Have you ever been over at a friends’ house and their cat stares at you like you’re their next victim? Or maybe you have a feline furball that randomly yowls and hisses at you 30 minutes after purring and rubbing up against your leg. Could your cat be bipolar, moody, or possibly even worse? Researchers in the UK may have an answer for you: your cat could indeed be psychopathic.
Back in 2016, we wrote about how researchers in Australia identified five personality types that cats display: skittish, outgoing, dominant, spontaneous, and friendly. The Australian researchers felt that these five personality traits were the most common among domestic cats. Apparently, researchers almost 10,000 miles away felt there were a few more feline personality traits left undocumented.
It is not a well-known fact that the number one cause of death in domestic house cats is euthanasia because of undesirable behavior according to research published by the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science in 2001. Researchers in England wanted to understand how different cat personalities affected the relationship with their owners and if there is a possibly a way to address the above issue.
Just this month, researchers from the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Mores University published their findings on cats’ boldness, meanness, and disinhibition traits via a 46-question survey to 549 domestic cat owners to understand the dynamics of their relationship (sorry Tiger King, you weren’t part of this research).
These researchers theorized that not all potential personality factors have been captured, researched, and documented, especially regarding aggression and other undesirable behaviors. A “triarchic” model of psychopathy was used in creating the questions to measure such behaviors. These questions included “My cat vocalizes loudly (e.g. meows, yowls) for no apparent reason,” “My cat runs around the house for no apparent reason,” and “My cat does not appear to act guilty after misbehaving.” These questions were specifically designed to measure disinhibition, meanness, and boldness.
Researchers theorized they would come to three unique findings from the study.
Yes, a large portion of the cats studied did show at least some traits of psychopathy and that these traits most likely stem from their undomesticated ancestors that had to survive in the wild. And, most likely, the more psychopathic an undomesticated cat in the wild was, the greater the chance at longer-term survival.
Congratulations, if you are a proud feline parent, there is a good chance you live with a psycho.
If you are interested in finding out your kitty’s psychopathic tendencies, fill out the Cat Triarchic questionnaire.