from cat owners, as they do not have the easiest queues to indicate what they are thinking. But there are many ways to communicate effectively with the felines in your life, you just have to learn them and pay attention when they answer back.
One of the easiest ways to communicate with your cat is to let them approach you first and follow their lead when it comes to the interaction, but if you are looking for a more specific way, maybe you should try smiling, the cat way.
How to more effectively communicate with your cat
Many believe that a cat mews when they want to communicate, but that is learned behavior that they rarely use with each other past infancy. The most common ways that cat indicate their friendliness to each other, and their humans is by narrowing their eyes and blinking slowly. Many cat owners have figured it out by trial and error and by imitating their pet, but now experts and scientists researching the issue are corroborating their experience.
Karen McComb, a University of Sussex psychologist, said in a 2020 statement “As someone who has both studied animal behavior and is a cat owner, it’s great to be able to show that cats and humans can communicate in this way. It’s something that many cat owners had already suspected, so it’s exciting to have found evidence for it.”
This is a common expression seen in felines and it indicates that the animal is relaxed and willing to interact, so to test the theory, a team of psychologists designed two experiments to determine whether cats behaved differently towards slow–blinking humans.
The study was done in two parts, the first involving 21 cats from 14 households where the owner, seated about a meter away, slow-blinked when eye contact was made. The responses were recorded and compared to their typical blinking behavior without human interaction and researchers found that cats were more inclined to return the gesture after receiving it from their owner.
The second part of the experiment tested 24 cats from eight households, but this time unfamiliar researchers performed the blinking instead of the owners. As a control, the researchers also stared at the cats without blinking to assess baseline responses, and researchers found that when the slow blink was used along with an outstretched hand, the cats were not only more likely to blink in return but also showed a higher chance of approaching the researcher’s hand afterward.
“This study is the first to experimentally investigate the role of slow blinking in cat-human communication,” McComb said. “And it is something you can try yourself with your own cat at home or with cats you meet in the street. It’s a great way of enhancing the bond you have with cats. Try narrowing your eyes at them as you would in a relaxed smile, followed by closing your eyes for a couple of seconds. You’ll find they respond in the same way themselves, and you can start a sort of conversation.”
Psychologist Tasmin Humphrey of the University of Sussex is also quite excited about the findings and the potential applications “Understanding positive ways in which cats and humans interact can enhance public understanding of cats, improve feline welfare, and tell us more about the socio-cognitive abilities of this under-studied species. Our findings could potentially be used to assess the welfare of cats in a variety of settings, including veterinary practices and shelters.”