What affects us affects cats
I have compressed the results of a research project by Prof. Jennifer Vonk and Brittany Greene entitled: Is companion animal loss cat-astrophic? Responses of domestic cats to the loss of another companion animal, into an infographic in order try and get Google to recognise its existence as Google’s catastrophic algorithm changes four months ago …
You will see a ginger tabby-and-white cat looking at a video of the cat’s former owner who has died. The cat looks intently and then gently head-butts (nuzzles) the image and rests his head on the screen. It’s a wow moment. It is clear that this cat is looking at his former human companion, …
Many cat owners and animal experts believe that cats can experience the emotion of grief. They have probably seen it first hand. These first hand experiences concern the change in behaviour of one family cat when another, towards whom the remaining cat was friendly, dies. The remaining cat’s behaviour looks like an expression of …
It is sad but true: animals “grieve” for lost relatives. They also grieve for friends who have passed on. In one instance we are told a Siamese cat howled for days and would not eat after her sister died. It would seem that the Siamese cat’s propensity to vocalise loudly allowed her to express …
Dr Bradshaw in his book Cat Sense states that he believes that the domestic cat is able to feel the emotion of jealousy but not grief. He states that, “all that jealousy requires is that the cat merely perceives that another cat is getting more of something than it should”. In an article I …
by Michael (London, UK) Sad cat – photo by karp3diem (Flickr) People ask whether there is such a thing as cat grief. There are no easily accessible scientific studies, that I can find, which deal with this subject. Perhaps, though, we don’t need them. Perhaps we already know from personal observation and experience. Grief …
