We see lots of videos on the internet of cats playing fetch so it might not surprise informed cat caregivers that around 40% of cats enjoy playing fetch to varying degrees and extents. For me, the evolutionary history of the domestic dog over up to 30,000 years of the human-to-dog relationship resulted in the domestic dog being used in a utilitarian way to fetch. The reason why some cats like to play fetch is less well understood but as I say in the infographic it is probably a distorted version of hunting sometimes instigated by a cat to enable them to express their natural instincts to hunt with the assistance of their caregiver to play fetch in the unnatural environment of the human home when confined to that home.
Mikel Maria Delgado, the lead author of the study said:
“We were surprised to find that there were very few studies of fetching behaviour in dogs. And as a lifelong cat person, I have to admit that I thought all dogs fetched. This is a nice example of one way they [cats] are interacting with humans [i.e. playing fetch].
There are suggestions that if you play fetch with your cat, you might help protect wildlife as in 2021 researchers from the University of Exeter found that cats whose owners played with them regularly seem to have less of an urge to catch and kill songbirds.
