Why We Keep Underestimating Cats With Dr. Monique Udell

Cats have a reputation for being mysterious, stubborn, and “low maintenance” but that story falls apart fast when you look at the science. I’m joined by Dr. Monique Udell, professor at Oregon State University and director of the Human Animal Interaction Lab, to unpack what research reveals about feline cognition, cat communication, and the everyday ways cats pay attention to us.

We talk about why dog cognition has dominated the spotlight, how early psychology research actually relied on cats, and what changes when we design studies that make sense to feline motivation. Dr. Udell shares what her lab is learning about cats in training classes, cat assisted interventions, and cat child partnerships, plus the surprisingly important role of social rewards. If you’ve ever felt like your cat “gets bored” with treats or quits after a few reps, you’ll understand why that can be normal cat behavior, not a personality flaw.

Then we dive into the signals many of us miss: subtle body language, consent cues during petting, how cats respond to human attention, and why scent, sound, and even learned words matter in a cat’s world. We also break down persistent myths that harm cat welfare, from the idea that cats can’t be trained to the belief that indoor cats don’t need daily enrichment. You’ll leave with concrete, evidence-based ideas for enrichment, play, and foundational skills like carrier training and harness training that can make vet care and emergencies safer.

Subscribe for more science-backed cat behavior conversations, share this with a fellow cat person, and leave a rating or review if it helped you see your cat differently.

Transcript

Introduction to Human-Animal Interaction

Speaker 0:00

Hey, welcome back to Hiss and Tell. I'm your host, Christina Wilson, Cat Behavior Consultant and Funder of Cat Atute Adjustment. Today I'm speaking with Dr. Monique Ridell, professor at Oregon State University, and director of the Human Animal Interaction Lab. If you've ever wondered whether cats really recognize our words, invent games, understand our attention, or why so many outdated myths about cats refuse to disappear, this is the episode for you. We are going to talk about the fascinating world of feline cognition, communication, enrichment, and the latest research that's reshaping how we understand our feline companions. So whether you're a lifelong cat lover, a behavior nerd, or just curious, this is the episode for you.

Kristiina Wilson 0:40

Hi, and welcome to another episode of Hissentel. Today I am with Dr. Monique Udell, a professor at Oregon State University. Welcome, Dr. Udell. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about who you are, what you do, and what originally kind of drew you into studying human-animal interaction and cognition?

Journey into Animal Behavior and Cognition

Speaker 1:03

Sure. So I do a combination of research and teaching and outreach at Oregon State and focusing in the area of animal behavior, human-animal interactions. And I have always been interested in animals from early age. I knew I would do something with animals, and I just didn't know what. And so it was kind of a journey figuring out what there was that could be done. You know, I think for many kids who want to work with animals, we start out knowing about veterinarians and maybe zookeepers. But, you know, it was kind of a winding path to discovering that one could study animal behavior as a career. And learning that really changed my path and made me want to still help animals and help people, but from a slightly different angle focused on their behavior. Right.

Kristiina Wilson 1:53

Yeah. It's I feel like so much cognition work is focused on dogs. What made you interested in working with cats?

The Fascination with Cats

Dr. Monique Udell 2:00

Yeah, so I I've always really been interested in cats as well. So I grew up surrounded by cats. I had lots of cats in my household growing up. And then I had some really unique opportunities and experiences that sort of solidified my interest in cats. So I was lucky enough as a teenager to join my family, joined a uh safari to Africa in Kenya that was part of our local zoo, and um seeing the wildcats and just how incredible they were. And then later in college and graduate school, I worked in a lot of uh wildlife facilities, like rehabilitation centers and like retirement facilities for animals that had been in various settings. And one of those was large cat specific, wildcat specific, um, and really developed a passion for big cats there. And then as I started doing work with dogs, um, sort of my love for cats and my interest and curiosity about cats and the things I saw always kind of came back to the surface. And I really even started collecting some pilot data on cats back in graduate school because I just was personally interested. So I I think I always knew that I would incorporate work with cats into the work that I did. But yeah, sometimes when you are first starting out, you start where uh a lot of the interest is and where some of the momentum is. And I also love dogs. Uh, I have a passion for dogs too and canines. And so for me, I think it's just logical. There's not, I think, as hard of a line in my mind between cats and dogs. Right. Maybe it's for some people. Sure. And so it was just a logical extension, I think, for me, that

The Need for Feline Cognition Research

Dr. Monique Udell 3:38

in much the same way that when I first started studying dogs, there just wasn't as as much out there. And there was this curiosity about this animal that we coexist with so closely, and we feel like we know so well, and yet we don't have as much information as I feel like we should for 14,000 years of history. I think the same is true for cats. We have this incredible coexistence, and yet we don't know as much about this other species that we live with as we should, or about our love for them and our interactions with them. And so I think that really has driven a lot of my passion.

Kristiina Wilson 4:10

And it totally makes sense. And I love seeing now that that there's so many dog cognition labs popping up all over the place. And I guess that sort of leads me into another question, which was why do you think that feline cognition research has historically gotten so much less attention than dog cognition research? Do you think it's because people have to walk their dogs and like pay more attention to their dogs? Or do you think it's because you know one of the things in your paper that we're gonna talk about is that people have historically thought that cats are easier pets, or is it just because it's a lot harder to study cats in a in a lab context? Or something else entirely?

