Cats certainly make us laugh. In fact, among cat lovers, the cat doesn’t even need to be present to garner a good laugh. Cat owners can swap stories about the antics of their kitties and get nearly the same joy and amusement out of them as if they were witnessing the antics first hand. Indeed, a playful cat can keep a human amused and content for as long as the cat is willing to perform. Watching a playful kitty can be more captivating and satisfying than watching a really funny TV show.
But do cats make us laugh on purpose? Do they know they are being funny? Do cats get amused? Scientists avoid the subject because it is nearly impossible to prove that animals have emotions and thought processes without injecting a certain amount of anthropomorphism (projecting human qualities onto an animal). But animal behaviorists, and anyone who has lived with a cat, dog or even a rabbit, will tell you that many animals indeed have a sense of humor.
Author Sarah Hartwell, who works for Cats Protection in the UK, writes, “After spending hours watching my own cats, it seems that they have a sense of humor, though nowhere near as sophisticated as a human sense of humor. On second thought, having witnessed my cats 'laughing' at me, their sense of humor is probably so sophisticated that us humans can't understand the jokes.”
Much of a cat’s humor, it seems, comes from playing pranks on people. This makes perfect sense, knowing that a cat typically does what pleases the cat. A cat is less likely to do something funny for your amusement as she is to do something to you for her amusement. It is in a cat’s nature to stalk and pounce, and doing so with pretend prey makes up most of their play. Many cat owners have been the startled “victim” of a cat ambush — a woman walks through her living room only to have Fluffy spring from a bookcase and land on her head. It is clear that this is play, and entirely for fun. The reaction of the owner must be quite amusing to the cat.
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson writes in his book, The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats, that his cats love to throw themselves right in front of his feet when out on a walk. The cats lie down, causing him to have to jump out of their way. They have enough trust in him to know he would never step on them. They do it all the time, and seem to get a great deal of amusement out of it. How funny it must be to watch him startle and react like that.
Cats are known to play tricks on other species as well. In the same book, the author tells of a cat who plays a sophomoric prank on a poodle. The cat baited the dog to chase him, and the dog complied. The cat ran with purpose, coming to an abrupt stop, causing the poor pup to fall down a steep embankment. The dog was unharmed and the cat, as if to show he was only kidding, climbed down the embankment and licked the pooch.
We’ve always known that cats are very smart creatures with distinct personalities. It only makes sense that if they have personalities that show up in varying levels of playfulness, aloofness, sweetness, affection and sneakiness, it would follow that they have some level of a sense of humor, sometimes a delightfully devious one.
