Cats Like Playing Fetch Too, New Study Finds

Every day, the gap between Cat People and Dog People narrows. Thanks to science, we’ve learned that, like dogs, cats can be trained to walk on a leash, use speech buttons, or respond to their name — some cats even enjoy swimming. Now, researchers have discovered another thing that cats and dogs have in common: the desire for a good old-fashioned game of fetch.  A new survey found that over 40 percent of cats enjoy the pastime.

The study

To find out how common it was for cats to engage in a game of fetch, researchers surveyed 8,224 pet parents who each described the frequency of 100 different feline behaviors.

The researchers found that overall, 40.9 percent of cats were reported to sometimes, usually, or always play fetch. Cats who were kept indoors and lived in homes without dogs were more likely to play fetch. Female cats were less likely to play fetch; older cats and cats with health problems fetched less, too. 

Those weren’t the only play behaviors the pet parents reported: 58 percent of cats carried toys or objects, and 39 percent initiated interactive play by bringing toys to their pet parents. 

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Move over, pups. This is a cat’s game, too.

When they conducted a survey on dogs, they found that 77.8 percent of dogs like the game — meaning almost half as many cats as dogs are playing fetch. 

Why do cats like to fetch?

When it comes to dogs, experts have a pretty good idea why they’re fetch fans. “It is likely that dogs were selected for retrieving behavior during domestication, probably in the context of human hunting with projectile weapons,” the study’s lead author Dr. Mikel Delgado wrote. But cats weren’t domesticated in this way — so why are they half as fetch-obsessed? 

The researchers suggest that a game of fetch taps into a cat’s hunting instincts. “All aspects of the fetching sequence likely relate to predatory behavior,” Dr. Delgado wrote. “Cats are stalk-and-rush hunters, engaging in short-distance chasing of moving prey.” After catching prey, cats in the wild often take the winnings away to a safer location or to their offspring.

Plus, there’s the obvious: It’s fun. Cats love to play, and fetching behaviors were highly correlated with playful personalities — in fact, they were more highly correlated with playfulness and activity than with prey interest and predatory behaviors. If your cat loves to run, jump, and engage with items around the house (like, for example, that one piece of string they somehow got their paws on), they might also like retrieving their favorite catnip toy. 

“We hope that the study draws more attention to fetching behavior in cats — who are often portrayed as independent or aloof,” Dr. Delgado told PLOS. “In fact, they can be very social and this is a nice example of one way they are interactive with humans.”