“What the hell is… Cat Testing?”
In this inaugural "What the hell is...?" episode, Naomi gives her cousin Kerry the skinny on the concept of cat testing.
This episode is for you if...
➔ your dog was "cat tested" in the shelter or rescue
➔ your dog wasn't "cat tested" in the shelter or rescue
➔ you don't know what "cat testing is"
➔ you just like the sound of the phrase "cat testing"
What you'll hear in this episode:
what cat testing is (sort of)
how it can help predict your dog's behavior around cats (sort of)
what you can do with the information you get from cat testing (sort of)
To listen to the full episode, click here to open it in your podcast player or press play below:
Related Resource(s)
Here’s the study I mentioned in the episode:
Goal of the study (the cat-related aspect):
Assess whether dogs who passed a temperament test (including a "good with cats” component) in the shelter exhibited aggression towards cats when living in a home.
How were the dogs tested?
The dog approached a cat in a cage (a more specific method isn’t included in the paper).
How was “pass/fail” measured?
A dog failed the test if they: snarled, growled, lunged, snapped, bit, stalked, or stared rigidly in the presence of the cat.
Dogs that failed were euthanized in the shelter.
How did they measure the behavior of the dogs who passed?After around 4 months in a home, the researchers categorized the adopted dogs’ behaviors, including how they currently behave around cats (and other animals):
➔ Dogs reported to bark, lunge, growl, snap, or bite in the presence of squirrels, cats, etc. were put in the “predatory aggression” category
So did those dogs end up being “good with cats”?
Nine of the 66 dogs in the predatory aggression category exhibited behaviors associated with aggression, about 14%. But 8 of those 9 dogs were reported to display moderate or high levels of aggression, including biting/snapping, growling, lunging, or barking.
Was this test a good indicator of the dogs’ future behavior towards cats? Sort of…?
And here’s another one I found:
Goal of the study:
Assess whether dogs who are “good with cats” and dogs who have previously injured or killed cats react differently to different types of cat-like stimuli (visual, olfactory, and auditory).
How were the dogs tested?
They had access to:
- realistic cat stuffed animal
- smell of cat urine
- recordings of cat vocalizations
How were the dogs’ behaviors measured?
Timing how long each dog spent orienting towards each stimulus.
What were the results?
All the dogs were more responsive to the sound of cat vocalizations than to the sight or smell of “cat”. Interestingly, the “not good with cats” dogs spent significantly longer orienting to the cat sounds than the “good with cats” dogs.
Was this test a good indicator of the dogs’ future behavior towards cats? Well, that wasn’t what they studied (since they used the dogs’ known history with cats as a way to categorize them). But it does indicate that including cat vocalizations in shelter “cat testing” might be a good thing to test in future studies!
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