Do Cats Have Emotions?

There is little doubt that most pet cats enjoy the company of their humans and give affection in return. Those who deny that cats can be affectionate should analyze exactly what it is that makes humans affectionate. The underlying causes of affection are actually very similar!

Grief

Cats are aware that a familiar person/cat is absent and may search for that person/cat. It may change an established hierarchy as well as being the absence of a familiar companion. It is not grief in the human term, but the sudden absence of something familiar is distressing to many cats. The absence of a familiar part of the environment causes sadness. The continued absence of that person or thing can lead to stress. In the context of a bereavement, this stress is termed grief.

As with affection, humans must analyze exactly what causes and sustains human grief before arguing that animals do not feel a comparable emotion. Grief is a reaction to the sudden absence of something or someone which caused happiness/satisfaction.

The major difference is that cats show grief for someone who has been a close companion while humans show grief for a distant relative or at the death of a public figure. Cats simply lack the abstraction (and the memory capacity) which allows humans to grieve for someone we have never met or who has been absent from our life for a prolonged period of time.

Comprehension of Death (Bereavement)

Cat appear to comprehend a state of someone not being alive - body temperature changes, smell changes etc. Whether they make the link between a corpse and someone previously alive is not certain, but many cats stop looking for an absent companion after being shown the body of a deceased companion. Therefore cats probably have some comprehension that something dead cannot become alive again. The display of grief in cats is due to the absence of someone familiar. In humans it is, in part, due to the realization that we will never see that person alive again i.e. to our understanding of the permanence of death.