New Study Shows Cats Are Crazy Attached to Their Humans
My cat, Peaches, was a necessary addition to my life almost three years ago. Lately, I've been kind of shocked for lack of a better term how attached she's been to me. Maybe it's because I was spending more time at home, but she's been up my butt. She scratches at the door whenever I'm in another room with the door closed, she can't help but lay on my chest when I'm sitting on the couch at home, she's always around me when I'm home.
Then I was thinking, "okay, maybe she's just lonely" but she has a not so great history with other animals. Nope. It's definitely not that. It's not a coincidence that around the same time, the results of a new study were published that answered my question.
Researchers at Oregon State University found that cats’ attachment to their human caregivers is far stronger than initially thought. The study tested the cats using criteria developed for primates, including humans, and for dogs. Called a “secure base test,” the experiment labels the different responses animals display when left alone without their familiar caregiver for a few minutes. The idea is that the test subjects will react in different ways to the return of their friend, depending on their level of attachment to that person.
The team found that 64.3% of their feline test subjects — all of whom were 3- to 8-month-old kittens — appeared to be securely attached to their caregivers. For reference, it's close to the same for human babies and dogs!
So, in retrospect, I always thought that Peaches was a cat who liked to be alone and only hung out with me some of the time because she was forced to (lol) but science helped me understand better.
She does love me!!
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