7 years vs albacore

In 2019, four Japanese researchers published seven years of work confirming what I could have told them over a Diet Sundrop. Cats know their names.

The scientists played recordings of owners calling their cats. Most of the cats turned an ear or a head. Fewer than one in ten bothered to meow, flick a tail, or stand up. The researchers called this an orienting response.

I call it Winston.

When I say his name, he turns his head and gives me the look a senior partner gives a junior associate who has knocked on his door. He waits. The burden of proof is mine.

A name earns a cat’s attention when something good tends to follow it, the study says. Food. Play. A scratch behind the ears. So Winston hears his name and checks my hands. A can means the meeting has an agenda. Empty hands mean I’ve wasted the partner’s time, and he goes back to the brief he was reviewing with his eyes closed.

The researchers matched every test word to the cat’s name in length and accent. They masked the voices with tones so the judges couldn’t tell which word was which. They ran the recordings through software that measured pitch and frequency. All of it to prove a cat can tell one word from another.

Winston can tell a tuna can from a Fancy Feast tin from two rooms away.

The first crack of the tuna lid, and he’s on the counter. Sitting. Waiting. Looking at me like he’s been there all along and I’m late.