A familiar theme on social media is that cats can see ghosts. As I write this, Halloween just passed, and all that spookiness got me thinking... can cats see spirits? What's up with ghosts and cats?
As I've been writing this blog, I've explored a lot about the senses that cats possess and how they might compare to a human's senses. For example, when looking into whether cats can see in the dark, I learned that they can see in low light around 6 times better than us. The Dodo says that is because cats eyeballs have around 6 times the number of rods in them. Cats can also see better in the dark due to two other special features of their eyes - the tapetum lucidum, which helps reflect light and their vertical pupil which helps them take in more of the limited light. So, at night cats will definitely see their surroundings better than people can!
And, it's not just in the dark that cat's see differently from people. Cats see different colors than we do, and LiveScience.com also says that cats can see ultraviolet light, which humans cannot!
And it's not just cats eyeballs that are adapted to percieve the world differently from humans. Cats can also hear much higher frequency sounds than humans can and can hear noise from further away than people can.
And those aren't the only ways that cats sense the world. They also have one other sensor that humans do not - their whiskers! Cat's whiskers are senstive to air currents so they might be able to detect vibrations with their whiskers even if there isn't actually anything to see!
Cats also do seem to sense the feelings of their humans. They know when you are sad or happy, and seem to be able to tell if someone doesn't like cats (and can then return the sentiment!) It may not be as concrete a sense as their eyes, ears or whiskers, but cats may also be able to sense other things that we can't. Cats.com quotes animal communicator Katherine Bozzi, to say that animals in general, (including cats) can be more open to spiritual connections because they haven't been told that it's just their imagination like we have.
So do all these heightened senses that cats possess mean they can see spirits? If your cat is staring at the wall, are they seeing a tiny bug, hearing a sound that you can't hear, or looking at ghosts? Whether or not you believe cats can see ghosts probably depends on whether or not you believe in ghosts. What we can say for sure is with their sensitive vision, hearing and whiskers, cats can percieve things that humans cannot!
Cover photo by Edward Howell on Unsplash
Leave a comment