Do Cats Understand Word Associations? A Happy Cat Expert Explains

Cats are often seen as mysterious, especially when it comes to how they communicate with humans. But recent research challenging what we thought we knew, which raises the question: do cats understand words and word associations, and how far do cats understand humans in everyday life?

The Vocabulary and Understanding of Dogs

First, to understand how cats understand humans, it can be helpful to take a look at their canine counterparts.

It is well recognised that dogs are very capable of recognising human speech, and this is part of what makes them such good companion animals. Dogs will develop a wide recognition of words, especially those related to certain actions such as ‘sit’, ‘lie down’, ‘stand’, ‘walk’, ‘heel’ and so on. They clearly have the ability to make appropriate responses to certain words or phrases – a process usually developed through reward-based training.

For some dogs, at least, there is an ability to learn a much wider vocabulary of words, and to learn an association between many words and the objects to which they refer. Famously, a border collie called Rico was reported to know the words to over 200 objects which he would reliably be able to retrieve, and showed a remarkable ability for learning new object-word associations. A study of another border collie called Chaser showed that she was able to learn and retain the names of over 1000 objects.

However, this ability of dogs to learn word-object associations, and the context in which this can occur, varies greatly between individuals with some dogs appearing to be exceptionally talented. Interestingly, evidence also exists that dogs are able to draw a ‘mental image’ of an object in association with a word, similar to the way humans do.

How Cats Understand Humans: Picture-Word Associations

So that’s a little on dogs, but how do cats understand words and their associations?

The social cognitive/understanding ability of cats has been the subject of more studies in recent years. It is now well established, for example, that cats recognise their own names, recognise the voices of their owners, and can recognise images of their owners and other cats in the same household.

This all adds to the evidence that cats understand human words in a more complex way than previously thought, and new research is expanding on this knowledge further.

The 2024 Japanese Study on Word-Picture Learning

In a study from Japan published in 2024, 31 cats that either lived in cat cafés or homes were familiarised to novel word-picture combinations. Each cat was repeatedly shown one of two different abstract pictures on a laptop, along with recordings of their human saying one of two meaningless words (‘parumo’ or ‘keraru’). The picture and word combinations were the same for each individual cat and would be repeated four times, with the picture growing or shrinking over several seconds. This process was repeated at least 8 times.

Testing & Behavioural Responses

Following the phase where the cats were being familiarised to a particular word-picture combination, the cats were subsequently tested by exposure to either the same word-picture combination or to a different, unfamiliar combination of words and pictures. During this process, video recordings were taken of the cats. The videos were then evaluated by someone who had no knowledge of what the cats had been familiarised to or had been exposed to in the test.

What This Tell Us About a Cat’s Understanding of Words & Humans

The design of this study was borrowed from studies of human infants, and the results clearly showed that the cats were rapidly learning word-picture associations – further supporting the idea that a cat can understand words through experience and repetition. This was demonstrated by the cats spending a longer time looking at the screen when an unfamiliar word-picture combination was presented to them.

During the familiarisation phase of the study, the cats generally spent increasingly less time looking at the screen as the procedure progressed. This suggested that they were genuinely becoming habituated to the word-picture combination (a similar response is seen with human infants). During the test phase of the study, it was found that the cats spent significantly shorter time looking at the screen when the familiar word-picture combination was used, compared with when unfamiliar word-picture combinations were used.

Interestingly, during further investigation, the sound-picture association appeared very much weaker if electronic sounds were substituted for human voices. This showed the cats also had a greater tendency to respond to the voice of their human carer.

What This Means for the Human-Cat Relationship

The results of this study further expand our understanding of the richness of social cognition in cats, as well as how cats understand humans and our own communication.

Much of the exploration of dogs and their ability to understand object-word associations has been from studies involving them fetching items. Interestingly, fetching specific items is not a behaviour most animals will naturally display. Nevertheless, this study of cats from Japan, using a clever technique adapted from investigation of humans, has shown that cats too have the ability to rapidly form word-object associations, especially in response to human voices.

Once again, social skills and understanding that might have been thought to be relatively unique aspects of the human-dog relationship have been shown to also be a feature of the human-cat relationship, even if they are expressed in different (and sometimes less easy to identify) ways! This is all further evidence that cats do understand humans, as is becoming increasingly well supported by research.

For more fascinating insights from Andy and all our Happy Cat Experts, keep exploring our articles online! You can also sign up to our newsletter to receive all the latest updates straight into your inbox.