Researchers theorize that cats meow more at men to demand their attention, as women already tend to give them more attention without needing to meow.
A new report published in Ethology suggests that cats may communicate differently depending on their owners’ sex, with cats men receive significantly more meows and other vocalizations than women.
The study analyzed the interactions of 31 cat owners with their pets when they arrived home, using video recordings taken in natural, everyday conditions. Participants were instructed to enter their homes and behave as they normally wouldallowing researchers to observe the cats’ authentic reactions.
The findings revealed a surprising pattern: During the first 100 seconds after their owners entered, cats vocalized, on average, 4.3 times toward their owners compared to 1.8 times toward their owners. These vocalizations included meows, purrs and chirps. The researchers found no influence of other factors, such as the cat’s age, sex or breed.
Researchers monitored 22 distinct behaviorsfrom social gestures such as lifting the tail and rubbing the body to displacement actions such as shaking the body and scratching. Although many of these behaviors tended to be grouped into social or displacement categories, vocalizations stood out, not showing a strong correlation with the other behavioral groups.
This independence suggests that cats’ meows during greetings are intentional signals, not mere expressions of stress, hunger or emotional state. Instead, the vocalizations appear to be a intentional communication tool.
Although the researchers did not directly investigate the underlying cause of the sex-based differences, their observations point to a likely explanation: women generally offered more attentionwere better at interpreting feline emotions and often imitated cat sounds, leading them to rely less on vocal signals. Men, on the other hand, seemed more distant in their interactions, causing cats to meow more to get their attention.
“It is possible that male caregivers require more explicit vocalizations to understand and respond to your cats’ needs“, the researchers wrote. Over time, this dynamic may condition cats to vocalize more frequently towards men.
