高冷猫猫不爱搭理你？学习一下猫咪的“微笑”吧

Cats have a bit of a reputation for standoffishness, especially compared with dogs. But if you find your feline friend is a little hard to bond with, maybe you're just not speaking their language.

feline: /ˈfiːlaɪn/ n. 猫科动物

Research shows that it's actually not so difficult. You just need to smile at them more. Not smile in the human way, by baring your teeth, but the cat way: by narrowing your eyes and blinking slowly.

If you've spent any time around cats, you've probably seen their "partially closed eyes" facial expression, accompanied by slow blinking. It's similar to how human eyes narrow when smiling, and usually occurs when puss is relaxed and content. The expression is interpreted as a kind of cat smile.

In a study published in 2020, scientists observed cat-human interactions, and were able to confirm that this act of blinking slowly makes cats – both familiar and unfamiliar animals – approach and be receptive to humans.

"As someone who has both studied animal behavior and is a cat owner, it's great to be able to show that cats and humans can communicate in this way," psychologist Karen McComb of the University of Sussex in the UK explained when the results of the study were published.

Jackson Galaxy, cat behavior expert, says there are some pretty strong feelings behind the cat slow blink. He calls it the "I Love You Blink." Galaxy says the cat slow blink is when cats and people are wholly opening up to one another in sharing affection because when the cat closes his eyes he is allowing himself to be vulnerable to his person.

vulnerable: /ˈvʌlnərəbl/ adj. 脆弱的，易受伤害的

In the first experiment, owners slow-blinked at 21 cats from 14 different households. Once the cat was settled and comfy in one spot in their home environment, the owners were instructed to sit about a meter away and slow-blink when the cat was looking at them.

The second experiment included 24 cats from eight different households. This time, it wasn't the owners doing the blinking but the researchers, who'd had no prior contact with the cat.

They found that not only were the cats more likely to blink back, but that they were more likely to approach the human's hand after the human had blinked.

"This study is the first to experimentally investigate the role of slow blinking in cat-human communication," McComb said.

Dr Tasmin Humphrey, the animal behaviour scientist at the University of Sussex, said: "Understanding positive ways in which cats and humans interact can enhance public understanding of cats, improve feline welfare, and tell us more about the socio-cognitive abilities of this under-studied species."

"Our findings could potentially be used to assess the welfare of cats in a variety of settings, including veterinary practices and shelters."

veterinary: /ˈvetnri/ adj. 兽医的