Dr. Monique Udell 4:46

Yeah, yeah. Those are those are all definitely reasons that I hear. Um and I I think, yeah, I think it's both some combination and something else entirely. Yeah. So so I think I think where I where I see the difference is that one, these things ebb and flow over time. So while we talk about this resurgence of interest in in dog cognition work or dog behavior work, or at least um, you know, 20 years ago we were talking about as a resurgence, I think it's well established

Historical Perspectives on Dog vs. Cat Research

Dr. Monique Udell 5:13

now.

Kristiina Wilson 5:13

Yeah.

Dr. Monique Udell 5:14

But that there was this longer history of interest in dogs scientifically. I mean, Darwin wrote a lot about dogs. There was lots of research done in the past, you know, socialization critical periods in the 1960s, even before that, but there's, you know, a lot of attention given to dogs then. And then again, dog wolf comparisons in the 90s. So it's not like this came out of the blue. These these patterns of interest have existed. And then there was just this huge resurgence of interest, you know, in the like late 1990s, early 2000s, and so on. And I think the same is true for cats. We sometimes forget the history of interest. And at the time, the early parts of the times where people were interested in dogs, including again Darwin, he was also interested in cats. He wrote about cats and their behavior and emotion right alongside dogs in his writings. And you can kind of follow that history and pattern through different time periods and maybe sometimes different questions. But you know, there was a lot of interest in cats. And so Edward Thorndike, who is a famous psychologist, um, he was interested originally in social learning. And one of the animals that he chose as his model were cats. And then when that didn't quite work out for him, he developed basically cause and effect psychology, which was the foundation of what we now think of as like operant learning or positive reinforcement training. And the model species that we all know that Thorndike worked with or that we often forget, um, but we should know, is cats. So cats were there, you know, and being studied for their learning ability, for the foundation of what became animal training.

Speaker 2 6:50

Right.

Dr. Monique Udell 6:50

Right at the beginning. And then there's been a lot of like perceptual cognition research with cats over the years. So I think where a lot of the research has been lacking in more modern history and recent history is when we're thinking about problem-solving ability, social behavior, human-animal interaction work. Um, and I don't think it's always historically been the case, but I think that in part, maybe due to our cultural perspective and expectations that dogs should be more social or should behave certain ways or should be better trained or better at problem solving, it made it seem like maybe they would be easier to work with. And I think to some extent today, there's this belief that dogs are easier inherently to work with than cats. Um, once you start working with cats, and the more you start learning about them and understanding what motivates cats, what makes them as individuals easier or more challenging to work with. Um, and the same individual individual variability is true with dogs. You can work with cats and ask a lot of the same questions. You just need to do it in a way that's relevant to cats. Yeah. And so I think it's totally doable, but I think maybe it's the things that you mentioned are all reasons I think that people believe it's difficult to work with cats. But also a lot of those things I think have more to do with our perceptions of what cats are than necessarily what cats are really capable of. Um, and so I think it's overcoming some of those misconceptions that cats can't do these things. And then also, you know, as a culture, as a society, we have to believe that. Because if we aren't socializing our cats when they're young and they're not getting out of the house except to go to the vet and they don't have a lot of enrichment, then they can be more difficult to work with. But that's not inherently because they're cats. It has a lot to do with their lifetime experiences, and those sometimes differ quite a bit between cats and dogs.

Kristiina Wilson 8:44

So can you tell listeners a little bit about your lab, the human-animal interaction lab, and what what you get up to over there?

The Human-Animal Interaction Lab

Dr. Monique Udell 8:53

Yeah. What do we get up to? We get up to a lot of things. So so our sort of founding mission um is to improve the lives of both humans and animals through deeper understanding of both. So we're really trying to improve human-animal interactions. We have a very one health focus. And so what this means is that to improve the lives, we also have to understand the animals that we're working with. And so a lot of our work is focused on fundamental understanding of behavior and cognition of different species. We work a lot with pet dogs and pet cats or like cohabitating dogs and cats with humans. We also work with other species. And so I've worked with uh captive wildlife. Right now we have some research going on with lambs and their mothers, their youth. Um, and so we we aren't necessarily species specific, but we do a lot of work with our some of our closest companions. And then the other side of that is then taking what we've learned and studying things like uh interventions, like human-animal interactions or animal-assisted interventions that are aimed at utilizing that knowledge to improve the relationships between people and the animals that they live with and hopefully resulting in positive health outcomes, um, both physical, emotional, and just general sense of well-being and belonging for both partners.

Kristiina Wilson 10:18

Any um research questions that you are working on right now that you're super excited about that you can talk about?

Dr. Monique Udell 10:24

Yeah, yeah. I like that you make that caveat.

Kristiina Wilson 10:26

Yeah.

Dr. Monique Udell 10:28

Yeah. I mean, there's actually so many different facets that we're looking at. Um, it's it's sometimes hard to narrow it down to one. One one sort of broad area that we've been spending a lot of time in recently is is looking at um cats' capacity and sort of interest in engaging in animal-assisted interventions and more active uh partnerships. And so we do a

Current Research on Cats and Children

Dr. Monique Udell 10:52

lot of work looking at relationships between right now, we've been focusing a lot on cats and children and just seeing how we can provide experiences to both the child and cat partners that will help enrich those relationships. And that includes things like either harness and leash training or backpack training, but also like basic, you know, kind of equivalent to what you'd expect to do in like a puppy training class. Can we do those things with cats and how does that impact their long-term cognition, their their social behavior and those relationships? And so it's not just one study, there's multiple studies, but I think that it's been pretty exciting because we're just seeing not only so much potential, but we're seeing this incredible enthusiasm for people who want to be involved in this. And we're seeing so many people who want better relationships with their cats, um, including kids who are like just gung-ho and open-minded, and they haven't, you know, maybe developed some of these belief systems yet about putting limitations on cats. And um, and so there's just this incredible enthusiasm. And then you see this beautiful change sometimes in behavior or relationship or sense of understanding. And I think it gives me a lot of hope for the future because I don't um I don't think that you know this is gonna stay the case where cats are underrepresented or maybe don't have these opportunities. I we're definitely seeing that momentum shift towards people wanting those deeper relationships, wanting those opportunities, and that's that's really the first step. That's the catalyst.

