Communi-cat-ive: cats attentive to owner’s voice, research finds

Cats more responsive if owners speak to them like babies but less so if adult-to-adult tone used, study claims

Any cat owner knows that the correct way to get their pet's attention is to sing here, kitty kitty", rather than utter a flat come here cat". Now research suggests cats may routinely tune into their owner's tone of voice to detect when they are talking to them, rather than to other humans.

Most people automatically adopt a higher-pitched, sing-song tone when speaking to animals and human infants. Although previous research has suggested that such baby-talk" is more likely to capture dogs' attention, less was known about how cats react to being spoken to in this way.