Some cats went off their food. Some yowled more and sought attention. Some, after the death of their cat companion, would sleep more and play less. Some would even do so, the scientists noted, when the family dog had died.
What was going on? The answer is simple, said Jennifer Vonk, a professor at Oakland University in the US: they were mourning.
In a study of more than 400 recently bereaved cats, she found signs that, despite their reputation for standoffishness, many cats seemed to experience grief.
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“Unlike dogs, we tend to think that cats are aloof and not social,” she said. But, she pointed out, when cats