Your Cat Loves You (Or Is Just Plotting Your Demise): A Scientific Inquiry

Wednesday, February 12, 2025.

So, it turns out cats have attachment styles. Just like dogs. Just like babies. Just like you. Just like me.

This is unsettling news for a few reasons.

First, it suggests that your cat might actually care about you—or not.

Second, it means science has taken another bold step in proving that nothing is special, not even our relationships with our pets.

And third, it means some poor researcher spent their days filming cats to confirm what any cat owner could have told them over a glass of wine: some cats like you, some cats tolerate you, and some cats would burn your house down if they had opposable thumbs.

Researchers in China—who we can assume were either cat lovers or masochists—set out to prove that feline attachment styles mirror those of dogs and human infants. They categorized them into three neat little boxes: Secure (affectionate but not clingy), Anxious (needy little psychos), and Avoidant (aloof jerks).

Their findings, published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science, suggest that these attachment styles influence a cat’s behavior, its social interactions, and even its oxytocin levels—the so-called ‘love hormone.’

Yes, the same hormone responsible for human bonding and that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when someone holds your hand. Apparently, cats have it too. Science is always discovering things that make us question free will.

To test all of this, the researchers conducted what they call a "secure base test."

I kid you not.

A cat and its owner were thrown into an unfamiliar room together. The owner leaves for two minutes, comes back, and the cat's reaction is recorded.

Some cats rejoiced, some ignored the return of their human overlord, and some panicked like the world had ended.

Then, the scientists did another experiment at home, observing how the cats behaved when left to their own devices. Did they gravitate toward their humans? Did they endure awkward forced cuddles? Did they plot revenge?

And here’s where it gets weird: oxytocin levels in cat saliva mirrored their attachment styles.

Securely attached cats started with lower oxytocin but got a boost after social interaction, as if their little feline hearts swelled with affection. Anxiously attached cats, on the other hand, began with higher oxytocin levels but saw a drop after interaction, perhaps because they spent the entire time worrying about what it all meant. Avoidant cats? No change. They remained as indifferent as ever.

This has actual, practical implications.

If your cat is securely attached, congrats! Your life together will be harmonious. If your cat is anxious, expect clinginess followed by bouts of existential despair. If your cat is avoidant, you may simply be an unpaid butler in their eyes.

And if your cat shows signs of aggression, fear not—this research may one day lead to scientifically-backed techniques for improving feline socialization. Maybe one day, we’ll have oxytocin sprays for cats. Maybe one day, we’ll understand them fully.

Maybe one day, we’ll all stop pretending we own cats and admit that they own us.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The study had limitations. Only 30 cats were involved, all from one city, and their owners were young and childless, which means the results might not apply to, say, your aunt’s 17-year-old Maine Coon who only emerges from under the couch once a year.

In other words, the design of this study was absurd from the get go.

Future studies could expand the sample size and explore what owner characteristics influence a cat’s attachment.

Maybe we’ll find out that cats, much like humans, can be conditioned into loving us. So what?

Or maybe we’ll find out what we’ve long suspected: that cats do whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want, and science is just along for the ride. That’s far more likely to be the case.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Chang, H., Zhang, J., Huang, H., Aviles-Rosa, E. O., Huang, H., Guo, Y., Xiao, Z., Liu, Q., Deng, B., & Zhang, L. (2024). The effects of owner-cat interaction on oxytocin secretion in pet cats with different attachment styles. Applied Animal Behaviour Science.