Yes, Your Cat Really Is Ignoring You, Accordingto a New Study Researchers in Japan experimented by sayingdifferent words, including names, to cats. They found that cats can distinguishbetween their names and other words,even if it’s not the cat’s owner speaking. In cat cafes, the cats distinguished names from non-names, but did not distinguish between their own names and the names of other cats in the cafe. This implies that cats do not really associatetheir name with any sort of self-identity. They do know that when a human says acertain sound, it’s linked to something goodhappening: food, head scratches, treats, playtime. In other words, cats are capable ofdistinguishing human speech to some degree. Whether they actually respondis entirely up to them.