If you’ve ever been woken up by your cat’s paw on your face just before your alarm or been aggressively miaowed at when you’re three minutes late with dinnertime, you’ll have wondered: how do cats know what time it is?
They don’t have a tiny wristwatch, after all.
Have they somehow figured out how to read the kitchen clock?
You’re not overestimating your cat’s intelligence.
While cats can’t tell the time from a clock (as far as we know), they do have a general sense of time.
They keep track of when things usually happen and know full well if you’re not sticking to their allotted mealtime or you’ve overslept.
Cat behaviourist Anita Kelsey explains that like humans, cats have a sort of internal clock that keeps their waking and sleeping hours fairly regular.
Anita tells Metro.co.uk: ‘Cats are crepuscular, meaning that they are primarily active around dawn and dusk. This is evolutionary, meaning all cats instinctively and naturally do the same.’
Also like humans, cats can use internal and external cues to figure out what point they’re at in the day.
The same way that you’ll get hungry around lunchtime and know it’s been a few hours since breakfast, cats will judge how long it has been since their last meal – and that’s how they know to tell you off if a dish is overdue.
Animal Behaviourist Rosie Bescoby tells us: ‘Internal cues such as hunger, thirst and other internal motivations, will cause the cat to predict food etc at certain times.
‘External cues will also be ‘back chained’ which means that the cat can chain together numerous cues that predict something is about to happen.
‘For example, the sun coming up predicts the owner’s alarm clock is about to go off, or the neighbour arriving home predicts their owner is about to arrive home, or the owner eating dinner predicts they are about to be fed, etc.’
We play a role in reinforcing certain time-specific behaviours, too.
Your cat probably doesn’t wake you up at 6am because they don’t want you to be late for work, but because they know you’ll reward that behaviour with plenty of head strokes and snuggles.
‘If they begin crying at 5am (when they’re naturally awake) and they get attention from that, whether negative or positive, they will continue to wake their owners up at this time,’ Anita says.
‘The same goes for our patterns of coming home from work. They know that when we arrive home they will get fed and cats are good at memorising time lengths if it means they get what they want at the end of it.
‘For example: My cats always get a midnight snack and they always wake up or sit by the kitchen around midnight, which is actually the only way I know the time then!’
In short: Yes, your cats can figure out the time without the need for a clock or an alarm. It’s all down to their natural body clock, their observation of external cues such as daylight and your behaviour, and internal cues such as their own hunger.
Yes, they do know that you’re having a major lie-in this morning. And yes, they probably are judging you.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/01/26/cats-know-time-12123850/
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