Kristiina Wilson 12:16

No, absolutely. So you're doing a lot of citizen science research as well, or is it sort of like a hybrid?

Citizen Science and Community Engagement

Dr. Monique Udell 12:22

We do, we do some citizen science research and we do some like more remote survey research. Um, but but actually a lot of what I'm talking about, we actually bring folks in, they come to our lab. We have a behavior center that's uh both for doing sort of behavior tests, cognition tests, and also training classes. And so a lot of times people are coming to us and we're offering these training classes and interventions. There's one collaborative project we have going on right now that's a partnership with 4-H in our local area. And so helping develop and provide curriculum to 4-H clubs that are focused on cats, and those kids are working within their home 4-H units to train their cats, not only just train them, but they have the option of training them to be therapy animals, certified therapy animals. Yeah, so they can like pass it forward, right? And show other people and help other people with this experience. And so, yeah, so we do a lot of in-person and work too.

Kristiina Wilson 13:22

That's amazing. That must be so nice. So, because you're having so many cats actually come into the lab, what are some of the ch biggest challenges in the cat research in your lab?

Dr. Monique Udell 13:33

Biggest

Challenges in Cat Research Methodology

Dr. Monique Udell 13:34

challenges. Um, you know, I think early on, some of the challenges were figuring out how to ask questions that we wanted to ask in ways that that made a lot of sense to cats. There are there are things that I think we found challenging in the beginning when working with cats, like certain problem-solving tasks that we thought would maybe work well as they were, but just turn out to not really fit well with the way cats behave. Um, and not for the reasons most people expect. So I think in the beginning, uh, the assumption that many people would have is that um maybe they aren't as socially motivated, and so we're gonna have trouble, or maybe they aren't as comfortable with unfamiliar people. And certainly, again, that can be true of some cats, um, but not necessarily all. Um the problem we were actually having is that cats, or a lot of cats, um, don't love doing tests that require multiple repetitive, repeated trials for food. Like walk a little, get some food, walk a little, get some food, and then you're gonna do that for an hour. Most cats are like, no, thank you. I will do that two times. I get it. Like, this is old now. I'm gonna move on, do something different. What we've have found though, and this was kind of like a turning point for us early on, is that cats will do a lot of those repeated trial tests if the reward is interaction with a person. And with a lot of cats, it doesn't even have to be their person. They're happy to do that for puts from a stranger. And so what's really ironic and funny about that is that, you know, there's this idea that cats are somehow less socially motivated. And yet a lot of our early methodologies, when we had to make a switch, it was to switch to social reinforcers because we could get dogs and cats to do that, whereas only some of the cats would do the repetitive trials for the food.

Speaker 2 15:25

Right.

Dr. Monique Udell 15:26

And yeah, and that boils down to like a difference in um foraging. Like, you know, dogs are scavengers. There is some predatory motor patterns in dogs, um, and especially some breeds, but by and large, um, dogs are scavengers. And so that's very normal behavior for them. Cats, you know, if if we're thinking about like a cat hunting, they do their thing, they have this larger energetic cost, and then they've achieved it. And we're letting them achieve it, and then we're like, no, do that a hundred more times. So, so some of those just like little figuring out those little differences and figuring out like what is it that we really want to know? And are we asking it in the best possible way? And I feel feel like now that we've done that enough, we have a pretty good sense of developing or finessing methodologies that'll work well not only in cats, but that we can use across species. And now it just boils down to sometimes just making sure that the cats that we're working with feel comfortable in the environment that we're in. And sometimes that means recruiting cats specifically who have experience like getting outside their house. And sometimes it means going to the cats where they feel comfortable. So yeah, figuring out those sorts of things. But in recent times it's become much easier to work with cats because the more you work with them and understand them, the easier it is to ask the questions

Understanding Cat Behavior and Communication

Dr. Monique Udell 16:39

you want to ask.

Kristiina Wilson 16:39

Of course. And that makes a lot of sense to me. And it actually, I feel like, reinforces the papers that were coming out a few years ago. Now I'm forgetting who authored them. Was it Kristen or there was a one paper about preference um in cats where they set up was it the strange person scenario? And then they had the cat choose between their person or a treat or play. Yeah, the cat chose. Who authored that paper? Yeah, Kristen was the only thing. Yeah. Yeah, okay. That's what I thought. I was like, oh, so many papers floating around in my brain all the time. Yeah. So that really reinforces that, right? And then it totally makes sense.

Dr. Monique Udell 17:17

In some ways, I think that uh cats are easier to do some of these tests with, but we make it hard by insisting they do it the way we believe it should be done. And they're really done, they're just happy to do it. They think this is really interesting. And then as soon as you try to make it a food task, which it doesn't inherently have to be, they're like, no, this is not. I don't want to be paid in food. It's yeah.

