Your car had trouble starting so you were late for work, which spiraled into missing an important meeting, upsetting your boss and even forgetting your lunch. Then by the time you get home after bumper to bumper traffic, you’re left an exhausted, upset mess. As if all that weren’t enough, your cat is keeping her distance and didn’t even offer her normal hello meow. Is she just upset that her dinner is late or is there something more to her behavior?

Do Cats Feel Emotion?

In order sense emotion, you need to be able to feel that emotion yourself. While a cat’s emotional spectrum might not be as elaborate and fine-tuned as ours, they do experience the basic feelings of happiness, fear, anger, and sadness. It is these emotions that drive how they react to certain situations and stimuli. For example, a cat experiencing anger will hiss, bite, and scratch her antagonist while the happy cat will purr and rub.

It’s hard to measure the exact scale that cats feel these emotions. However, we do know that those with behavior problems, like excessive grooming, operate on the extreme of that scale. So if cats are capable of experiencing these emotions, it would make sense that they can also detect them in us.

Can Cats Sense Our Emotions?

The quick answer is yes! While they may not be as emotionally in-tune as their counterpart dogs, cats can at least tell the difference between our facial expressions and then act accordingly. For instance, cats are more likely to purr, rub on, and sit on their owner’s lap when that owner is smiling. Frowning owners might not get positive attention from their cats and may even cause their kitty fear and anxiety. There can also be an increase in friendliness if the owner is crying. Most of us would like to think that our kitty is trying to share in our joy or eliminate our tears when he responds this way, and maybe he is.

But it also may be that he is fueling his own needs. Cats are quick to learn that smiles equal more treats and attention, frowns equal less treats or possibly negative attention, and tears can mean some downtime where an owner pours over their kitty. This means that a cat’s emotional IQ is learned through time and interactions with their owners. Cats that are new to a household will react differently to your emotions than they will after many years spent with you. Furthermore, most cats have no specific responses to the emotions displayed by strangers adding more fuel to this theory.

What Does This Mean for You and Your Cat?

According to a study by Galvan and Vonk, a cat’s learned response to changes in your facial expressions does suggest that they are privy to your emotions, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they feel empathy toward what you are feeling. However, this study does determine that cats might not be as aloof as we once thought they were. Since cats take the time to study our facial expressions and learn how those gestures affect them, it at least hints to the idea that they are more interested in us than we once believed.

Even though this interest may be self-serving, the fact that our cats care enough about us to learn from our behaviors can make any cat parent proud.

The next time you come home after a long and rough day, don’t take it personally if your cat isn’t there to comfort you. Rather use his behavior as a suggestion and turn your frown into a smile. Not only will this action bring you and your cat closer, it will also brighten your day.