We cannot know if cats can sense evil in a person. After all, defining “evil” from a scientific perspective is impossible. Therefore, we can’t test whether or not cats can pick out an evil person from a non-evil person. It just isn’t possible.
However, we know cats are very good at reading human body language. Therefore, a cat may perhaps pick up on nefarious motivations and intentions. If someone is acting off, our cats may be able to pick up on it before we do. Still, there aren’t any studies on how well cats predict bad actions. Furthermore, we don’t know if cats catch all bad actions or just certain kinds. Can people mask their true intentions from a cat? How do cats act if they do sense “evil?”
Sadly, we can’t answer any of these questions scientifically. Cats cannot tell us why they act in certain ways, and it would be unethical to test many of these questions.
Can Cats Sense Evil in a Person?
Cats Are Excellent Judges of Character—or Not
There are many claims out there about whether or not cats can judge people. There have been many studies on whether cats can read human body language. Generally, studies have found that cats can read body language and, therefore, understand humans to some extent. However, studies have also found that cats can also pick up on a human’s emotional state. For example, they’ve been observed to spend more time with individuals who are depressed 1.
Cats may not be able to understand language. But they can use our body language and perhaps even our facial expressions to determine what we’re feeling and saying to some extent. Furthermore, they appear to change their behavior based on what the people around them are feeling.2
Based on this information, they can probably feel when things in the room are a bit tense. Therefore, if you get in a fight with someone else, your cat may be able to pick up on these subtle cues.
But we don’t know to what extent cats can pick up on emotions when they’re being hidden. Most studies involve humans obviously showing emotion. However, in many real-world situations, things are a bit more complicated than that. People often hide their emotions or mask them with other emotions.
We don’t know to what extent cats can pick up on emotions in difficult, everyday situations. Furthermore, studying this in a lab is challenging. After all, mimicking real-world situations is nearly impossible, especially when studying emotions.
Can Cats Sense Toxic People?
Cats likely do not have the same social concepts as humans do. For instance, a cat probably does not know what a toxic person is. Instead, it is probably more simplified than that. Cats probably know when they don’t like someone, for instance. However, they may not have much reasoning behind why they like or don’t like this person.
Cats probably are not sitting around and getting psychological with their human relationships.
Conclusion
Figuring out whether cats can sense evil people is challenging. After all, it is difficult to study this in a scientific setting. Furthermore, interpreting a cat’s behavior can be difficult, especially in real-world situations. How do you know that the cat reacts to their “sensing of evil” and not how the person smells, for instance?
However, many people experience their cats reacting badly to a person—only to find out that the person had less-than-stellar intentions. Therefore, we do know that cats sometimes see through a person’s actions to their true intentions.
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