Kristiina Wilson 17:40

I think a lot of times also because we often tend to use the same treats. And there's that new paper that just came out from Japan talking about cats getting sick of the same food after three times, right? So I wonder how much overlap there is with that as well. Because at least I know like our cats with all their different diets, there's one kind of treat that I can give to all of them. So if I was gonna give them treats, it has to be this one kind of treat. And I'm sure they'd be like, we don't want that anymore. We're sick of this.

Dr. Monique Udell 18:09

Yeah, and that's absolutely. And yeah, it's not to say that cats aren't food motivated. Absolutely they are, but it's just that I think the way that we think about it and the way that we pair food with things sometimes is not the way that the cats are interested. And then, like you're saying, exactly. Do they want that thing that we're giving them? And do they want it like a bunch of times in a row? Or would would they rather some variety? Yeah, and and our cats too. Like there's some treats that they absolutely love, but we keep those kind of special for those moments where we want to train something new so that they're like exciting. Um, and I think we know that for dogs when we train dogs and we often come with our like treat bags full of a variety of things. And I think sometimes we miss that for cats. And and so yeah, I think that would make a difference for sure.

Kristiina Wilson 18:52

Yeah, I agree. It's I love brownies, but I don't want a brownie every second of the day. And I don't want like as much as I love them, I don't want like 54 brownies a day because I would be sick. Yeah, just like couldn't get me to work for 54 brownies. Anyway, again. So that kind of answered my question with like, I my next question is gonna be do you think that we fail at communicating with cats effectively a lot because we're using human or dog social expectations?

The Importance of Listening to Cats

Dr. Monique Udell 19:20

I think I think what's interesting there is that, you know, yeah. So I think sometimes we try to utilize expectations that we're familiar with when we're interacting with cats. And I'm not sure if it's just social expectations or just expectations more generally, like, you know, what how should they respond to food? And when we're thinking about the social cues, I think that it's the struggles that we have with cats are very similar to the struggles that we have across the board socially as humans, as individual humans. It's that relationships are better when we take the time to understand the person that we're communicating with, when we understand our partner, and when we listen to them. And not just in terms of the words that they're speaking. When we're talking about listening, whether it's another human or whether it's a non-human animal, it's also their body language. It's also like, do they lean into your touch or are they pulling away from your touch? You know, what are the other cues going on at that moment in that environment? What is our history of relationship with this individual? You know, if we're just meeting this individual for the per first time, you know, if you're just meeting a person for the first time, you're probably not gonna walk right up to them and hug them and pick them up and carry them around. We feel so comfortable doing that with cats and dogs we've never met before. I'm not entirely sure why. And especially the smaller they are, the more comfortable we might feel. And cats are tend to be on average smaller than a lot of dogs. And so I think a lot of it just boils down to uh the need to be better listeners and not even necessarily cat specific, but I think we forget, and you know, I've heard people say a lot with cats, especially recently, that cats are harder to understand because their signaling is more subtle. And I challenge anyone who has a cat that's listening to this to take like 30 minutes and just put your full attention on your cat for 30 minutes and watch all the signaling that happens. I don't care what they're doing. There is so much communication happening, so much subtle and obvious behaviors happening that if you just take that dedicated time and you watch them, you'll see. I think, I mean, for me, when I do that, it's just so fascinating. I learn things about my cats that I might not have noticed before or I didn't realize even about cats in general before. Um, and it's so impactful to your relationship because it gives you a new appreciation and also the cats notice. Cats notice. Yeah, they notice when you're watching them, they notice when you're responding accurately to them, and that is a quick, easy way to. Start improving that relationship and also having a cat that may actually end up being more pro-social towards you.

Kristiina Wilson 22:06

Yeah. I have to add to that, I am a huge fan of pointing your camera at your cat and capturing video of your cat, especially because a cat gives you those little minute movements. So especially if you're having a cat who has padding aggression, or they may give you tiny little body movements that, you know, you can pick up on. You know, one of our cats used to get to a point where she would hate for she didn't want us to pat her anymore. And all that she did would give us like a little side eye. You know, it would just be like and it was this fast. So if we hadn't like recorded her and then slowed it down to wash it, we wouldn't have known. But once we did that, then we're like, oh, it's a side eye. Okay, now we know. And she totally thought she was being very clear, and we were so rude that we kept patting her once she was like very clear. And so then she would like take her pawn and be like, enough. Yeah. These phones that we all carry around can be so helpful if you just point that also at your cat and see what's going on. Yeah, that's a great suggestion. So I always have clients do that and send me videos so that I can have more videos of cats to stare at all the time. So you talked a little bit about how looking at your cat, your cat will notice that you're looking at them if it's actually paying attention to, like when they're interacting with us. I know that your lab has looked at how cats respond to human attention and social cues.

