Millions of people share their homes with a cat, and many owners say their pet lifts their mood. Yet research on cats and mental health has been mixed, with some studies finding benefits and others finding none, or even small drawbacks. A new study suggests that what may matter is not simply owning a cat, but how much time owners spend close to it each day.
Researchers at Kyoto University and Azabu University followed 19 cat owners and their 29 cats in their own homes for one month. The findings appear in iScience. The team wanted to know whether owners and cats show linked hormone patterns, something already reported in people and their dogs but never tested in cats.
Owners were recruited through flyers and social media. Over the month, the researchers collected three urine samples from each owner and each cat to measure oxytocin and cortisol. Owners completed a short mood questionnaire, and small Bluetooth beacons fitted to the cats’ collars tracked how close each cat stayed to its owner during daily life.
Oxytocin is a hormone linked to bonding and social closeness, and it plays a part in the attachment between parents and children. Cortisol is a hormone that rises with stress. The mood questionnaire covered seven areas, including tension, low mood, anger, fatigue, confusion, friendliness, and vigour.
Complete hormone data were available for 24 cats from 17 owners. Owners with higher oxytocin tended to have cats with higher oxytocin. Owners with higher cortisol tended to have cats with lower oxytocin. Cortisol levels in owners and cats, however, were not clearly related, which differs from the stress hormone pattern seen in dog owners and their pets.
Cats with higher oxytocin had owners who reported fewer negative feelings. In fact, the cats’ oxytocin was more closely tied to their owners’ negative mood than the owners’ own oxytocin was. Owners with higher cortisol also reported more negative moods.
Physical closeness told a separate story. Owners whose cats spent more time near them scored higher on vigour, the sense of feeling lively and full of energy. How many years someone had lived with their cat did not reliably predict positive mood, and an apparent link between longer ownership and more negative mood disappeared when the data were analysed by household.
The study has clear limits. It was small, it took place in one country, and the analyses were exploratory. Every finding is a correlation, so it cannot show whether closeness to a cat improves mood, or whether happier owners simply spend more time with their pets. The authors also note that cats and owners share the same home, so some of the hormone links may reflect the household environment rather than the relationship itself.
Earlier research has shown that short interactions with cats can affect how owners feel. This study adds hormone and tracking data from everyday life, and suggests that the quality and closeness of the bond may explain why past findings on cat ownership and well-being have been so inconsistent. The full paper is available to read in the open access iScience study on cats and their owners.
