Cats appear to grieve death of fellow pets – even dogs, study finds
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
One of them died suddenly years later. As painful as that was, it was even more heartbreaking to see our other cat dealing with his death. She did not understand why he had disappeared, and grew increasingly upset in the days following. Searching everywhere around the house making distressed meows at all hours. Demanding to have every door opened so she could search every inch of the house multiple times.
After a week, she began to understand our other cat was not coming back. For at least a month, her appetite disappeared, she was grooming herself compulsively and needed to be near one of us 24/7.
Similarly, families of people that disappear are often "relieved" when a body is found, since they can properly start to grief instead of clinging on some hopeless dream that their loved one might reappear out of thin air.
I got a kitten a couple of months later and they bonded quickly. In my experience cats are always happier when they have a friend, which isn't surprising.
Parents had some beagles and they could never get enough affection from humans. But for some weeks they would just growl at you if you came near them. Also you could really see the sadness in their faces.
In the same way that mice mythologically prefer to eat cheese.
Prey drive is a big reason that extreme caution is advised
when introducing an adopted dog to a cat with an unknown history.
Conflicts there are most definitely not evidence of whom is a "natural predator" of whom.
Dogs are a natural predator of all small mammals
And it's difficult to imagine a dog or a pack of dogs being able to catch a cat in the first place.
(And by the way, showed no emotion at all when the cat had to be put down, although I'm not for one second denying that animals grieve.)
He ignored squirrels, oddly enough. Too many of those.
I cried my eyes out before taking her to the vet for the last time and she came up to me and licked my face and nibbled. She was an extremely affectionate cat.
I brought her back home so the other two could see/sniff her because I didn't want them to not understand that she just disappeared. One of them is definitely more concerned than the other.
Cats are pretty amazing creatures and while not all of them are super affectionate (my other two aren't) they seem to understand a lot more than we give them credit for. Mine always know and understand when I'm not feeling well and show it in their own ways. I will miss the hugs and cuddles from the one I said goodbye to... I needed those hugs and cuddles this week but the one that would give them wasn't with me anymore. Tough times.
I would encourage anyone to take the time with their animals and give them attention and love. You never know when a surprise may come and you have very little time to say goodbye.
I also had a cat funeral when a cat died. I like to think that seeing and sniffing the dead body gave the other cats closure
I'd highly recommend others do it if possible just to be a little proactive in sparing our little furry critters some possible pain and suffering.
And with the subsequent deaths of all the remaining cats, as they are all sadly deceased, I saw similar things happen.
We should not anthropomorphise animals, but that doesn't mean they don't have complex feelings or thoughts. If we find that even bees can "play", it's not that weird if cats can "grieve".
If one has any sort of biology background the silliness of these types of studies is clear. Humans are simply animals, there is nothing distinct about us aside from being further out on the distribution of cognitive ability.
It would be news if an advanced member of animalia didn't experience grief from the death of another. If an animal can enjoy the presence of another animal (as they clearly can) it should be assumed they can mourn their loss.
The dog was very closely bonded to my two cats (who themselves are a bonded pair of litter mates) and having the dog euthanized this way allowed the cats to understand what happened. They were pretty distraught afterward (as was I) but weren't looking for him around the house. Their personalities changed in that they were more stressed out when I had company at the house, and didn't really return to normal until I adopted another dog about a month ago that they were able to bond with in a really similar way. Because of how closely the cats are bonded I definitely will need to use one when the time comes for either cat.
I really don't know how someone could deal with putting down animals all day, but if you can find a good one they are fantastic. In addition to helping my cats, it definitely helped me process the situation way better than if it had been done in a sterile setting at a vet's office.
It would be pretty weird for a smart, social mammal to simply ignore the death of a beloved companion. Are there any social mammals that DON'T grieve? Maybe large herd/flock animals (deer, bat, rodents)...?
It was surprisingly hard to find a scientific consensus on this topic. Maybe there isn't one yet? It seemed obvious to me, but that's not data, just anecdotal experience with animals.
I remember a video of a hunter shooting a deer and the other deer around it didn't care and kept eating their grass. I suspect most cats are smarter than deers.
I doubt cats would immediately understand what was happening if one of them was suddenly shot by something they could not perceive either.
Depends. How would it benefit the mammal?
Nor is it safe to assume that any existing trait must confer an evolutionary benefit. Evolution isn't a perfect optimizer, and it's an ongoing process without a terminus. All kinds of traits in the current human population might turn out to be evolutionarily disadvantageous and scheduled for elimination via natural selection in the long run. We won't be around to find out.
But attachment has immense benefit for social animals. Attachment is maintained by both positive and negative emotional incentives.
Grief is the negative emotional incentive ramped up to the max.
When a human's loved one dies, we miss them in the present moment... but we are also thinking of the past and future. We think of our days ahead without them and mourn the happy times in the past that can now not be repeated.
It was surprisingly hard to find a scientific
consensus on this topic.
Even in humans, you usually just have to ask the subject how they're feeling.