Cats' Sensitivity to Human Attention

Dr. Monique Udell 23:26

Yeah, so much. So much. I think that's where I would love to see a lot more research, or one of the areas I'd love to see a lot more research, because I think we underestimate just how much cats are paying attention to and how sensitive they are. And so I can tell you what we know from the research that's been done, but that's not necessarily representative of what cats are paying the most attention to, in part because there's only been research done on certain sensory systems with cats with respect to this, and only a little bit in each of these areas. So we've done a lot on visual cues, um, in part just because we were trying to extend and do some parallels with research that has been done in other species, like dogs. And so they are very aware of your attentional state. Like, are you looking at them, directing your energy towards them? If they approach you, do you reciprocate or are you ignoring them? Very sensitive to that. You can see dramatic, statistically significant differences in sociability just in a couple of minutes of telling a caregiver to pay attention or not to pay attention to their cat. So they get that. Um they can follow gestures. They are also decent at um social referencing, where not only are they paying attention to what you're doing, but they'll modify their behavior with respect to you, especially if they want something. I think anybody who has a cat who's been meowed at and then led to the kitchen for dinner probably is aware of this, but there's some research to back it up. Um, and then they're also paying attention to other things. They're very aware of scents. Um, they're very interested in scent. And there's a lot more research on uh olfaction in dogs than in cats. And I think there that's in part because we utilize dogs in working roles that involve sniffing. I think we could be doing the same with cats. I I have one cat that I don't know, we might work on it with her because she is so interested in scents, and she is very good at detecting subtle changes or finding things based on scent. And so they pay a lot of attention to that. We know that's a big part of their world and a part of what makes them feel at home is having that not only their own scent in a space, but having commingled scent of themselves and their their family members, and this is like a key feature of what it means to be home to a cat. And then tactile, they're like very tactile animals, and then vocalizations. We don't even get me started on vocalizations, they're very sensitive, very sensitive to sound and like including like you know, tone of voice, but they can also learn words. And yeah, we haven't counted how many words our cats at home learn, but one of our cats, we started trying to count the other day and we were testing them, and it was an incredible number. I was like, there should be more research than this in cats too. So yeah, that I think they're paying attention to a lot. We're really important to them when we take care of them in our homes. You know, we control all the resources.

Kristiina Wilson 26:15

It's true. It's funny about the cats and words. There was a study that I read recently that was talking about, you know, cats are aware of the names of other cats in the household. Yeah. And then I think the same day I read that, I was every night before bed, I like to take a flirt toy and like run up and down this really long hallway in our house just to get everybody's energy out before bed. And I usually, when I get to the end of the hallway, I yell everyone's names who hasn't followed me to just my wife is like, you sound like a football coach, because I'll be like, Come on, let's go, Kevin, blah, blah, blah. And there's two orange guys who are best friends, Gene and Butters. And they like to jump out and get each other halfway through to like tackle each other, just like totally friendly. And I was yelling Kevin and Egg and like all these other people. And the second that I yelled for Gene, I saw Butters be like, Oh, my buddy's coming,

The Joy of Cat Training and Communication

Kristiina Wilson 27:01

got excited and went and hid so that he could wait and get his buddy who he knew was coming down the hallway. And it was so cool to see that again. It was something that I never thought of in terms of he obviously not only knows that that's the word for his friend, but then used it in a way to prepare to play. Yeah. It was so cute and it was such a cool moment. And then I was like, Oh, I wish I had that on video, but like I didn't say.

Dr. Monique Udell 27:25

I know that's that's a thing, right? You always wish you had this thing on video when they do something, you're like, Oh, I missed it.

Kristiina Wilson 27:30

I know, it was it was so cool. Anyway, that's cool. Yeah. It was very, very cute to see. And especially because we have so many of them that they know 15 cat names. Yeah. That's pretty cool. So I don't know. There's there's a lot to be said about associative concept training and the speech button use, and you know, I I could go on for a long time about a lot of that, but that's not uh appropriate.

Debunking Cat Myths: The Catastrophic Myths Paper

Kristiina Wilson 27:53

But I have a lot of thoughts about that. Again, not appropriate. So I want to talk um a little bit about your paper um that you wrote. It was catastrophic myths, common misconceptions about the environmental, nutritional, and genetic management of domestic cats and their welfare implications. So, and I will put a link to that paper for everyone in the show notes so you guys can go and read it. And I'll put links to all the papers that we've talked about because I know we've talked about a lot of papers. So, can you tell me a little bit about what inspired this catastrophic myth series?

Dr. Monique Udell 28:25

Yeah, that's a great question. Well, in part, for me, it was an opportunity to work with uh a colleague that I especially admire, Dr. Candace Croney, and and really the whole team of co-authors on that paper was incredible. So it was just it was a wonderful opportunity to work with a variety of people who had a passion for cats and had different expertise with cats who could come together and say, what are the challenges that we face? Communicating, what are the misconceptions that exist? And sometimes you have to name a thing before you can address it, you know? And so just naming these things, like, yeah, these are the ones that we hear over and over again that there either isn't evidence for or there's already evidence against, and yet they are sticking in these expectations. And not only that, they're there things that we believe that addressing and challenging could actually have a meaningful positive welfare, well-being effect on the lives of these cats, like challenging ideas that are not only potentially wrong or inconsistent, but also prevent people from maybe engaging with their cats in ways

Misinformation in Cat Care: The Challenge of Outdated Beliefs

Dr. Monique Udell 29:39

that would provide the best possible outcomes. So I think that was kind of our hope as a group and a collective, and then obviously just the opportunity to work with each other to to think how can we move this field forward and make it better, I think was an inspiration too.

Kristiina Wilson 29:54

So why do you think that there could because there is so much misinformation and outdated beliefs? And I find that in my practice too, that so many people come to me and they're like, oh, I've been doing XYZ for my cat problem. And XYZ is like such a bad practice and so outdated, but it's still just floating around there in the ether, or like TV personalities are, you know, recommending that you do this. And it just, it's the stuff is so perpetually kind of out there and very difficult to remove, sort of much like dominance, you know, myths. Why do you think that this stuff remains so widespread?

