Do cats feel empathy?

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grey_kitty

I don’t care what some religious people say–I believe animals have souls. How can you look into the face of your dog or cat and not just KNOW it’s there?

But this is not a religious or philosophical discussion of whether animals have souls or not. It’s also not about dogs (who definitely have a form of empathy, the way I see it).

This is a little story that shows that cats may have empathy, at least some cats.

A woman whose house I clean (I’ll call her Judy) had a beautiful shorthaired gray cat named Dusty. Dusty was 14 and by the way he moved, you could tell he was getting up there in years.

A month ago, Judy described the way Dusty always sits on her lap when she’s reading or looking out the window. Dusty has given her a lot of comfort since her husband of over 30 years died right around the holidays. Since the day she lost her husband, Dusty has always been right there, sitting on her lap, and sleeping curled up next to her at night.

She told me an incredible story. One day Judy was crying hard because she was missing her husband so much. Dusty came over to her, gently placed his paw on her face, and she looked up to see him gazing at her sadly. She told me Dusty’s eyes looked full of tears. According to scientific evidence, humans are the only known species (except elephants and possibly some apes) able to shed emotional tears. But I’m not so sure. I swear I used to see my dog Daisy get tears in her eyes when she was punished and knew she’d been naughty, and I’ve seen this in other dogs too. But cats? It could be–or maybe Dusty is just a very special cat.

Judy cried into Dusty’s fur for a little while, and Dusty just sat there in her lap while she stroked him. When she was done crying, he looked up at her and then, amazingly, licked the tears from her face.
Dusty felt Judy’s sadness and knew exactly what she needed.

Last week I went back to Judy’s house I noticed Dusty wasn’t there and I asked her about him. She started to tear up and gave me the sad news. Dusty had to be put to sleep because he had developed kidney disease.

I felt awful. I didn’t know what to say, so I just quietly said, “I’m sorry.”
Dusty gave a lot of comfort to Judy in her time of loneliness and grief. Now she must move on.

Dusty certainly seemed to have empathy. I do wonder if intelligent animals like dogs and cats can feel empathy for their loved ones. I think they can and I think this story proves it.

For further reading, here is an interesting article about empathy in animals, that concludes they can feel it. Dogs in particular can be empathic, but it’s been seen in other animals as well, even chickens.

23 thoughts on “Do cats feel empathy?”

  1. I am pretty sure animals feel empathy and do sense what we are feeling and thinking, my little black cat Evie sleeps with me every night because she seems to know how lonely I am without my wife, she never once slept upstairs in our bed prior to my wife’s passing, when I am having a bad day and can’t stop crying from grief, Evie sits on my lap and purrs softly , she has also started “talking” meowing when she’s in another room from me, she will get progressively louder until I respond to her, I think it is her way of checking up on me. I don’t know, but she has become a great comfort in my life.

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    • Yes…she knows. What a blessing Evie is to you now. Pets can be so healing to us. I like the fact many nursing homes allow their residents to keep a cat or a small dog. For many of these sick and elderly people their pets are the only “people” they really have.

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      • yes for sure, the nursing homes here are just starting to allow cats and small dogs (we are about a decade behind the times) and the hospitals are starting to use pet therapy , the Palliative care unit my wife was in allowed me to bring her cat Sabre to her, they even provided him with food and disposable litter pans, he stayed with my wife right to the end, I never knew that cats could cry, but he cried and grieved hard when she passed, he died last month of a broken heart, I had him at the vet, the vet said the cat is healthy and should be eating , he refused food and died laying on the floor next to my wifes Urn.

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        • Oh, Butch. I don’t even know what to say. That is so heartbreaking. Yes, Sabre was grieving for your wife and felt your family’s sadness. I’m so sorry for your loss (and Sabre too) but as sad as it is, that’s a beautiful story about the love animals can feel.
          They are such sensitive creatures.

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  3. I’ll inbox you a photo of an empathic cat named Bo. Bo was my friend Jenny’s cat. One night I was very sad and I was crying and bo put his paw on my heart and cuddled me to make me feel better.

    You can put a photo of bo up if you want. The late bo was an very loving pathetic cat.

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  7. Decades ago, we had a grey tabby who couldn’t bear to hear a baby cry. Whenever the baby cried, the cat would jump on him and start licking his nose — which usually startled him so much that he stopped crying.

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    • Awww! 🙂
      I never believed the old wive’s tale about cats sucking away a baby’s breath. It used to make me laugh how horrified people used to get that I allowed my cat, Boris to sleep with our son in his crib when he was an infant. Boris never sat on his face, just like the warmth and probably the milk smell too I guess. H used to curl up at my son’s feet and purr. My son loved it and used to laugh at Boris’s loud purr.

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