Playing fetch is an integral part of a dog's life, but now scientists have discovered that many cats enjoy it just as much.
The first such research on 1.000 domestic cats provided interesting information about their play habits.
Students from the University of Sussex and Northumbria said the results show that owners need to be imaginative when stimulating cats to get them to respond.
The research was first published in the scientific journal Nature.
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Many cats instinctively like to play, the report says, and owners are urged to think more about the different activities they could do to keep their pets happy and active.
It has been found that cats prefer to be in control of play and do not need special training to have fun.
"Cats that started this game did it with more enthusiasm and repetition during the month," said Gemma Forman, a researcher at the University of Sussex's School of Psychology.
She added that this perceived sense of control from the cat's perspective can be beneficial to its well-being and relationship with its owner.
"I would encourage owners to be more available for their cats' needs by responding to their wishes for play. "Not everyone will want to play fetch, but if they do, they'll probably have a special way of doing it," Forman said.
The research involved 924 owners of 1.154 cats (994 mixed and 160 purebred) who were playing, in order to better understand the behavior.
The highest percentage of cats (94,4 percent) showed an instinctive ability to play fetch from an early age, whether it was to retrieve toys or common household items.
Siamese purebred cats were the most numerous in the survey (22,5 percent), followed by Bengal (10 percent) and Ragdoll (7,5 percent).
"We think this is important because it shows how much of this behavior is driven by the cats themselves, as few of the owners surveyed trained their cats to fetch," said study co-author Dr Elizabeth Renner, a psychologist at Northumbria University.
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