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Many animals probably hold mental representations about the whereabouts of others; this is a form of socio-spatial cognition. We tested whether cats mentally map the spatial position of their owner or a familiar cat to the source of the owner's or familiar cat's vocalization. In Experiment 1, we placed one speaker outside a familiar room (speaker 1) and another (speaker 2) inside the room, as far as possible from speaker 1, then we left the subject alone in the room. In the habituation phase, the cat heard its owner's voice calling its name five times from speaker 1. In the test phase, shortly after the 5th habituation phase vocalization, one of the two speakers played either the owner's voice or a stranger's voice calling the cat's name once. There were four test combinations of speaker location and sound: SamesoundSamelocation, SamesoundDifflocation, DiffsoundSamelocation, DiffsoundDifflocation. In line with our prediction, cats showed most surprise in the SamesoundDifflocation condition, where the owner suddenly seemed to be in a new place. This reaction disappeared when we used cat vocalizations (Experiment 2) or non-vocal sounds (Experiment 3) as the auditory stimuli. Our results suggest that cats have mental representations about their out-of-sight owner linked to hearing the owner's voice, indicating a previously unidentified socio-spatial cognitive ability., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Anicom Speciality Medical Institute Inc. played no role in the study design, data collection or analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript, providing only financial support in the form of M.A.’s salary. This does not alter our adherence to PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Companion animals have established special relationships with humans, as demonstrated by many studies describing their abilities and bonds to communicate with humans. In this questionnaire-based study, we explored owners' views of pets in terms of their emotional and intellectual functions and their relationship with owners, and compared the results between cat owners and dog owners. We found that although both types of owners most often regarded their pets as "family members," this tendency was weaker in cat owners. Cat owners also scored significantly lower than dog owners for some emotions and intellect they thought their pets might have. Additionally, cat owners who regard their cats as family members tend to attribute "compassion" to their cats more strongly than cat owners who regard their pets as non-family. This study revealed that some aspects of cat owners' views of their pets differ from those of dog owners. These finding may help us to better understand our heterospecific companions and establish good relationships with them., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

We used an expectancy violation procedure to ask whether cats could use a causal rule to infer the presence of an unseen object on hearing the noise it made inside a container and predict its appearance when the container was turned over. We presented cats with either an object dropping out of an opaque container or no object dropping out (turning-over phase) after producing either a rattling sound by shaking the container with the object inside, or no sound (shaking phase). The cats were then allowed to freely explore the experimental environment (exploration phase). The relation between the sound and the object matched with physical laws in half of the trials (congruent condition) and mismatched in the other half (incongruent condition). Inferring the presence of an unseen object from the noise was predicted to result in longer looking time in the incongruent condition. The prediction was supported by the cats' behavior during the turning-over phase. The results suggest that cats used a causal-logical understanding of auditory stimuli to predict the appearance of invisible objects. The ecology of cats' natural hunting style may favor the ability for inference on the basis of sounds.

Recognizing invisible entities from auditory information is advantageous to animals in various situations including predator avoidance and foraging. In 2 experiments we asked whether cats could predict the presence of an unseen object on hearing noise it made, based on a causal-logical rule. After observing an experimenter shaking an opaque container for 15 seconds (observation phase), the cats freely explored the environment for 15 seconds (response phase). Experiment 1 tested 3 conditions. In the first, “contingent noise” condition, the object inside the container made a rattling noise when shaken. In the second, “irrelevant noise” condition, white noise accompanied the shaking action. In the third, “no noise” condition, the shaking action was silent. Experiment 2 tested a “noncontingent noise” condition, in which the rattling noise and movement of the container were out of synchrony. In both experiments cats looked at the container for longer in the “contingent noise” condition than the other conditions. These results suggest that cats used a causal-logical understanding of auditory stimuli to predict the presence of invisible objects. This ability may be related to the ecology of cats' natural hunting style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]