This article describes everything that someone who has lived with a cat understands.
Good that it is formalized, but after growing up with a cat for 12 years or so, there is nothing new here.
Here is Stoy’s guide to make a cat want to meet you, it is not 100% successful, I would say that it is 75% successful in making a cat come to you.
- Give the cat space! Cats are ambush predators, they hate being cornered, give them a way out if they are not interested.
- Sit down - sit down to make yourself look smaller, less threatening.
- Use the slow blink.
- Talk in a low, soft, friendly voice. I usually say stuff like “Oh hello there” and “how are you?” This can make a cat more interested.
- Extend your arm and hand to allow the cat to get a feel for your scent.
- Once they know your scent, cats tend to relax, often inviting you to pet them.
- When petting a cat you don’t know, avoid petting the head, pet the sides of the main body, cats tend to see objects approaching their head from above as a threat.
- Don’t pick up unknown cats! You don’t know how the cat will react so it is better to avoid it all together.
- When the cat loses interest, don’t try to stop it, just let it go.
If you do this, you will probably get to pet some cats, and the cat will remember you as not being a threat, so next time it may be even more open to contact.
Also, cats understand a surprising amount of human speech. So you can and should talk to them.
(if you get those little button things, they’ll even talk back)
They will learn to understand the words dinner, food, and tuna real fast.
In my experience, the best way to get a cat to come to you is to completely ignore it. More often than not it will come to investigate.
As best as I can tell, it’s simply impossible for a cat to imagine that you’re not aware of them, like they are hyper aware of you, and ignoring it signals that you don’t think that it’s a threat. Mutual slow blinking may or may not be involved.
Note that I’m not a cat expert, haven’t lived with a cat since I was eight, but most cats seem to come over to say “Hi” when I’m visiting friends, to the point where owners seem to regularly exclaim that they’ve never seen their cat come over to a stranger.
YMMV.
