Cats are sensitive to human emotional gestures

This study tested whether cats modify their behaviour according to their owner's displayed emotion, comparing happy and angry expressions. Cats showed behaviours consistent with detecting the emotional state, adjusting their proximity and contact, and the effect interacted with the relationship quality reported by owners. While more subtle than in dogs, the results indicate cats attend to human affective cues rather than ignoring them, contributing to a body of work establishing that domestic cats are socially perceptive partners. The findings help explain everyday owner reports that their cats seem to respond to mood, and they motivated further cross-modal emotion research.