The depth and breadth of the bond between humans and animals

Written by Peter Wolfe and Sue Neil

Recent forbes The article estimates that two-thirds of U.S. households own at least one pet. So even if you're not a pet owner, you probably know someone who is. Either way, you've seen the human-animal bond in action. In this case, it's probably no surprise that 97% of pet owners consider their pets to be family members, according to the Pew Research Center.

dogs are not cats, they are not birds

It may come as a surprise, but scientists have developed a tool to quantitatively measure how attached we are to our pets. However, attachments are abstract structures. How exactly do I measure it? Expenses related to food, toys, supplies, veterinary care, and everything else are one obvious indicator. The grief we feel when we lose a pet is something else. Of course, different scales reflect different aspects of attachment. The depth of our grief is not necessarily proportional to the cost of ownership.

First tested in the early 1990s, the Companion Animal Scale (CCAS) was developed to better understand a very specific aspect of attachment: the perceived level of emotional comfort that owners receive from their pets. Ta. ¹ In its original form, the CCAS was a 13-item survey. However, it was soon discovered that two items were likely to yield higher scores for dog owners than for cat owners. Once those items were removed from the survey, the difference in scores disappeared.

a cat is a cat

Although the 11-item CCAS addressed one important source of bias, the survey was designed for pet owners. However, community cats are by definition not owned, so they are not technically pets. These are cats common in almost every community, cared for by residents (often multiple households), but not owned by anyone.

The CCAS instrument required only minor modifications to make it suitable for measuring the “perceived level of psychological comfort” that community cat guardians receive from the cats in their care. . This usually involves replacing “pet” with “community cat.”

We are distributing the revised version of the CCAS as an online survey to customers of Alley Cat Advocates (ACA), a Louisville, Kentucky, nonprofit organization that provides community cat neutering and health care in Jefferson County and surrounding areas. did. He received 295 responses from caregivers who indicated they had provided food, water, or shelter to one or more community cats within the past 12 months.

This is the first time this type of scale has been used to measure caregiver attachment to community cats. As caregivers ourselves, we hypothesized that their scores would be similar to those obtained in previous studies of cat owners. In fact, they were virtually identical.

Other measures of attachment

In addition to attachment scores, our survey also collected basic demographic information from respondents. Our findings are: Journal of Shelter Medicine and Community Animal Healththerefore, who are the community cat guardians? ² While the median household income in Jefferson County is $61,633, nearly half reported an annual income of less than $50,000 and nearly one-third reported an annual income of less than $35,000. (To put this in context, the latest poverty guidelines from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are $26,500 per year for her family of four.)

Also worth noting is the financial involvement of caregivers. Expenditures on food and veterinary care are comparable to those reported by cat owners in the United States, who report spending approximately $47 per month on food and veterinary care combined. One reason the expense is not significant for most caregivers is that each person cares for a relatively small number of cats. Contrary to the image evoked from sensational media reports, almost three-quarters of respondents take care of one group of cats, usually consisting of only three cats.

Also, the small group size allows caregivers to get to know each “their” cat as an individual. So we weren't surprised to learn that many of our respondents were worried when their cat went missing. The majority of respondents (92.1%) either agreed (37.8%) or strongly agreed (54.3%) that they would be worried if their cat did not show up as expected.

policy implications

Last year, the American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP) revised its Free-Roaming Cat Position Statement to express support for policies and practices that consider “caregivers and their human-animal bond.” This is a welcome change, as the AAFP's previous statement, released in 2012, did not mention caregivers.

Unfortunately, the caregiver bond is often ignored. As an example (albeit an extreme one), consider the aftermath of the unannounced culling (shooting) of local cats at the Stockton Breakwall in Newcastle Harbour, New South Wales, Australia. The impact of this incident on caregivers was, unsurprisingly, directly related to their feelings of attachment to the cats in their care.

“When guardians called each cat by name and pointed out their favorites, when they expressed concern for the well-being of cats that went “missing” after being euthanized, and when they cried over the loss of a cat killed in a culling. It's obvious from the moment I played it. Weeded out during the interview process. ”

As a less dramatic but more common example, consider that the “feral” category makes up the majority of cat admissions at many animal shelters. Historically, these cats were at risk of euthanasia.

But starting about 15 years ago, in search of an alternative, shelters began spaying and vaccinating many of the “feral” cats they took in and returning them to the locations where they were found through trap-neuter-return (TNR) programs. I started putting it back. The resulting reduction in euthanasia is well documented. This change in shelter operations has clear benefits for caregivers. It is not surprising that the caregiver is often deeply involved in her TNR efforts (e.g., humanely trapping cats and transporting them to and from the clinic).

Many (if not most) cats that enter shelters as “feral” have caretakers who would miss them if they were gone, regardless of their final outcome (this is why these This certainly explains the cat's generally good health. In fact, they are as likely to grieve the loss of a community cat as they would the loss of a pet. The distinction between non-domestic and domestic cats is largely abstract and convenient, not substantial enough to interfere with the human-animal bond.

Peter J. Wolf is a researcher at Best Friends Animal Society and founder of the blog Vox Felina. His professional experience includes acquiring, analyzing, and synthesizing both quantitative and qualitative data and communicating research results.

Sue M. Neal is co-founder of the Veterinary Care Accessibility Project and an assistant professor at Arkansas State University. She has an academic background with a focus on her research in public policy, GIS, public health, and ethics.

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