Are cats telepathic?

To answer the question, you have to ask first whether telepathy is a genuine subject to discuss seriously. I think that you will find that the scientists and the experts believe that telepathy is pseudoscience. I don't think there's any hard evidence to prove that it exists in people. Therefore, it will not exist in cats either.

Definition of telepathy: the supposed communication of thoughts or ideas by means other than the known senses. Sounds like mind-reading. Cats don't mind read but they can understand pick up our mood and learn our habits.

So, I'm going to stick my neck out right away and say that cats are not telepathic. However, they have skills which might hint to some people that they are telepathic. I will provide some examples.

Your cat is always at the front door when you come home. They are behind the front door waiting to greet you. Or they sense when you are going to get up when they're on your lap. They appear to be reading your mind.

But this is not mind-reading. Cats greet their owners when they return home back because they've waited very patiently for a very long time (perhaps hours) behind that front door and they know in general terms through their internal clock and through the rhythms and habits of their relationship with their owner that he or she is going to come home at a certain time plus or minus an hour or two. That's how it works. It is far more functional and realistic than mystical.

And if a cat jumps off your lap before you get up even when you are thinking of getting up it is because you are showing signs of getting up such as, for example, turning off the television so there's no sound coming from the TV. Or putting down the newspaper. There will be some sort of signal as a preliminary to you getting up which tells your cat that it is going to happen at which point, they prepare for it.

This is because cats are very sensitive to auditory and olfactory stimuli. They have great senses. Their hearing is more sensitive than ours and they can detect higher frequencies. Their nose is more sensitive than ours and they can detect smells which we can't. Their sight is not better than ours and is slightly worse in fact but they combine their sight with their hearing and sense of smell to become very sharp on picking up changes in the environment around them.

RELATED: A cat’s senses are ready and waiting.

You might, for example, be sitting with your cat and he suddenly turns his head looks towards a wall or the back door. You've heard or seen nothing. He has seen and heard something probably heard something more than seen it and is inquisitive about what it might be. My cat does this all the time. He picks up the sound of foxes outside when I haven't. Or someone coming to the front door.

Cats are more instinctively and intuitively sharper in terms of sensory input than humans in my opinion. And they are very sensitive to the rhythms and habits of daily life. They like these routines to be set in concrete actually. They like each day to be the same. They like their owner to do the same things day in and day out because it gives them certainty and it reassures them. But they also learn these rhythms and respond to them. This means they can predict sometimes what is going to happen next.

RELATED: Cat Memory: How Good Is It?

This is not telepathy but memory in combination with their sharp senses. And cats do have decent memories by the way. They remember their owner even when they haven't seen them for many years. This has been categorically proved when a lost cat is found and reunited with their owner. They settle in immediately to the way they were five years ago.

People might like to believe that cats are telepathic because people like to believe in mysterious things/myths and legends (think big cat sightings in the UK for instance when they are all false). I would rather try and be more scientific and explain feline behaviour from that standpoint.