Dr. Monique Udell 30:25

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think in part until fairly recently, there wasn't a lot of widespread effort to counter it. I'm not gonna say there wasn't effort. I know lots of individuals have been making effort for a long time, but I think that there needs to be a sort of a cultural shift or a cultural movement of sorts, right? We have to get enough momentum to say, hey, we should talk about this and we should look at the evidence that exists. And if there's not evidence, we need people who are willing to do the thing of collecting the evidence and addressing what's challenging about collecting it if there is challenge and actually take those steps, right? To actually move these ideas forward. And so I think part of it is just sometimes there's just not enough information, even if we believe that something might not be true, we need good information about that. We need to ask it scientifically. Um, because sometimes our expectations or our beliefs might be wrong in either direction. So we don't want to replace one potential myth with another myth. We want to actually make sure that information is good information. So that's that's the first bit. And then the second bit is that once we have good information to share, then we need to share it. We need to make sure it gets to the people who are interacting with those animals, whether it's, you know, the practitioners in applied settings or whether it's the cat caregivers or just the general public who might encounter cats and make sure that that information is accessible and can be applied easily by the people who have that first direct contact with those animals. And so it's not enough just to say, yes, cats can be trained. You also need to say how and like in what ways and how can the average person access that material so that they can have that enriched relationship with their cat and also explaining why it's important. So I think a lot of it just comes down to the availability of information and then the accessibility of information. And once you put that information out there, one of the things that I've really loved seeing again is that a lot of, I mean, we have so many cats living in our homes with us. And I granted this is not the state of cats all around the world. So we have to be sensitive to the fact that the way we live with cats here in the United States or within, you know, westernized culture is not necessarily the same as the way people live with cats everywhere. But when we think about the way that we live with cats here, and we think about why we live with them the way that we do, we see that even on surveys, people are reporting increasingly that they're viewing cats as family members. Some people view cats as their children. And the ratings for those sorts of questions are pretty parallel now to what people report for their dogs. So people love these animals, um, view them as family members. And of course, they most people want to do right by them. They want to have good relationships with them. And so when you put that information out there, I think we're in an era where most people are very receptive and they're like, yes, please tell me more. Yes, please give me those resources.

Understanding Cat Maintenance: The Low Maintenance Myth

Dr. Monique Udell 33:21

And so I think now's a great time to like start challenging these myths because people are ready and receptive. And when we've done training classes, we always have wait lists. We always have more people that want to do it than we have space in any given point in time. So I I think the the desire is there now. And it's just gonna take, I think, an awareness and a recognition that this is what folks want and it's possible. Um and we just need to make it more accessible.

Kristiina Wilson 33:49

I wanted to talk about, well, all of the myths that you talk about, but the one I wanted to address first that we already touched on a little bit is the idea that cats are low maintenance pets. Do you feel that that myth is still existing? And how do you think it kind of impacts feline welfare?

Dr. Monique Udell 34:08

Yeah, I think I think it does still exist to some extent. Not again, not everybody. There's individual variability in cats, there's individual variability in people uh and perspectives. But I I do think it does to some extent still exist. Um, you know, in part it might have to do with sort of this transition and how we view cats in our general lives and even just the differences in the way that that we raised cats. So, you know, when it comes to things like enrichment or activities, how do how's your cat going to keep busy? We have to keep in mind that until recently, a great number of cats, even homed cats, were indoor, outdoor or maybe entirely outdoor, they were keeping themselves busy. So, you know, they had they had their own forms of enrichment. And the more that we bring cats in, um, and especially if cats are primarily like confined in confined spaces, then they're we're gonna need to replace that stimulation for them. We're gonna need to provide that enrichment. And so I think part of it is just, you know, during these transitions for how we view and keep cats, even within like just across generations for the same people. You know, when I grew up, you know, our cats were indoor, outdoor, and now I live in a place and in a situation where our cats are indoor except for when we bring them out on leash. And so it's it's a different way, even for me, of raising cats than what I grew up with. And so I think part of it is just a learning curve and thinking about, you know, how we live now and what that means and the effort that it takes to maintain the kind of relationship and and well-being in different situations of contexts. And then I think the other part is that some of these myths uh rest on this idea that cats can't, right? Like cats can't be trained, cats uh can't be as social as dogs, or they can't um solve problems in the same way. And if you believe that, if you come in believing that, you can be incredibly well-being and want the you're incredibly well-meaning and want the uh the best for your cat, but you're not gonna invest your time and energy providing them with things that you think aren't relevant to them, that they're not interested in, that they can't do. And so I think by challenging some of those things and saying, no, actually, cats, not only can they be trained, but we wouldn't know as much about modern training, or it would have been delayed significantly if it hadn't been for cats, because cats, cats showed us about child and error learning. So they can absolutely do it. And cats can be social. They have these incredibly sophisticated, adaptive, complex social structures. They're facultatively social just like dogs, meaning they have an adaptive social structure, which is so cool. And that also means that your behavior, the environment you set up has a huge impact on the social relationships they have, including with you. Um, that's so empowering if you know that. You know, I'm gonna go adopt this kitten, and the life and world I set up for it is going to have a big influence on the relationship we have. That should be super empowering. And they can problem solve and they're curious. They're so curious. And a lot of the trouble I think cats get into at homes is like pure representation of their curiosity, but we can help funnel that in directions that are maybe safer, more appropriate for them, and also more fun for us.

Speaker 2 37:20

Yeah.

