“Can’t find your keys, human? That’s terrible. I don’t know where they are, but perhaps I could recall that information if, say, there were treats involved. Take your time, I’m in no rush even if you are.”
A new study shows dogs and human toddlers are eager to help when their adult caregivers are looking for a missing item, but cats don’t seem to care.
The study, which involved running the same experiment for young children, dogs and cats in their own homes, made it clear cats were fully aware of what was happening and understood their humans were looking for the missing object.
They just didn’t care.
There was one notable exception, of course. If the missing items were important to the cat — a favorite toy, for instance, or a bag of treats — the felines were motivated to help search or direct their humans to the missing objects, the research team from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary found.
But at all other times, feline observers were content to hang back and watch, even when they understood their humans were getting frustrated.
By contrast, young children and dogs actively tried to help and signaled to adults when they thought they’d found the object.
“Lookin’ for something? No, I’ll just watch, thank you. Warm, warmer…oh! Cold…colder…that direction doesn’t look promising, human.” Credit: Gord Maclean/Pexels
So does this mean cats are jerks? Probably. Are we surprised by the results? Not at all.
We still love our furry friends, who do have their own unique ways of demonstrating they care about their humans beyond seeing them as providers of food, shelter, and safety, as well as playmates, minions and servants.
Besides, testing whether dogs or cats were helpful or not wasn’t the point. As the authors note, “[t]hese three species provide an important comparison because they share a similar anthropogenic environment but differ in their ecological and evolutionary backgrounds.”
In other words, they’re interested in figuring out how evolution plays a part in how species behave in particular situations. Although it’s yet to be conclusively proven for this behavior, a likely reason is because domestic cats are the descendants of a mostly solitary wildcat species, whereas we humans and our canine friends have long evolutionary histories of living in social groups and cooperating with each other.
The study is included in the March 2026 issue of Animal Behavior.
Strongly resembling ocelot cubs, margays have a unique biological adaptation to tree-climbing and a devious ability that gives them a massive advantage over their prey.
Taxonomic name:Leopardus wiedii Genus: Felis (small cats) Weight: Between 5 to 9 pounds with typical felid sexual dimorphism Lifespan: More than 20 years in captivity Gestation: About 80 days Litter size: Single kitten, rarely more than one Distribution: Central America, including Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana, Colombia, Panama and parts of Mexico IUCN Red List Status: Near threatened
If you’re fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of a margay, you might think you’re looking at an ocelot cub.
The two species look remarkably similar, sharing beautiful rosette patterns in their fur, intense eyes and prominent facial stripes.
But ocelots are medium-size cats that can top out at 35 or 40 pounds, while margays are even smaller than domestic felines, weighing between five to nine pounds.
An ocelot cub with, left, with its mother. Margays are easily mistaken for ocelot kittens. Credit: Mark Dumont via Wikimedia Commons
Living in jungles teeming with life, margays have a distinct advantage that allows them to escape land-based predators while making them a threat to monkeys and other critters living in the branches — they are outstanding climbers with unique biological adaptations that allow them to do things other cats cannot.
Credit: Supreet Sahoo via Wikimedia Commons
The most dramatic example is their ankle joints, which allow them to rotate 180 degrees as the little spotted cats anchor themselves to trunks and branches. As a result, margays don’t just climb with speed and ease, they are capable of swiftly evacuating trees by climbing down head-first like squirrels.
Other cat species lack that adaptation, which is one reason why we often hear about domestic cats who find themselves uncomfortably high up in trees or on utility poles, refusing to come down for days despite hunger and coaxing by humans trying to help.
A margay demonstrating its ability to climb head-first down a tree thanks to its unique ankle joints. Credit: James Kaiser
Margays are outstanding jumpers in addition to their unrivaled climbing ability, able to leap six to eight times their own height. It’s easy to see how these diminutive cats can intercept birds and monkeys far above the jungle floor in addition to hunting terrestrial mammals.
Indeed, using their large tails as a counterbalance, margays traverse branches with a swiftness and sure-footedness that rivals the gibbon.
The jungle’s tricksters
They’re also remarkably clever. Scientists have documented margays mimicking the vocalizations of monkeys, their favorite prey. In one documented example, a margay imitated the call of a baby tamarin, then ambushed the adult tamarins who approached to investigate the sound.
That’s a surprising adaptation for a cat species, and we should be thankful they’re tiny. The thought of tigers or leopards with that ability is terrifying.
Margays are solitary and due to their size, they’re both predator and prey. Because of that, these tiny cats spend the majority of their time well above ground level and are usually found deep in old growth jungles where they can blend into dense vegetation, hiding among leaves and branches, where their coat patterns help them blend in.
Like all wildcats, margays face increasing pressure from habitat loss, poaching and other threats, and they’re classified as near-threatened on the IUCN Red List.