Behavior changes are at best kind of a decent proxy for making... educated guesses instead of uneducated guesses into an animal's feelings.
We could measure things like oxytocin and cortisol levels or take fMRIs, but good luck collecting those metrics without profoundly altering the animal's emotional state.
I of course grieved mightily when my mom died. Even though it made nearly zero practical difference in my present life at that point. I was grieving the loss of things past, and of the future - I would not see her in the future, and I also greatly grieved that she would no longer be able to do the things that she loved so much in the future.
Subtract all that past and all that future, and what's left? I think that's where most animals are at... there is much common ground, and they clearly feel emotions as strongly as we do, but they experience the world so differently.
So when one died I was shocked that the other paced around yowling for days. I don't know if he missed her specifically or was just confused about where she was and his confusion is what was causing distress.
We used to have semi-feral cats living in our shed. One time, one of them had kittens. Not too long after, our dogs broke into the fenced area around the shed and killed and ate the kittens. We only found some blood and bits and pieces, it was gruesome.
For quite a while, the mom went around meowing like crazy, she looked very distressed. I guess she didn’t see them die, there wan’t much for her to find and understand.
I really don’t know why our dogs were so aggressive towards smaller animals. They were perfectly fine with people and kids, but we has to keep them far away from the cats and chickens. I guess they learned from each other.
We were alerted our one cat had died suddenly in the bathtub to the sound of our other cat howling outside the bathroom door. The surviving cat then acted really strange for the next week or so.
It was a place he liked to lay normally.
A nitpick: The researchers are asking the owners for the owners' observations during a time of grief, which doesn't seem as robust as it could be. Humans would be emotional, grieving, and also projecting their own loss to their other animals. (Theres not much of a control or a fair baseline here)
In a way a deeper question I have is do we humans actually "understand" death in similar ways? I personally do not think so and it arises from how much or little I have seen people spend time pondering on these topics. With some, I can discuss hypotheticals easily and with others I just can not. They do not admire these subjects and I wonder if our brains just perceive some of these things differently. Time is another such topic.
I should add that we do not need to agree on what is "death" in order to grieve the missing. But I guess how would cats know death vs missing (vacation)?
It was heartbreaking to watch, especially because she was a very quiet cat and rarely meowed at all.
Following various deaths (2 cats, 1 dog) and departures (1 cat and 1 dog from a departing housemate) the remaining pets didn't seem to show any lasting behavior change at all.
The only thing I observed is that, after fellow cats died or departed, the remaining cats spent a day or two roaming the house and seemingly searching for them. They seemed to be in something like "stalking" mode, moving slowly and stealthily. But, they didn't seem distressed.
My 2nd dog actually seemed happier after the first one died. Seemed happier to have us "for himself."
Domesticated dogs and cats are social, and are clearly capable of love for any reasonable definition of the word "love."
Of course, the grieving brings up the awkward question about all the other animals that we don’t categorize as companion animals and abuse and murder for trivial and unnecessary reasons.
One had a big personality, very outgoing with strangers, and only left family members alone go hunting[1]. The other was a bit dopey and didn't groom well.
After the superstar cat passed then the surviving cat became much more energetic, playful, and outgoing. We all commented he seemed to step into the limelight after his counterpart passed.
Still not sure if it was driven by us giving him more attention or by him "activating" and demanding more attention.
As for cats and dogs: our cat seems uninterested in our dog. But when the dogs boarded our cat walks room to room screaming until the dogs back home.
[1]i was a kid, my cat stays inside now. Sorry birds :(
Cat body language is more difficult for humans to decipher, whereas dogs literally evolved extra eye muscles to better make those adorable expressions at us. That doesn't make it the cat's problem if you miss their signs of love. The orneriest cat I knew became highly, HIGHLY distressed when she lost her hearing and with it, constant assurance that her humans were around.
But also this is also a survey of pet owners about their own pets' behaviors, and I can't shake the feeling there's more than a bit of projection/anthropomorphism involved.
The link from the article contained snippets but I can't access the full paper. For anyone who can (if you would be so kind) did they share similar concerns and/or control for them?
This is an actual "view"? I thought that was a stereotype, possibly entertained by people who never had any extensive interactions with cats.
> Previous studies have revealed some differences between canine and feline scavenging. Dogs tend to eat the face and throats of humans, then break the ribs and chew on bones. Cats, on the other hand, often strip skin from the nose, upper lip, and fingers (the same places, Rando notes, that they nip at when playing with a living owner). Scavenging is more common with dogs than cats, Byard adds, “but I don’t trust either of them.”
The first time I went on a two-week holiday after getting my cat, when I got back, she became super anxious about me leaving. Whenever I left, she would wait near door and meow loudly until I came back. It took a while for her to start to trust that I wouldn't just disappear again when I left.
Edit 1: I have no idea idea why people are voting this down. I'd love for somebody to explain to me what about my comment is causing them to do that.
Edit 2: I guess the word "grieve" is ambiguous, but I understand it in this context to mean "being upset at somebody else's death." Of course cats are upset if somebody they like isn't around, that's what I'm describing happened with my cat. I just doubt it's because they know that somebody died.
