Ask almost anyone with a cat if watching the antics of their four-footed companion brings them joy, and you’ll most likely get a resounding yes in response. But do cats make their owners happy? From a scientific standpoint, there’s no clear or consistent evidence that cat ownership definitively leads to increased long-term happiness. Still, there’s plenty to explore when it comes to cats, animal companionship, and how personality traits factor into the relationship—so keep reading to learn more.

Some Preliminaries — How Do We Measure Happiness?

Believe it or not, measuring happiness in a quasi-scientific fashion isn’t easy. No one’s quite sure how to define the concept or accurately determine how much of it you’re feeling. Most researchers use self-reporting, basing their conclusions on what people tell them in standardized multiple-choice surveys.

The issue with this approach is that it’s far from perfect. It’s relatively easy to manipulate people’s happiness gauges by tinkering with their environment. Music, for instance, can impact your perception of an environment, directly influencing your feelings of happiness or sadness and your responses to a survey.

Using surveys to measure almost anything involving human behavior and emotions often skirts the edges of the impossible, and the variety and complexity of the human experience can’t be fully reflected in multiple-choice questions. In addition, we have to be careful when assuming the universal transferability of study conclusions.

Most studies on pets and their impact on happiness focus on answering limited questions, such as how pet ownership impacts the happiness of elderly adults in Australia or the relationship between pet ownership and happiness in a small group of Croatian adults.

With small sample sizes, focused research questions, and the near impossibility of transferring research conclusions between countries, genders, and even ages, answering whether pets universally make us happier is challenging.

Do Pets Make Us Happier?

From a scientific perspective, the answer isn’t as straightforward as many people might expect. While pets clearly bring enjoyment and companionship into our daily lives, research does not consistently show that pet ownership leads to increased long-term happiness.

Between the 1980s and the early 2020s, a number of peer-reviewed studies examined the relationship between pet ownership and happiness or life satisfaction. Most studies found little to no lasting impact of pet ownership on overall long-term happiness. In other words, owning a pet doesn’t reliably make people happier over time in a measurable, universal way.

These findings appear relatively consistent across different populations. Researchers studying groups in countries such as Mexico, the United States, and Australia have often reached similar conclusions, suggesting that the results aren’t limited to one culture or region.

This aligns with broader happiness research, which shows that many positive life changes, whether it’s buying a new home, achieving a major goal, or even winning the lottery, tend to produce only temporary boosts in happiness. Over time, people usually return to their routine level of well-being. Having pets, it seems, may work much the same way, deeply meaningful and rewarding, but not a guaranteed path to lasting happiness.

Do People Who Like Cats Tend to Be Happier by Nature?

Some studies suggest that cat owners tend to be happier than non-pet owners in general, experiencing less depression and anxiety. But that may have more to do with the type of people attracted to cats and the researcher’s assumptions than anything else. The issue of causality makes it impossible to say with confidence that cats improve happiness.

However, the evidence suggests that compared to dog owners, cat parents are more open to new experiences but are more introverted, less outgoing, decidedly less friendly, and a bit more inclined towards neurotic behavior. In other words, cat owners lose out to dog lovers when it comes to overall personality traits researchers say are indicative of general happiness and contentment.

On the other hand, some findings indicate that cat owners may be more sensitive in social situations and more likely to trust others than those who don’t have a pet. However, that conclusion was based on a small study of 60 undergraduate men and women, making it somewhat less than reliable for the rest of the world.

Are There Benefits to Cat Ownership?

There appear to be several benefits to having a cat companion! Some research suggests that owning a cat may help reduce minor health complaints, such as stress-related tension or headaches, at least in the short term. Other studies have found that cat owners may have a lower risk of dying from heart disease, including heart attacks, though the reasons for this are not yet fully understood.

Cats can reduce our stress and calm us, which allows owners to see difficulties as challenges instead of stressors. Also, people with cats report feeling a greater sense of connection than people who don’t live with pets. But remember that perceived benefits to cat ownership are similar but decidedly different from happiness.

Factors that May Influence Cat Ownership & Happiness

Several factors can influence the relationship between having a feline companion and one’s long-term happiness.

Finances

Owning a cat can easily become a source of stress when extensive financial demands are involved in providing sufficient care for a sick animal. Loving a creature deeply and being unable to care for them could negatively impact your happiness.

Time Commitment

While cats may seem like generally lower-maintenance creatures, they still require love, care, and attention. Due to a new baby or the demands of a tough job, a cat parent who doesn’t have time to provide the love and attention a kitty needs will likely experience the relationship as stressful and not supportive of their greater happiness.

Lifestyle

Cats, like children, are a responsibility and may impact some of your choices and take away a bit of the spontaneity of life. Depending on an owner’s dreams, needs, and preferred lifestyle, having a cat can make it challenging to do what they need to be happy.

Undesirbable Behavior

Some cats require more care and consideration than others, depending on their early life experiences, socialisation, and personality. Kittens and young cats need plenty of mental and physical stimulation, or they quickly become bored and frustrated, which may lead to undesirable behaviors.

Some cats may eliminate outside of the litter box when stressed. Others may have incredibly high prey drives, making life unsafe for other households and neighborhood pets and dangerous for fish and small pets like guinea pigs and hamsters.

Death & Grief

Watching your companion become ill or decline over the years can be nothing short of torture. The emotional toll of feeling responsible for a cat’s accidental or untimely death can cause intense and long-lasting grief that many struggle to shake.

Final Thoughts

There’s ultimately no definitive answer to the question of whether or not cats make us happier. They show us affection and bring great joy to our lives, but our relationships with the magnificent creatures are rollercoasters full of joy, frustrations, laughter, and love. The minute you let a feline into your life, you’ve signed up for more moments of connection than you can imagine and the pain of saying goodbye.

Cats don’t make us happy or unhappy; they allow us to live more fully. They allow us to love, establish deep connections, and experience the unbearable pain of loss, which we should be immensely grateful for because those experiences are life’s building blocks.

Featured Image Credit By: Oleg Ivanov, Unsplash