Dr. Monique Udell 37:21

Um, so if you have a cat that likes to get on the top of your counter and slowly push things off, that is, you know, they're getting to see what happens when they do that. They're getting to see what reactions happen in the environment. You know, there are these things going on. And so give your cat a puzzle box and they're probably gonna approach it with similar curiosity if you find the kinds of things they like. And so, yeah, I think there's opportunities just for uh challenging some of these ideas in ways that are just not only good for the cats, but also just really fun and exciting in terms of your relationship with them.

Kristiina Wilson 37:55

No, I agree. And that that leads me to talking about enrichment and what you like to propose for enrichment. I'm a huge fan, even when we were still living in New York City, I was a huge fan of like a suction-cut bird feeder paired with an enrichment box or a food puzzle, something that kind of allowed them to do that whole hunting sequence.

Enrichment for Cats: Engaging Their Curiosity

Kristiina Wilson 38:14

But I'm curious, what do you recommend to people who don't have 15 cats that they have to manage? What do people do for enrichment for their cats?

Dr. Monique Udell 38:23

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I I think that part of it comes down to like going back to watching your cat, like what are they interested in? The first step is getting a sense of your individual cat's preferences. And there are formal ways you can do that. Um, you know, the preference assessment sort of that you mentioned earlier is something people can do at home with their cats, dogs, any animal. It's basically just providing them with options of things that might be reinforcing to them, different toys, different activities, different ways of petting, different foods, and seeing what they engage with and what they don't, and seeing, you know, if you have multiple options, what do they choose first? I would definitely always recommend uh switching it up, just like we were talking about with different kinds of treats. Enrichment is only enriching if it has some variability to it. We've seen that in research over and over again with just about every species, including humans. Like you don't want to watch the same episode or the same TV show every day for the rest of your life. Like the cats want different kinds of stimulation. Um, and I think part of it then is just figuring out what kinds of interaction, stimulation activities does your cat like. So we now know some cats like playing fetch. You know, they'll they'll engage in fetch. Some cats like playing hide and seek or chase, some cats like sniffing, some cats like interacting with you socially. I have one cat that plays this really, I think is a very cute hunting game. Uh, and she hides under the edge of our comforter. And she, it's very like there are rules to this game. She is like very rules. And you have to like walk by. And it's like she doesn't always get the first person, but she expects everyone in the room to take turns walking by, and then she'll pick a person, it's like duck duck goose, and she'll like stick on her paw and she'll touch your foot, and you have to fall. If you don't fall, she will come out of the comforter and she'll give you that stink eye we're talking about, and she will follow you around complaining until you go back and redo the game. And she's it's just really fun. And so I think the more you start paying attention to like how they're responding to these interactions, you can start figuring out like what games can I play? You know, and sometimes they're made up, these made-up games, and then sometimes it's like quite similar to what you might do with other pets. So, like sticking treats in a paper towel roll and sticking fluff out of it that's cat safe that they can rip out, or maybe just bringing things in for them to to sniff as long again, you want to make sure you're bringing stuff in that's safe and that isn't, you know, toxic. But we're taking them on leashwalks. Some cats like leashwalks. Um, so there's so many options, and I think that's the thing is just keeping in mind that these are these are living beings and they have individuality and preferences. But like, you know, if you think to yourself, if I were stuck inside all day and didn't have more things to do than is just sort of right there in front of me, how would that feel? And looking at your cat's life and say, what's missing? Like, what what are cat things? What are things my cat likes? What are uh things that cats do, even big cats do in natural circumstances, and just trying some things out and seeing what sticks and resonates.

Kristiina Wilson 41:37

And it was like every night the cat would go, they would push the the bathroom door all the way open, so it made like a triangle between like the the wall between there, and then the person had to take one q-tip and put one q-tip through the crack, and the cat would take the q-tip, and if you didn't do that, the cat would get really angry and not go to bed and just follow you around screaming. And it's kind of like first, how does this ever happen? And then how does this become a routine? And how is this just like it? They're still funny, but I feel like everybody with cats recognizes this type of behavior and is like, oh yeah, that totally makes sense. Uh yeah, I get it. Like you've got to feed the cat a q-tip from behind a door triangle, and then everyone can chill out. Like, okay.

Dr. Monique Udell 42:20

Yeah, yeah, it's really funny. I, you know, I previously had a border collie and um she was very much that way. But I think when when you have a border collie, people are like, oh yeah, like they do those things. But yeah, cats, cats do it too. It's just really interesting. They they do have these games.

Kristiina Wilson 42:35

They really are our one-year-old little CH kitten, she is she's like the bully of the house. Not a bully, but she's just the the the head of the house, sort of. She's even at her young age and she bosses around her giant 20-pound huge uncles. And she will come and scream at me every night at like 5 or 6 p.m. and she is ready to play. And if I don't follow her, she will start like I don't I don't want to say being bad, but she'll just start being mischievous until I follow her, and we go and play her particular game that she's decided on that day, and I have to figure out which one of like three or four it is, and then I have to play it for however long she's decided. And she really she's got me under her thumb, man. I don't do it. Explain this to a cat sitter. This tiny little wobbly kitten is gonna come and scream at you, and then you have to follow her and figure out what which of the four toys she wants and exactly how she wants you to play it, and don't let any of her uncles steal it. And then Yeah.

