According to a recent study, scientists have found evidence that cats grieve after the death of another pet in the house, even dogs.
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Humans are far from the only animals to mourn the dead. Dolphins, elephants, and other highly social creatures have been observed displaying signs of grief, such as orca mothers holding onto the bodies of their recently deceased offspring.
Studies conducted in recent years have also shown that dogs exhibit significant sadness when humans or other pets die, but cats have received little scientific attention regarding their capacity for grief.
In a new study, published last month in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science, scientists from Oakland University in Michigan interviewed more than 400 cat owners who had lost another pet in the past. The owners were asked about short- and long-term behavioral changes in their surviving cats after this loss.
Overall, the team found that cats might experience behavioral changes similar to those observed in studies examining canine grief. Cats may eat or sleep less, seek more or less attention from their humans, or even “appear to search for their lost companions,” the researchers wrote.
Additionally, the longer the cats lived with the lost companion or the more positive their relationship was, the more signs of grief these felines seemed to show. About two-thirds of the cats lived with other cats, but one-third lived with dogs.
However, they emphasized that the findings are based on subjective reports from cat owners, and the researchers found that owners who reported spending more time with their cats or who experienced greater grief over the death of their pet were more likely to perceive their cats’ grief.
This means that there is a possibility that people are simply projecting their own loss onto the surviving cats rather than seeing their genuine pain. According to the scientists, this is only the second study to analyze whether cats mourn for other pets in the house. Therefore, more research should be conducted to confirm the phenomenon of feline grief.
“Future work is needed to determine whether these results reflect caregivers projecting their own grief onto the surviving animal companions or if cats can also grieve after the loss of a companion,” the researchers wrote.
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