Whether they'll actually listen to you is a whole other question.
In the second scenario, the cats listened to their owner utter sentences directed to other humans, then one recording where the owner was plainly talking to them. And in the third, they listened to a stranger doing the same. This time, when the cats heard their owners employ “cat talk,” the team saw a behavioral change in 10 of the 16 cats . But the behavior intensity of the cats stayed level when they heard from the strangers, even after the strangers switched to cat talk.
“It’s further evidence showing that there is attachment between cats and humans. And I think that’s important to keep in mind, because for decades, we have been thinking that cats are very independent creatures, that they just want food and shelter, and that they don’t care about humans,” she said. “The fact that they show a special reaction to a special way we talk to them means, I think, that we are something more just than a food provider in their world.