Reading your cat

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Reading your cat

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1Cecrow
Editado: Dez 5, 2019, 2:02 pm

Reading this article by the Canadian Press (Dec. 2, 2019)
https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/test-yourself-cats-are-hard-to-read-but-some-people...
Science is confirming what many pet owners already know -- cats are hard to read. In a recent study, researchers at the University of Guelph decided to look at how well people were able to read the expressions on cat faces. They showed 6,300 people from 85 countries a series of 20 short cat videos pulled mostly from YouTube. After watching the videos, which showed only the felines' faces, people were asked to rate whether the cat was happy, unhappy, or simply inscrutable. The respondents got about 12 faces right on average, which was just slightly better than chance. A small group of people were remarkably accurate -- slightly more than one out of 10 scored better than 75 per cent. The "cat whisperers" were likely to be young and female. Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, being a cat lover made no difference at all.
How is your ability to tell what a cat is feeling? Take the test yourself through the University of Guelph.
https://uoguelph.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cBGMqIIYSsurKW9

Ya, but what I want to know is, how did the researchers know what the right answers were?

2lesmel
Dez 9, 2019, 2:30 pm

1. Exactly, who knows the right answer? Maybe the scientists asked Jackson Galaxy to interpret.
2. Who looks at a cat's face to tell their mood?

3krazy4katz
Dez 9, 2019, 5:53 pm

Right. You have to at least look at their tail.

4Zambaco
Dez 11, 2019, 10:01 am

The angle of the ears is a good clue. I found the easy quiz very easy as the cats in it were being expressive with their ears. The advanced one was harder, because the ears were all neutral. But yes, you would look at the whole cat - eyes, ears, tail, posture, movement - to tell their mood, not just the face.

5anna_in_pdx
Dez 24, 2019, 12:20 pm

I decide my cats are happy with me if they come to me, rub their cheeks against me, or settle onto my lap, especially if they purr while doing any of this.

Tail up and ears forward means they are in a positive and forward-looking frame of mind. Ears back and hissing means they're mad. Their faces don't show the same types of expression as ours, but their behavior is not *that* hard to read.

However, they are individuals. I have one that purrs a lot and one that hardly ever does. The one that is skittish and never sits on our laps has a way of sidling up to us when he wants to be petted or noticed, and I guess he's happy then, although he never acts like our little love bug kitten who's just always flopping down in front of us and purring.

6guido47
Dez 24, 2019, 5:39 pm

If my cats are with me they are usually Happy.

My MAX (who adopted me 10+ years ago) is dying at the moment and quire strange.

Buffy, a calico, Bitch whom I do love :-) is curious (as all CATS should be!)

I don't try and interperet them. I always thnik of T. S. Eliots poems.

Guido.

PS. If you look up my library, I think I have 130+ books tagged as CAT.

7krazy4katz
Dez 24, 2019, 6:13 pm

>6 guido47: Sorry about Max!

We have an old cat (5 cats total, 20 legs) who we think has dementia. He howls suddenly for no reason. He also has kidney disease, so we give him saline twice a week. He also gets on the top of the sofa and scratches our hair with his paws. We don't know if he is trying to cover something that bothers him or if it is his way of petting us.

Koro-chan (rolling in Japanese) is our most concerned cat. If one of the other cats is crying, he runs to see what the problem is. For example, this morning I came downstairs and there was BLOOD EVERYWHERE. It looked like a crime scene. We finally figured out that Boots was leaking from her butt (sorry to be gross) and I had to take her to the Emergency Vet. We put her in a carrier and she started crying. Then Koro-chan came over and started scratching away at the carrier trying to break her out of there.

Nikki never meows, she just chirps. She has 1-, 2- and 3-syllable chirps, the third being used when she is very hungry. The first 2? I don't know.

I could on on...