Source checked 14 November 2026. PawLine editorial team. Not professionally reviewed.
Editorial information, not veterinary advice or an assessment of your cat. Do not test a myth through food, falling, handling or stress. Health, pain, injury and welfare concerns need direct professional advice. Do not delay care for a worksheet or an app reply.
The myth with the longest nine lives
Of all the stories told about cats, the most durable might be the coldest: the cat as a beautiful lodger who accepts food and shelter while remaining fundamentally unattached. It is a myth with pedigree - generations of pet books repeated that cats, descended from solitary hunters, simply do not bond the way dogs do. It has one flaw. When scientists finally tested it directly, it failed.
The test designed for babies
In 2019, Oregon State University researcher Kristyn Vitale and her colleagues put cats through a version of the standard psychology attachment test used with human infants. The setup is simple: a cat and their owner spend time in an unfamiliar room, the owner leaves, then returns. Attachment theory predicts how a bonded individual behaves - distressed by the departure, comforted by the return, then confident enough to explore again.
What the cats did
As Oregon State reports, cats displayed the same main attachment styles seen in babies and dogs, and in similar proportions - roughly two-thirds showed the secure-attachment pattern with their caregiver, seeking them out after the reunion and then relaxing back into exploration. Nature's coverage of the study emphasized how striking that number is: the bond pattern held for adult cats, not just kittens. The cats were not indifferent to who had left the room. They were counting on who came back.
Why the myth felt true
Cats express attachment in cat, not in dog. A bonded cat may signal security by sleeping in the room you just left, greeting you at the door with a vertical tail, or simply choosing the same sofa arm every evening. None of that looks like a golden retriever's devotion, so humans undercounted it. The research did not discover that cats changed. It discovered that we had been reading them on the wrong scale, grading a quiet signal against an exuberant one and calling the difference absence.
What to do with the corrected record
The practical reading is warm but not sentimental: your cat's preference for your company is a real bond, and like any bond it is shaped by daily interactions - play, predictable routines, respectful handling. The aloof roommate was always a story humans told. The animal in your home has known better all along.
Sources and limits
Oregon State University: Cats develop attachments to their caregivers, study shows