Can your cat tell the time?

When he lets you know with persistent meowing that you’ve forgotten to fill his food dish at the regular time, it poses the question, doesn’t it?  Cats, to some extent, seem to have a built-in clock. I have one female, Emmalee, who will dutifully come and find me at 10:30 p.m. to let me know that I am supposed to go to bed. If I don’t cooperate, she stares me down indefinitely like I’m trying her patience. Her sister Sheila, on the other hand, is there in the morning at 6 a.m.

It may appear that your cats can actually tell what time it is, but they are really products of their environment to a certain extent. Cats fall into our routines and learn to anticipate certain actions from us that have occurred repeatedly. They synchronize with their owners, which is really quite nice. It’s comforting to have a little soul that cares about your bedtime and wants to cuddle with you. And it’s convenient to have a cat that’s vocal enough to let you know the water bowl’s still empty and it’s after feeding time. There’s also something perfect about waking up with a loving feline in your face about the time the roosters get up. It’s as reliable as the sun.

Until you have to rely on it! If there’s one morning out of the year on which it is essential for me to rise and be at a very important place at a precise time, Sheila will let me down. She’ll, for some unknown reason, choose to slumber away on the couch, completely forgetting about her alarm clock responsibilities. It makes me wonder just how much cats really do know about time. Are felines capable of spite? That’s a whole different subject.

If your cats are like mine, even if they possessed the ability to interpret time in ways that far outweighed the human method, they'd keep it to themselves and use it to their own advantage. Knowledge is power, after all. Maybe the best conclusion we can reach is not to, under any circumstance, rely on your cat for dependable behaviour. They may be inconsistent in their inconsistencies, which makes them all the more inconsistent. They’re sneaky!  I think I’ve made my point. 

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