Research overview: assessing positive affective states in captive felids

Modern welfare science increasingly seeks not just to minimise suffering but to promote positive emotional states, yet measuring positive affect in cats is challenging. This overview surveys approaches to assessing positive welfare in felids: indicators such as relaxed body postures, purring and affiliative behaviour, play, anticipatory behaviour toward rewards, exploratory engagement and behavioural diversity, alongside emerging cognitive measures like judgement-bias tests that probe optimism. It examines the conceptual shift toward good lives, the difficulty of distinguishing contentment from inactivity or shutdown, and how positive-welfare indicators complement stress measures. It discusses the role of agency, choice and control in generating positive states. The synthesis frames the assessment of positive affect as a frontier in felid welfare, expanding goals beyond the absence of harm.