Yes, is the answer to the question in the title. I can produce the results of a couple of tests that were passed by domestic cats as evidence. Firstly, mine. When I buy the paper in the morning, I have to walk to a garage about half a mile away. My cat follows me – always. He stops at the same place about 150 yards from our home while I continue. When I return, he recognises me from around 50 yards away. That test is not great as we are in a routine and cats respond to routines. But on other occasions he has noticed me from around 20-50 yards away and responded by coming towards me when I was silent and when there was no chance that he could have smelled me.
Domestic cat eyesight is not that bad. They have poor recognition of reds but their peripheral vision is superior although it’s believed that it is a bit ‘softer’ (less sharp) than good human eyesight.
But it is certainly good enough to recognise their caregiver from a distance. I have tested this many times and I am convinced that the answer to the question is as stated.
Another person conducted a more scientific test and reported it on Quora.com. He returned home in a non-standard way to fool his cats – two brothers – who were both on the front porch at home. He did all he could to break from the routine to ensure that his cats had to recognise him from 50 feet away and they passed the test, which did not surprise me.
That person thought that cats have to be smart to recognise their owner by sight at a distance but I think they are incorrect. It is not about intelligence. It is natural and applies to all domestic cats.
When you think about it, it’s to be expected. The domestic cat is a domesticated N. African wildcat. This small wild cat species is a good hunter and they rely on sight and sound to detect prey. Their hearing is superior to ours in that they can pick up higher frequencies and detect and track small prey animals in long grass without seeing the animal.
My cat picks up sounds outside that I miss. He turns his head towards the sound, which is telling. He turns his head to see the source of the sound. He expects to see it. He is using his eyesight to confirm what he thinks is an animal making the sound. It is normally a fox as it happens.
Cats rely on their eyesight a lot but their world is not so centred around the visual as it is for humans. For us it is all about what we see first and foremost. For cats smell and sound are on an equal footing to sight a lot of the time.
At close range their olfactory senses seem to take over. When they eat their food, they check its palatability with their nose. Close range is a problem and in any case their muzzle gets in the way! And when they are near us, they smell our bare legs if we are mooching around the kitchen first thing in the morning.
Smell is critical to a cat. There is another sense that comes into play under very dark conditions: the sensory powers of their whiskers which are able to detect air currents as they waft around obstacles that might be in the cat’s path. And those super-sensitive whiskers can ‘feel’ a caught prey animal to detect the position of the vertebrae in preparation for the killer bite.
Below are some more articles on cat eyes and their sight which may interest you.