Edit 3: I think I might have been wrong, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41182137 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41182236
Why wouldn't they understand it? Death is a natural process.
They may not be aware of their own mortality. But they can tell if another animal has died. And that if it has died it isn't coming back.
It's common advice to let dogs see and smell the bodies of their deceased companions, so they know they aren't coming back.
You've already said they react in a particular way when people or other animals they care about aren't around anymore. That's grieving.
> I have no idea idea why people are voting this down
Because you're stating something incorrect, confidently.
I've read about this, though, and the scientific consensus seems to be that cats do not, in fact, understand the concept of death, because they tend to wait for deceased owners to return. The same applies to dogs.
They understand the concept of absence, obviously, and they find it upsetting, but I think calling it "grief" is misleading, because it implies that they know that the person they miss is actually dead.
Cats are very loving animals that can bond deeply to others. They just show it in different ways.
Of course they can grieve.
That's... that's what I said? That's why I put "grieve" in quotes, because in the article, they used it specifically as a reaction to death. But death is probably not a concept a cat understands. They understand concepts like "absence" and "missing," but I doubt they know that things die.
This is anecdotally wrong (see below), but also doesn't make much sense on its face. Why would social animals not recognize death? A dead animal poses many dangers to a social group, so there is evolutionary pressure to recognize death. I also don't see a reason to assume that understanding death requires more intelligence than a cat has.
But aside from that, I'm anecdotally sure that cats understand death and grieve. I've seen a bonded cat search for their friend who died earlier, but the cat didn't yet know. Once the cat saw and smelled the others body, this searching stopped. They instead became lethargic for multiple weeks, in a human I'd have said depressed, and they looked for much more human contact than they had before (even when the two were separated for a couple of days).
If you're correct, why did the cat suddenly stop searching everywhere, when it didn't stop searching during previous separations? Why did it not try to "wake" their friend? Why did it eat less, play less, and search for more human affection in the following weeks, even though it never did so during previous separation?
Killing is what a cat does, left to its own devices.
You have to define what this means, because I honestly have no idea what you mean. Animals understand alive vs not alive perfectly well.
Why are you so confident that cats can understand some concepts but not death, as a predator they kill animals, so do youy think that in their mind they think that after they kill an animal that animal is just sleeping and should wake up soon?
I am wondering what a cat that acknowledges a friend died or "is sleeping the long one" is thinking if they dream about them, is that confusing for them, dead cats comming to you in a dream.
This is a very human approach to describing how a cat perceives the world.
A lot of animals kill other animals. Some of these animals don't even have brains. I don't think "killing" is a necessary or sufficient precondition for understanding death.
"is thinking if they dream about them, is that confusing for them"
I think this is an interesting question in general. Cats seem to understand the difference between dreams and reality. When my cat seems to have a nightmare and I wake her up, she calms down immediately, so she must have some understanding that her dream was not real.
So when a cat leaves a dead mouse as an offer she does or does not understand that the mouse will never wake up? I think the cats know that dead is irreversible and a cold dead cat is not sleeping.
Do you think then that no other animals understand the concept of death or you think cats are not intelligent enough like monkeys/elephants.
My own hypothesis is that cats catch prey and play with them for a while as a way of getting more training per kill. They probably find some enjoyment in it, which is likely evolved as an incentive to practice. Cats are certainly well known for their playfulness, which tends to be stronger at a young age.
I suppose both theories might be true at different times, depending on the context or the prey. I guess mice aren't particularly capable of doing any real harm to a cat.
You're putting a lot of weight with the philosophical definitions of grieve and death for a cat. Yeah, it's probably not the same understanding as a human, as a social animal it's probably not the no understanding at all either.
The article is like "cats react to death like they understand what it is" and you're ambiguously insinuating that they don't without defining your terms or actually adding any substance.
"Cats might understand death but not the same way I do" is both obvious and probable and not particularly interesting.
> I very much doubt cats understand the concept of death and can "grieve,"
My guess is someone disagrees with both of these claims. To be fair, your doubting that they can grieve is a bit ambiguous – of course they can grieve but whether they can grieve over a death, assumes they understand death as distinct from 'where have they gone?'.
actually now that i think about it, having owned plenty of both as pets, cats are definitely a lot dumber than rats so now i'm definitely not sure.
I assume they take it as disrespect that their pet is an animal that is different than them. Rather than accepting they are simply another form of life with whole different motivations and concepts.
All I'm saying is that I don't think the word "grief" is the correct word in this context, because grief implies an understanding of the concept of death, which is a very human idea that we had to learn. We weren't born with this understanding, learning about death is something very upsetting that children have to go through.
-- https://www.apa.org/topics/grief
That seems to describe the behavior people have seen cats display after the loss of someone or another animal in their homes. Maybe they don't know it's death, but they know it's a loss and exhibit signs of distress, anxiety, and confusion. We can't really ask them to find out if they're dwelling on the past or apprehensive about the future though.
You may believe it is not so, but maybe you now understand my position?