Credit: Anderson Cristiano Hendgen via WikimediaCredit: Wikimedia Commons
Header image credit Clément Bardot via Wikimedia Commons
Copyright 2026 – Pain In The Bud – May not be reproduced without permission
The woman left her dog tied to a post near the departure gate, telling police she didn’t want to miss her flight after the airline told her she didn’t have the right paperwork to bring her dog in the cabin as a service animal.
A dog who was abandoned by his owner at a Las Vegas airport has a happy ending to his ordeal after he was adopted by one of the police officers who responded to the initial abandonment call.
The sequence of events began on Feb. 2 at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. A woman was trying to board with her goldendoodle — a medium-size breed that is a cross between a golden retriever and a poodle — when an airline employee told her she needed paperwork proving the pooch was a service animal. Emotional support animals don’t need paperwork and aren’t certified by any agency, public or private, but service dogs must be trained and certified.
Instead of trying to work the problem out, the woman abandoned her dog, leaving him tied to a post near the departure gate. The airline’s staff called police and when officers arrived, they found the woman waiting to board her flight.
The woman pictured with Jet Blue the dog before abandoning him at the airport. Still image from a video provided by Las Vegas PD.
She was insistent she’d done nothing wrong, according to Las Vegas police, and said she could find the dog again after returning home because he has a tracking device. That excuse didn’t fly, and neither did the woman– officers pulled her off the departure line and arrested her for abandoning an animal.
In a positive twist of fate, one of the officers who responded that day had been looking to adopt a dog of that same breed and had already applied and been cleared by a local shelter. He was just waiting for the right dog.
The officer, Skeeter Black, adopted the abandoned good boy and named him Jet Blue after the airline. Jet Blue joined his new family on Sunday after undergoing the usual veterinary checks, quarantine and a 10-day mandatory hold with animal control.
“We’re very excited to add him to our family,” Black said when animal control handed three-year-old Jet Blue off to him. “We’re gonna enjoy him. He’s gonna be very much loved.”
As for the Las Vegas Police Department, the brass issued an exasperated statement reminding people that animals are living beings with their own feelings.
“We can’t believe we have to say this,” police wrote in a post, “but please don’t abandon your dog at the airport — or anywhere else.”
Archie the cat, with his love of exercise, is the anti-Buddy.
This is unbelievable.
A three-year-old cat named Archie, who also hails from New York, loves running on his human’s treadmill. Mariah, his 27-year-old servant, keeps a close eye on the little guy while he gets his run in to make sure he doesn’t get hurt, but he seems entirely unperturbed and pumps his little legs, keeping a steady pace:
Honestly, I can barely comprehend this. Bud would be more likely to engineer a treadmill into an automated system to deliver snacks to him so he doesn’t have to lift a paw. He is, after all, remarkably dedicated to the craft of being as lazy as possible.
Cheers to Archie for showing not all cats are loafing blobs!
Terry Lauerman literally sleeps on the job, and cats love him for it.
Seven years ago, Terry Lauerman and the Safe Haven Cat Sanctuary went viral.
Lauerman, then 75, walked into the Green Bay, Wisconsin, rescue one day and told the staff he liked to brush cats. They welcomed him as a volunteer, he immediately curled up with a cat — and fell asleep.
Since then, Lauerman’s been going to Safe Haven every day, brushing his feline friends, then yawning and passing out with a cat in his arms.
Lauerman usually spends an hour sleeping on the couch with a cat, then wakes up and moves to another couch to nap with the next cat, WCCO reports. He did this for six months straight before Feldhausen eventually told him he had become an official volunteer and had him fill out a form.
Now CBS went back to check on Lauerman and the shelter. He’s still at it, napping away the hours with the shelter’s cats, giving a comfort they wouldn’t normally have until finding their forever homes.
“We’re very lucky that he walked in here,” said Elizabeth Feldhausen, Safe Haven’s executive director.
Lauerman, who is also a brother at a nearby abbey, said he senses God in our four-legged friends, which is a notion he probably shouldn’t share with them lest they become even more imperious.
“I’ve always been a cat person,” he said. “To me it’s a blessing to be touched by creation.”
As a CBS reporter put it: “You sleep on the job.”
“Yes,” Lauerman said, “that’s exactly it.”
Bud and I salute Mr. Lauerman. Years ago we heard a friend observe that “there are two kinds of people in the world: those who take naps, and those who don’t even understand how that’s possible.”
At the time, I agreed with her. But napping starts to seem like a great idea as the years pass by, and when you have a cat, well, sometimes you don’t have a choice. With 11 years now under my belt as Bud’s pillow, I can safely say there are few things more relaxing than opening a book, reading a few chapters as your little buddy curls up in your lap, and easing into some Zs.
Images via Safe Haven Cat Sanctuary.Header image via Pexels.
Pain In The Bud 