Size Doesn’t Matter in Friendship: Cow and Cat Show the World that They’re Best Buddies
“A few months ago, I was talking to my mom on the phone, and she told me how Daisy and Major were buddies, and I knew instantly if I got this video, it would go viral. I recorded the video in the morning when I was milking the cow. Every morning the cat comes to see the cow and have a cuddle,” Brian, a 25-year-old student in Kenya, shared with Newsweek.
Imagine that, a cat who loves cuddles. Often, we think of cats as mysterious and aloof creatures. However, in an Oregon State University study, it shows that cats can form bonds with their caregivers just like babies and dogs.
In the study, the researchers made cats participate in a test that’s similar to what has been done to babies and dogs to determine their attachment behaviors. The cat spends two minutes in a new room with its caretaker, two minutes in an alone phase, and two minutes in a reunion phase.
Results showed that the cats with secure and insecure bonds with their caretakers behaved just like babies. When their caregivers returned after the two-minute absence, those cats with secure bonds to them displayed less stress and had balanced attention toward the surroundings and their caretakers.
On the other hand, those cats with insecure attachment tended to cling to their caretakers immediately upon their return or avoid them. In humans, those babies with secure bonds accounted for 65% of the total number of participants. With cats, the result was 65.8%, which was indeed very close to the human number.
“In both dogs and cats, attachment to humans may represent an adaptation of the offspring-caretaker bond. Attachment is a biologically relevant behavior. Our study indicates that when cats live in a state of dependency with a human, that attachment behavior is flexible, and the majority of cats use humans as a source of comfort,” explained lead author Kristyn Vitale, a researcher in the Human-Animal Interaction Lab in OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences.
But, in this story, the 10-month-old cat’s attachment is with a seven-year-old cow named Daisy. And it’s one of the sweetest bonds among different animal species! The young cat has found affection and comfort from a larger but gentle beast.
According to Brian, he adopted Major the Cat when he was just a kitten, while Daisy grew up on the farm. The two animals found a family in each other, with size not making any difference to their special friendship at all!
