Can my cat tell I’m sad or stressed?
- Feb 14
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 14
C.S. Lewis, the author of “The Chronicles of Narnia”, supposedly said that "You can't put a cat on a couch and make it tell you its dreams. They would probably see through the analyst a good deal better than he'd see through them." Lewis is stating elegantly what most cat owners already suspect: that the furry friends know much more about us than we know about them, and likely more than we know about ourselves.
It is easy to assume cats are less evolved than us. They don’t recite Shakespear or recycle their tuna cans. They don’t win Nobel prizes or fly airplanes. All they do is nap, silently judge and find new ways to emotionally black mail you for food. They seem pretty relaxed in their lack of civilisational backdrop. All that is thanks to their advanced senses.
Cats are constantly scanning their environment for changes. They sense them immediately and then go about confirming them. Their sight is so powerful that they can see better at night than most of us during the day. Their noses are x5 times stronger than humans. Their brains might be smaller than ours but their ability to form accurate conclusions based on pattern recognition is impeccable. Their lives in the wild depend on it. Lazy hunters simply don’t survive. When your cat is domesticated all his instincts and intuition don’t go to sleep. Instead a significant part of it is channelled to understand your emotional states: happiness, sadness, stress at work or state of calm.
So yes, your cat does know when you are stressed or sad. He or she notices a change in your posture or smells the chemical cocktail of hormones evaporating through your pores and in your breath. Usually by the time you realize you're being under strong emotions - your cat already identified that “something is up” and either left the room to avoid being in the "splash zone” or went into crisis management mode by diving into soothing techniques like purring or “making cookies” for you.
Having a cat is a spiritual adventure you might not be ready for. Regardless, you should push through and think about your cat as a mirror of your own inner landscape. If you see some change in their behaviour it might be useful to first check in with yourself. Is my cat not eating or throwing up because I’m under pressure and it pours out onto them? Are they more vocal because I’m crying in bed for the second day in a row? It is most recommended that you pay attention to the changes in their behaviour in regard to your own states.
Because of cats' hypersensitivity to the surroundings while you are picking a sitter for them while you go away, it is important to choose someone who is emotionally calm and has the ability to self-regulate.
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