How Slow Blinking Can Help You Bond With Cats

Cats are known for being aloof (and fluffy), but if you are struggling to bond with your feline companion, the problem may simply be that you are not speaking their language.

Fortunately, research from 2020 suggests it is easier than you might think. The trick is to smile at them more often – not by showing your teeth as a human would, but by narrowing your eyes and blinking slowly, the way cats do.

By watching interactions between cats and humans, scientists confirmed that the expression encourages cats, whether familiar with a person or not, to approach and be more receptive to them.

“As someone who has both studied animal behaviour and is a cat owner, it's great to be able to show that cats and humans can communicate in this way,” Karen McComb, a University of Sussex psychologist, said in a 2020 statement.

“It's something that many cat owners had already suspected, so it's exciting to have found evidence for it.”

How cats respond to slow blinking

Anyone who has spent time with cats has probably noticed their partially closed eyes and slow blinks. The expression resembles the narrowing of human eyes during a smile and generally appears when a cat is relaxed and content. It is understood as a sort of feline smile.

Cat owners’ anecdotal accounts have suggested that people can imitate the expression to show cats they are friendly and willing to interact. To test whether cats responded differently to humans who blinked slowly, a team of psychologists devised two experiments.

In the first, owners blinked slowly at 21 cats from 14 households. After each cat had settled comfortably in one place at home, its owner was asked to sit approximately 1 metre away and blink slowly when the cat looked at them. Cameras filmed both faces, and the researchers compared the results with the cats’ blinking when there was no human interaction.

Cats were more likely to blink slowly at their owners after their owners had done so, compared with the condition in which there was no interaction.

The second experiment involved 24 cats from eight households. Instead of their owners, researchers who had never met the cats performed the blinks. As a control, the cats were also filmed responding to people who stared at them without blinking.

The researchers repeated the slow-blinking procedure from the first experiment, this time extending a hand towards each cat as well. The cats were not only more likely to blink back after the person blinked, but also more likely to approach the outstretched hand.

“This study is the first to experimentally investigate the role of slow blinking in cat-human communication,” McComb said.

“And it is something you can try yourself with your own cat at home or with cats you meet in the street. It's a great way of enhancing the bond you have with cats. Try narrowing your eyes at them as you would in a relaxed smile, followed by closing your eyes for a couple of seconds. You'll find they respond in the same way themselves, and you can start a sort of conversation.”

Cats and their relationships with humans

Dogs may show their feelings far more enthusiastically than cats, but the findings are unlikely to surprise cat lovers. Recent research has shown that cats are much more attuned to the people they live with than previously thought, and that comparing them with dogs does them a disservice.

For instance, cats respond in kind when people are receptive to them, so a cat that seems standoffish may be reacting to you. Cats also reflect the personality traits of the people in their household, which may help explain why they appear to notice when their humans are sad. They can recognise their names too, even if they often choose to ignore them, and their bonds with people are surprisingly deep.

Why cats blink slowly at humans remains difficult to establish. One interpretation is that it signals harmless intentions, as cats are thought to regard an unbroken stare as a threat. Another possibility is that the expression developed because humans react positively to it. With domesticated animals, the answer is often impossible to determine.

Slow blinking and cat welfare

Whatever the reason, slow blinking does appear to help build rapport. Knowing how to strengthen relationships with these enigmatic animals could also help improve their emotional health, both at home and in other potentially stressful settings.

“Understanding positive ways in which cats and humans interact can enhance public understanding of cats, improve feline welfare, and tell us more about the socio-cognitive abilities of this under-studied species,” said Tasmin Humphrey, a psychologist at the University of Sussex.

“Our findings could potentially be used to assess the welfare of cats in a variety of settings, including veterinary practices and shelters.”

You are going to try it right now, aren’t you?

The research appeared in Scientific Reports.

An earlier version of this article was published in October 2020.