Your Cat Does Know It’s Name, Just Doesn’t Want To Respond To You

A new scientific study is out that found your cat DOES know their name- they just choose to ignore or answer you. Typical for cats. Sometimes you have to wonder what the heck scientists are thinking when they research some ridiculous things. At the same time though, people are still low-key interested at the same time. For instance, this new study, from behavioral scientists at the University of Tokyo decided to see if a cat could recognize their name when called by their owners. The lead scientist Atsuko Saito had already seen in previous studies that cats were able to recognize their owner's voice but now they wanted to see if they knew their name, especially when their owners spoke similar sounding words.

After some exhaustive "research," that I hope involved several hours just playing with cats, they found that the cats actually do know their name! Researchers spoke to the cats using their names, other cats names they lived with, and other random nouns to see how they responded. Cats were able to respond to their name, knowing that a reward or punishment usually comes after. The cats may not realize that the word being said is their name, but they do recognize it all the same.