The headline from a 2025 University of Adelaide study is easy to summarize and easy to feel smug about: one in four adults cannot tell when a cat is upset. The tempting response is “well, not me, I speak fluent cat.” But the study’s most useful finding is not about the people who miss the signals. It is about the people who catch them and press on regardless. That second group cannot be fixed with more information, and it may include you.
Two different failures, not one
Published in Frontiers in Ethology, the study set 368 adults in front of ten short videos of people and cats playing, then asked them to read each cat’s mood and choose how they would respond. The researchers found something that looked, at first, like a single problem with reading cats. On closer inspection it was two problems that happen to look alike.
The first is a recognition failure. When a cat threw an unmistakable signal, hissing or flattened ears, 23.3 percent of participants still did not register the negative mood. When the signal was quiet, a tense posture or shifted whiskers, that number nearly doubled to 48.7 percent. So a real slice of people genuinely cannot read a cat, especially before the cat escalates to drama.
The second failure is the interesting one. Even among people who correctly saw that a cat was uneasy, 44.4 percent chose to keep interacting with it anyway. They read the room and overrode what they read. Most tellingly, 42 percent of participants said they would rub the belly of a cat showing negative signals, a near-perfect way to earn a bite, because an exposed feline belly is often a defensive posture, not an invitation.
“These are two separate problems with two separate fixes,” says Dr. Nina Kohl, a feline behavior veterinarian who reviews welfare research for Pet Times. “One group can’t read the cat. The other reads the cat just fine and talks themselves out of it, usually with a very human story like ‘she’s upset, so she needs comforting.’ You cannot solve both with the same pamphlet.”
The part where education backfired
Here is the finding that should make anyone humble. The researchers split the group and had half watch a short educational video on cat body language during play. Afterward, those viewers felt significantly more confident. Their actual accuracy barely moved, and their ability to catch subtle cues actually dropped by 18.8 percentage points.
Read that again. A quick lesson made people surer of themselves without making them better, which is arguably the worst possible outcome. Confidence outran skill. It is a useful warning for all of us, including anyone reading a cat-behavior article and feeling their expertise tick upward: feeling fluent in cat and being fluent in cat are not the same thing, and a little knowledge can widen the gap.
Why this is worth taking seriously
Cats are not being difficult when they send these signals; they are communicating in the only vocabulary they have. Recent behavioral work underscores how rich that vocabulary is. A 2023 study led by researchers at UCLA and the University of Kansas cataloged 276 distinct cat facial expressions in feline-to-feline interactions, a reminder that the animal we dismiss as “unreadable” is running a dense, subtle signaling system we mostly ignore.
And ignoring it has costs beyond a scratched hand. Cats subjected to repeated, unwanted handling can develop lasting stress-related behavior and health problems, from litter box avoidance to stress-linked cystitis. Pushing on with an overstimulated cat does not repair the moment; it deepens the hole.
A cheat sheet for the distancing cues people miss
Since the study showed that the quiet signals are the ones we blow past, here is the short list worth memorizing. When you see these, the move is to stop and give the cat room, not to reassure them with touch:
- Tail flicking, thumping, or lashing (a wagging cat tail is not a happy dog tail)
- Ears rotating sideways or flattening back toward the head
- Skin rippling or twitching along the back
- Whiskers pulled tight and forward, or a hard stare with dilated pupils
- Sudden stillness, a crouch, or a frozen “I am not enjoying this” posture
- Overgrooming, lip-licking, or a quick head-turn away from your hand
The kindest and most counterintuitive apology to an overstimulated cat is not more affection. It is stepping back.
“We want to make it right by smothering them, and that is a very human instinct,” Dr. Kohl says. “But the cat isn’t asking for comfort, it’s asking for space. Give it, watch, and let the cat tell you when play is back on the table instead of assuming you already know.”
References
- Henning, J.S.L., et al. “Do you speak cat? Assessing the impact of a training video on human recognition of cat emotions and behaviours during play interactions.” Frontiers in Ethology, 2025. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ethology/articles/10.3389/fetho.2025.1675587/full
- Scott, L., and Florkiewicz, B.N. “Feline Faces: Unraveling the Social Function of Domestic Cat Facial Signals.” Behavioural Processes, 2023. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S037663572300154X
- Buffington, C.A.T., et al. “Feline idiopathic cystitis and environmental stress.” International Cat Care. https://icatcare.org/advice/feline-idiopathic-cystitis/
