Why do some cats choose a favorite person while others do not? You may have noticed that your cat seems to love you more than anyone else in your family. However, maybe you’ve also had cats that seemed to love (or hate) everyone equally. Why you, and why this cat?
You already know your cat doesn’t fit the stereotype of a cold and aloof animal. Maybe he follows you around the house. Perhaps he won’t sleep at night unless he can sleep with you. It could be that he just seems to know when you sit down and is immediately there, in your lap, no matter where he was before.
So why do some cats choose a favorite person?
There are several possible reasons answering the question, “Why do some cats choose a favorite person?” If you live alone, then the answer is obvious: You’re his sole provider. He gets food, water, shelter, and above all, love, all from you.
When you don’t live alone, though, he might have chosen you simply because you’re the one who feeds him the most. Or you enjoy more playtime with him than anyone else and he’s a playful cat. It’s also entirely possible that there’s just something about you that makes him feel more safe and secure than anyone else does.
It could also be that you’re the only person who’s not bugging him all the time. Cats are drawn to people who love them and play with them on their terms. In fact, that’s why, in a crowd, cats seem to gravitate towards people with allergies or who just don’t like cats.
That seems too obvious. Is there more to it than this?
The question, “Why do some cats choose a favorite person,” begs a deeper look into the answer. Science explains a lot of feline behavior. This is no different.
Cats are only partly domesticated. They haven’t lived around humans nearly as long as dogs have, and for most of the history between us and our furry feline friends, we had limited interaction with them. We learned to tolerate them because they kept pests out of our food supplies, and they learned to tolerate us because our presence meant food, whether they hunted it, received it in the form of scraps, or both.
We cat parents know very well their partial wildness doesn’t mean they can’t love us. I have a cat right now who’s loving all over me (and drooling as she purrs). Our relationship with cats, however, is far closer to the relationship between two humans than it is between a human and a dog. There’s a give-and-take, and there’s communication. We have to learn to understand each other.
Because of that, they may well give us their affection because they choose to do so. They’re not yet hardwired to show it because they depend on us for their every need. We haven’t had anywhere near enough time to breed them to be so.
This isn’t to say that there isn’t any give-and-take or learning to understand each other with dogs. It’s just that, with cats, the interaction and relationship development is currently far closer to what you see between humans.
So why do some cats choose a favorite person?
Some cats choose a favorite person simply because that’s the person they interact with the most. For others, it may be because those people leave them alone or aren’t home very much. And for still others, it might be more complicated. Some cats don’t choose a favorite person at all.
It’s safe to say, though, that there is no single, catch-all reason to which we can point that answers the question, “Why do some cats choose a favorite person?” They do because they do.
