Research showed that cats respond most quickly to a human stranger when both vocal and visual cues are directed to them.
Cats were also found to respond quicker to visual cues alone compared to vocal cues. The cats were placed in a room, one by one, and put through four different types of interactions.
The researcher would call out to them without making gestures, gesture towards them without any vocal cues, and vocalise and gesture towards them.
The study was conducted by a team of French researchers at the Paris Nanterre University’s Laboratory of Compared Ethology and Cognition.
It analyzed the behaviour of 12 cats living at a cat cafe. In the fourth interaction, the researcher would sit idle with no vocal cues or gestures.
This served as the study control, which was used as the baseline of comparison for the effects of the other scenarios.
In their analysis, the researchers found that cats were significantly more responsive to visual gestures along with sounds.
They also found that the cats appeared to wag their tails more when the human ignored them completely, which is a sign of stress.
Charlotte de Mouzon, who led the study, previously published research showing that house cats can easily distinguish the voice of their owners from the voice of a stranger.
It also found that house cats were more responsive when owners used a familiar “baby talk” voice.
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