Dr. Monique Udell 43:30

What's incredible about that is like we talk about how maybe it's more difficult to communicate with cats, but just think about all that's being communicated. Yeah, all this like intense preference, like to the rules of a game that they made up. Yeah. It's just there's so much communication going on. And so, yeah, I think if you're open to it, you know, like, and I think for those of us who find that kind of thing exciting, and I think a lot of people would find it exciting if they if they realized it was possible, and hopefully we're getting that work. out a little bit today is like you know see see what your cats are up to and and what what they do when you reciprocate what they're giving you and and sometimes it's really fun.

Kristiina Wilson 44:10

I think that would

Innovative Cat Studies: Exploring Feline Behavior

Kristiina Wilson 44:11

be such an interesting study is looking at the games that cats invent. I know that play is already such like a strange territory and kind of behavior research anyway but I feel like cats are always inventing weird games and it would be so interesting to look at kind of the variety of the games and is there consistency you know what's going on with you know it could be kind of like a citizen science type study and just looking at what is going on with cats and their individualized kind of gameplay and and how do they solicit play from people and what are they making up and I don't know. I'm forever coming up with too many ideas for studies that I'll never have the time to actually run but um with that would be fascinating though yeah I know it's fun so is there something that um if funding and logistics was not a limitation that there's like a cat study that you would love to do that you can talk about narrowing it down to one is is the hard thing.

Dr. Monique Udell 45:10

I mean I think I think where my heart has been recently um has really like been wanting to do a study. And I think this is less about uh specifics of cognition. There's lots of fun studies I'd want to do like just out of curiosity to understand cats. But I really one of the things I'm working towards is we're really wanting to do more research on helping people learn how to do basic training that makes not only their lives easier but also the cats' lives less stressful and it facilitates health. So we've really been interested um increasingly at things like training to carriers, training to leashes because it's it's such a foundational thing, right? Like if we can make that more accessible for people and for cats, then people can get their cats to the vet and actually get good vitals. People can take their cats' places and provide them enrichment that they can strengthen their bonds. They can get their cats to other research scientists who are studying other things without them being stressed out when they get there. Yeah. It opens up worlds and also there's a lot of things that you know when when you look at even like human wellbeing and you know when things like the forest fires happen in California, like one of the number one reasons that sometimes people choose not to evacuate is because they're worried about leaving behind their pets. And sometimes it has to do with shelters but sometimes it simply has to do with they can't get their cat in the carrier. Yeah. They can't get their cat to come with them. And so I think you know it's maybe not the top of my list in terms of you know showing something scientifically that's novel. I've got lots of those but I think if we could help demonstrate and share ways to do some of these basic care and transportation bits better then it would be a foundational thing that would help improve lots of aspects of the human-cat relationship and our knowledge of cats in the future.

Kristiina Wilson 47:09

I agree I think also getting that knowledge into the hands of people who are doing rescue work, who are raising kittens, who are you know doing that foundational work when the kittens are in that early socializing period yeah that would be really helpful if you just knock that out like you know whenever I have a litter of kittens they go through all of that they go through we're not gonna be afraid of vacuum training like we're gonna meet some dogs we're gonna meet a bunch of kids we're going for car rides we're going on a leash and so then they all come out kind of like people always say oh they're like dom cats but they're not they're just super socialized. Yeah they're just they've just been exposed to everything so they're not afraid of anything which is why how we have egg the CH kitten who now is just like screaming at everyone and detackling her uncles. But I think it's so valuable to get that stuff in early if possible.

Dr. Monique Udell 47:59

There's others that have things online too. Kristen has has some good training tutorials online. We've been trying to put some stuff out so it's out there it's one of those funny things that it's it's kind of like and this is kind of what I meant by research that is like maybe not contributing some of this really novel knowledge but just adding to the body of scientific evidence that people can point to and say like no look they can because yeah like we know that they can do this. We see this over and over we even have the protocols other people have the protocols but sometimes there's just this feeling that it's not true. And like you're saying people want to be like okay well these are special cats these are like the cat dogs. But really like just showing that this is inherently possible for most cats or for a lot of cats in the same way that's inherently possible for dogs. There's nothing special about dogs that like makes them especially compatible for leash walking or crate training like those aren't like dog inherent behaviors. It always cracks me up when people say stuff you know implying that because it's like no like most dogs don't like a leash the first time you put it on them either and I'm not saying that that's the only way but yeah just demonstrating that it's possible I think goes a long way yeah.

Kristiina Wilson 49:15

So after all of this work is there one thing that kind of still surprises you about cats?

Dr. Monique Udell 49:21

Hmm yeah you know I think the thing that surprises me continuously about cats really is their curiosity. I know that it's there but there are times when I see my cats or other people's cats doing things and I'm just like that is so interesting. You know they're really paying attention to like these fine-tuned details they're trying to figure something out they're watching what's going on um and yeah even when you know it like there's you can learn a lot from just just watching them and so I think um just understanding even the the source of that curiosity better and knowing more about like what are they paying attention to and you know what drives them I think there's a lot to be learned there still and I'd like to know more about it.

Kristiina Wilson 50:07

Well that sounds great and I want to thank you so much for being on the podcast. This was such a great chat I really enjoyed having you thanks so much for having me this was really

outtro2026.mp4

Kristiina Wilson 50:17

fun.

Speaker 50:17

Thanks so much for listening to the show. If you're looking for one-on-one support with behavior issues like litter box problems, aggression anxiety or multicat dynamics, you can find me through my behavior consulting business Catitudeadjustment at catitude-adjustment.com. If you like the episode please consider leaving a rating or review. It really helps us grow. For more episodes, show notes and resources head to HIFNTELPOCAS dot com. Huge thanks to Cat Beats for the music and I'll see you next time