Will your cat remember you? How long does its memory of its owner last?

Yes!

They can generally remember it for 10 months to 10 years.

How long a cat remembers something depends on how much time you spend with it and the strength of your relationship:

A casual encounter and a quick meal…

—At least 16 hours.

At this point, the cat’s short-term memory is primarily activated. It’s similar to quickly memorizing a phone number, dialing it, and then forgetting it; a cat can typically remember it for 16 hours.

A psychology professor at the University of Michigan and researchers at the American Museum of Natural History conducted a behavioral experiment based on cats’ physiological needs (food). The study showed that cats’ short-term memory of food tests can last up to 16 hours.

Therefore, if you encounter a stray cat on the street or in your neighborhood and casually feed it, it will remember you for at least 16 hours; if you also pet it and interact with it in a friendly manner, it will remember you for even longer.

Of course, this distinction mainly relies on scent; if you’re wearing the same coat, they’ll recognize you more easily.

A kitten I rescued as a kitten, later adopted away…

—They can remember for at least 10 months.

This utilizes a cat’s long-term memory, which can be consolidated and strengthened from short-term memory into procedural memory—for example, they can still do eye exercises from when they were kittens; it can also be achieved through associative memory, such as remembering the pain of tooth extraction when wisdom teeth are mentioned.

The duration of long-term memory is affected by the frequency and depth of consolidation.

Péter Szenczi et al. conducted an experiment testing 58 kittens adopted after two months of age to see if they still remembered their mother’s scent as adults. The results showed that they could still distinguish their mother’s scent at one year old.

In other words, kittens can remember and recognize individuals for over 10 months using only their sense of smell.

However, because a mother cat’s scent is relatively stable, it’s best if your scent doesn’t change too much during those 10 months.

After being inseparable day and night, suddenly separated…

—Able to remember for up to 10 years

Long-term memory spans are difficult to test experimentally, so it is often recorded as events.

Semen, who spent a third of his life finding his way home.

In Murmansk, Russia, there is a memorial to the cat Semen. This cat went missing from Moscow while on vacation with his owner in 1987. After a fruitless search, the owner reluctantly returned home alone in the north.

One day in 1994, when the owner opened the door, he found a thin, bony cat with severely frostbitten paws standing there—it was Semen.

It took 6 and a half years, a third of its life, to travel approximately 2,000 kilometers across vast and frigid lands, ultimately returning home through astonishing instinct.

To commemorate Semen’s loyalty and perseverance, a bronze monument depicting a “kitten carrying a backpack” was erected in the area.

Billy, a stray cat, leaps over the desk to greet its owner.

An animal hospital in Connecticut, USA, adopted Billy as their “office cat.”

Three years later, while patrolling the front desk, Billy bumped into its former owner. The man thought Billy looked a lot like his lost cat, and Billy, excited, leaped over the desk to greet him warmly.

To further confirm, the man brought Billy’s twin brother to the hospital as well, and Billy immediately recognized his brother.

Sora, a cat who never forgot its owner

Mr. Ohno from Japan needed to be hospitalized for a long time due to illness, so he gave his cat, Sora, to an adoptive family in another city.

To test whether the cat could recognize and remember its owner’s voice, more than two years later, a research team from the University of Tokyo recorded Ohno’s voice and played it back to Sora.

The moment Xiao Kong heard the voice, she gave a very clear response…

Numerous reports from abroad have demonstrated that cats can possess long-term memories spanning at least 10 years.

And for cats, whose lifespan is only a little over a decade, the length of their memory of you might be their entire lifespan!