Can cats understand "death"? The "unexpected behaviors" and "changes" shown by cohabiting cats after their feline companion's passing

Do cats understand the concept of "death"? The answer to that question has not yet been reported. However, when my beloved cat, Jiji, passed away, I felt that cats might be intelligent enough to understand "death."

This time, I'll talk about the behaviors my two resident cats displayed when Jiji passed away and the changes that followed.

What were the reactions of my beloved cats immediately after their companion cat passed away?

Besides Jiji, who passed away, we have two other beloved cats: Kotaro (a brown tabby) and Leon (a ginger tabby). Immediately after Jiji passed away, their reactions were completely opposite.

In Kotaro's case

Kotaro and Jiji didn't get along very well to begin with. Kotaro is a sweet and clingy cat who always wants to be loved the most. When Jiji and I were being affectionate, he would often get jealous and then threaten Jiji later on.

However, they would sometimes sleep cuddled together, which was a strange dynamic.

Immediately after Jiji passed away, I felt hollow, but I thought I needed to tell Kotaro and Leon about Jiji's death. So, I opened the zipper of the oxygen tent (which I had rented for home use) where Jiji had taken her last breath, allowing Kotaro and the others to enter and exit freely.

Kotaro, however, went for the "Churu" Jiji had left behind, rather than Jiji herself. After he finished eating, he showed no particular interest in Jiji and exited the oxygen tent.

Well, they weren't that close when Jiji was alive, so I guess this is how it is. When I saw Kotaro's laid-back demeanor, I felt that perhaps a strong bond in life is essential for a cat to understand or mourn the death of a housemate.

However, I later realized this assumption was wrong.

In Leon's case

For some reason, Leon loved licking Jiji's head. It was his daily routine to suddenly go to Jiji and lick her head enthusiastically, as if remembering, "Oh, I have to lick her head."

Since he would lick for such a long time, Jiji would give him a "two-paw cat punch" when she wanted to be released. She would tell him to "stop" through physical action.

I wondered if Jiji's head tasted so good. Maybe there was some kind of broth coming out of it... That "licking scene" must have been Leon's desperate expression of affection.

Once Jiji started living in the oxygen tent, Leon would quietly watch her through the tent.

Immediately after Jiji passed away, Leon also went into the oxygen tent by himself. However, unlike Kotaro, he sniffed Jiji's scent. After sniffing Jiji's scent for a very short time, not even a few minutes, Leon's expression changed slightly, and he exited the oxygen tent.

Leon must have realized Jiji was gone by the scent. My husband and I thought so, seeing Leon's demeanor.

What if they met the deceased companion again a few hours later?

Since they were family who had spent so much time together, we wanted the cats to properly say goodbye to each other. My husband and I discussed this, and a few hours after Jiji passed away, we showed Kotaro and Leon Jiji's body again, explaining, "She's gone, it's time to say goodbye."

Cats are creatures that understand our words and emotions more than humans imagine. Therefore, I felt it was the owner's role to properly convey "death" through words and heart.

Then, both of them performed the same action. They sniffed Jiji for a moment, then immediately left and never came back.

I had often heard stories during interviews of cats who wouldn't leave the side of their deceased companion, or who would frantically groom the body. So, Kotaro and the others' somewhat indifferent attitude made me feel a little sad, wondering if the bond between my cats was surprisingly weak.

However, I later realized how shallow my thinking had been.

The "unexpected changes" my beloved cats showed after their companion passed away

The attitude my beloved cats displayed after Jiji's death was more casual than I had imagined, so I thought, "Their mental state will be fine."

But I was wrong. After Jiji's death, Kotaro and the others' appetites suddenly decreased. They weren't completely refusing food, so I observed them, but the rate at which their food disappeared clearly slowed down.

At our house, cat food is delivered once a month on a regular basis. When Jiji was alive, there were months when we had to buy more food because we ran out, but after Jiji's death, we started having leftover food from our monthly order.

It's strange that the amount of food consumed changed so much just because one cat was gone. Could it be that Jiji was the one who ate the most food? I considered that, but the possibility of Jiji, who was small and had a small appetite, being a "secret big eater" was extremely close to zero.

...Which means, perhaps Kotaro and the others are indeed eating less. Thinking so, I weighed them, and indeed, their weight had decreased.

When I learned that fact, my heart ached. I felt that "these cats also understand death and are hurting."

Kotaro, especially, loves to eat. It was an indescribable feeling to think that he was so shocked that he couldn't even focus on his favorite thing.

Honestly, I thought Jiji was an object of jealousy for Kotaro, a "cat he didn't really like," so I realized how shallow my thinking had been.

Just as there are many different things going on in human families, there must have been many things happening between the cats too. I was ashamed of myself for thinking I understood my cats' emotional wounds without considering what happened and the bonds that formed during the times we humans weren't watching.

Tears welling up at how the resident cats accepted the urn...

Fortunately, my beloved cats' appetites gradually returned after about a month. I felt that they were also slowly coming to terms with their grief in their own ways.

As I watched their daily lives unfold, I was surprised by my cats' reaction to Jiji's urn. Many urn covers come with decorative cords that cats are likely to play with. Jiji's urn cover was also of that type.

"They're going to play with this," I thought. But at that time, I was in a state of mind where I felt anxious if I didn't carry the urn with me constantly. When I placed it in the living room where my cats were, I made a conscious effort not to take my eyes off it.

However, my cats' reaction was unexpected... They didn't play with the decorative cords at all; instead, they began to relax by the urn.

When I tried bringing the urn closer to my cats, both Kotaro and Leon sniffed it and then rubbed against it. I was brought to tears by their gentle actions, which seemed to suggest they understood that Jiji's ashes were inside.

Perhaps cats, with their keener sense of smell than humans, can sense or understand the "weight of death."

There's actually a cat in America that can sense when humans are about to die!

By the way, as an aside, there's an interesting story about "cats and death" in the world. There was a cat in a rehabilitation facility in Rhode Island, USA, that could sense human death.

His name was Oscar. Oscar would reportedly make daily rounds of the patient rooms, meticulously sniffing the residents' scents, and then settling next to specific patients. And, the phenomenon of patients passing away shortly after Oscar settled next to them occurred over 50 times by 2010.

Oscar's mysterious behavior became a subject of study, and scientists concluded that he was "sensing the smell of ketones released during cell death." Oscar passed away in 2022.

It is not yet understood whether other cats besides Oscar also possess this "ability to sense impending death." However, personally, I believe that other cats may also have this ability, although there may be individual differences in sensitivity.

Perhaps my own cats sensed Jiji's impending death by smell, which is why their final farewell was so brief.

When a resident cat passes away, changes also occur in the living environment. In such circumstances, I believe that beloved cats can sometimes experience more emotional distress than humans imagine.

Therefore, even if they don't appear to be shocked, consideration might be necessary. When a beloved cat passes away, while taking care of your own mental health, it's also important to be mindful of the feelings of your resident cats.