What Does Your Cat See in You?

Or maybe the question should actually be, does your cat see you?  You observe your sweet cat gazing at you across the room and you feel the love.  Here’s what scientists say your cat really sees, according to an article on Petfinder.com:  you’re blurry, in black and white and look like you’re lit up with a black light!
 
What the heck?  To start off, cats eyes aren’t constructed the same way as human eyes.  We have lots of rods and cones in our eyes that respond to and process a broad spectrum of light and colors.  Cats are missing some of these, so they see more in blue, gray and yellow.  Studies have also shown that it’s likely that cats cannot tell red and green apart. 
 
Don’t be sad that your cat is missing out, though, because a new study in the UK indicates that cats, along with some other mammals, experience light more at the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, things we can only see under a black light.  Remember when you went in the specialty store in the mall with the psychedelic posters and black lights?  Things were illuminated in a strange way.  That’s more like what cats see.  This is possible because they have six to eight times as many cells as we do for viewing low light.  So, for us what would seem to be completely dark isn't at all for cats!
 

**CLICK HERE to see some images comparing what we see to what cats see!**

 
That's not all!  Cats have much better field of view than we do, 200 degrees compared to our 180 degrees.  Their peripheral vision is also better and both team up to make cats much more successful hunters who able to lock onto anything moving that they spot!

Studies have also shown that cats are nearsighted because they don't have all the same eye muscles humans do that help us adjust to what we’re seeing far away. That means they're able to focus on what they see between 6 and 20 feet away (humans can see objects clearly as far away as 200 feet).  Of course, as we’ve learned from our blind cats, they do have other senses that will help them know you’re nearby, even if you aren’t visually in range.
 
Another important question is how do cats view us as fellow creatures?  Do they see us as other cats?  Do they recognize us as individuals?  Researchers at the University of Texas/Dallas and Penn State University conducted tests in 2005 to help figure this out.  The technical term for what they were looking at is “pattern discrimination,” or knowing the difference between two images.   Cats were shown photos of their own handler’s face and the face of a stranger.  Results?  They only chose the photo of their handler about 50% of the time.  However, in the same study, cats were shown a photo of a cat they knew and a stranger cat.  In that case they identified the familiar cat nearly 91% of the time!  To double check that result, the scientists followed up by showing cats a photo of a familiar outdoor space and one they didn’t know.  The test cats picked the area they knew nearly 86% of the time.
 
Bottom line - either cats don’t know human faces so well or how we actually look isn’t a big deal to them.   As noted before, they also rely on smell and the sound of our voices to know exactly who is close by, talking to or petting them.   
 
Based on how they react to us, it can sometimes seem like cats think we’re just big clumsy cats.  The Petfinder.com article compares the way cats and dogs react to each other and to people.  Dogs communicate and play with other dogs very differently from how they do with their owners. Cats, on the other hand, mimic the same behaviors toward humans as they show to other cats.  When a cat greets you, he may rub against your leg and lift his tail in the air, the same "I'm happy" greeting he uses for other familiar cats.  This means where humans are concerned they really can’t tell - or don’t acknowledge - the difference.  The good news is that, even if cats don’t see us as people, that specific greeting is one a cat will use with an equal, not an inferior cat!  More good news comes if your cat kneads you or grooms you.  Either of those behaviors indicates that your cat thinks of you as family!
 
Whether and how cats respond to people has a lot to do with the way they were domesticated about 9,000 years ago.  People brought them inside to help make sure the grain stored for winter wasn't eaten by rats and mice.  At that point, there wasn’t much interaction between the people and the cats - they were there to do a job.  When dogs joined human communities  even before cats did, it was different.  There was much more interaction and behavior “training." 
 
As may have been true 9,000 years ago, cats seem to be the ones to take initiative when they want to interact with us, as discovered by some researchers in Tokyo.  Cat owners will also attest to the fact that cats respond pretty quickly to our voices if it’s feeding time or they want to go in our out!
 
Today, cats and people have established a strong bond and we all passionately love our cats, even if they choose when and if they want to respond to us!  At least now we know a few of the reasons why that is!
 
CLICK HERE to read about cat sight and recognition studies.
CLICK HERE for a clinical take on cat sight.