A formal assessment of domestic pet and shelter cat preferences (2017)

sciencedirect.com

29 points·vector_spaces··9 comments

From the abstract: "Adult cats from two populations (pet and shelter) were presented with three stimuli within each of the following four categories: human social interaction, food, toy, and scent." Cat on cat social interaction wasn't in the variables. So, the cats in the study highly desired social interaction, not necessarily from humans. If they had included falling anvils, I would bet on the cats eschewing that variable.

Cat on cat interaction, when the cats aren’t already familiar with one another, is often hostile.

Anecdotally, rather often the preferred stimulus category appears to be none of the above, but a catnap.

In this case, shouldn't it just be called a nap?

I do wonder how a sunny spot on a soft object would have compared to the other stimuli.

I'm surprised that it was not a scientific knowledge before this research. Cats are not like dogs, who are ready to sell their mothers for a bite of sausage.

Citation?

This is worth some research, as I am only familiar with dogs utterly non food-motivated while my gf (until she met me) was only familiar with the opposite.

She was frankly astonished that my dogs didn’t care for treats when the alternative was a pat or even a look. Of course I knew no alternative.

I'm teaching a stats/research methods/mini-data-science for lawyers class right now. Assign this article, because cats are the best? (Y/N)

Waiting for the Youtube cat video, the Instagram cat pictures, and the Twitter commentary.

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