Domestic cats discriminate their names from other words

Saito and colleagues tested whether cats can tell their own name from similar-sounding words. Using habituation-dishabituation, cats heard a series of four nouns matched in length and accent to their name, then the name itself, spoken by the owner or a stranger. Cats gradually stopped responding to the repeated nouns but showed renewed orienting, chiefly ear and head movements, when their name was played, even in the voice of an unfamiliar speaker. Cats living in cat cafes distinguished their own name from other cats' names less reliably, suggesting that the relevance of a name depends on the social environment. The experiments demonstrated that cats can extract a meaningful, individually relevant sound from human speech, learned through everyday association, expanding evidence for cats' attention to human vocal communication.