I Grieve

Listen to Today's Edition:

Cats get a reputation for being very detached creatures, though as recent studies have suggested that they can express a range – albeit subtle – of emotions.

Now, a new paper found evidence that felines grieve when they lose another pet in the house, even a dog.

Researchers from Oakland University in Michigan surveyed more than 400 cat owners who had lost another pet in the household. They asked participants about some of the changes their feline friends experienced following the loss.

Similar to humans and dogs, the cats would display behaviors associated with grief, such as eating and playing less, wanting solitude and even “appearing to look for their lost companions,” the researchers wrote.

The findings also showed that cats that lived with their dearly departed friends for a longer period or shared a strong bond exhibited more pronounced grief-like behavior.

“It does make me think maybe it’s more likely than I thought before that cats do have those feelings,” co-author Jennifer Vonk told NPR.

The findings further dispel assertions that cats appear emotionally unavailable, showing that they could form strong bonds similar to dogs.

However, Vonk and her colleague, Brittanny Greene, cautioned that the study relied on subjective reports from cat owners. This raises the probability of owners projecting their own sadness onto their surviving pets when reporting symptoms.

Even so, the study is only the second exploring grief in felines and the authors hope that future research will reevaluate the animal’s emotional range.

At the same time, the paper adds to a growing body of evidence that animals exhibit grief-like behaviors, including highly social species such as dolphins and elephants.