“When I started raising cats, I was attracted by their mysteriousness. “Of course I am a cat lover,” says Dr Saho Takagi of Kyoto University. Unsurprisingly, many of these scientists are cat owners. What we do know about the inner lives of domestic cats is usually determined by scientists running studies in their homes. “Which in a sense, cats are – they just want to follow their own nature.” “They have been stigmatised as evil because they are thought to be amoral,” says the philosopher and writer John Gray, author of Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life. In the middle ages, cats were thought of as the companions of witches, and sometimes tortured and burned. Cats have been unfairly maligned through much of human history. What are these cats thinking? How do they perceive the world? Dr Saho Takagiīut there is another reason that cats are under-researched. “The behaviour of a cat is so modified by its environment that if you move it to a laboratory,” says Siracusa, “what you’ll see is not really reflective of what the normal behaviour of the cat is.” I was attracted by their mysteriousness. But cats are intensely territorial creatures. This, says Dr Carlo Siracusa of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, “is partly due to practical problems.”ĭogs are easy to study: you can take them to a lab and they will be content. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardianĭespite the fact that cats are the most common pet in UK households after dogs, we know relatively little about them. You don’t need to understand the ways of a cat to worship it … Sirin Kale and her cat Larry.

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