We’ve officially launched our Cat Personality Test — which you can take even if you haven’t tracked your own cat (you can even take it if you don’t have a cat!).

Have you ever wondered just how your cat thinks? Maybe you’re curious about that friendly feline from around the corner? We may not be able to read the minds of cats but with the help of our partners in Australia and New Zealand we’ve been able to develop a way to tap into determining their personality.

How do determine the personality of a cat you ask? Excellent question! The Cat Tracker team is using a survey based on a template from our friends down under. And we’re proud to announce that the test is now live and available to take on the front page of our site!

Personality in cats works in very much the same way as it does in humans. Some cats may be adventurous or impulsive, while others may seem a bit lazy. Some are constantly seeking attention while others would rather be alone. Because of this, the questions used in the cat personality survey were actually adapted from questions on human personality tests. For example, a human personality test might include questions such as “How do you like to spend your Saturday nights?” followed by a few answer choices. For a cat this could be adjusted to something like “How likely is this cat to snooze in its favorite spot?” By going through and adjusting questions to make them more feline friendly in this manner, the Australian cat trackers were able to evaluate a variety of different behavioral traits in cats.

Through their research they were able to categorize all the many behavioral traits that cats exhibit into 5 major traits that represent a cat’s overarching personality. These “Feline Five” traits are Skittishness, Outgoingness, Dominance, Spontaneousness, and Friendliness. The survey looks at all of the questions and gives the final personality result as a range across all five of the major traits. It would be too difficult to classify every cat as falling into just one category, as in reality things are usually more of a blend. We’re hopeful that by comparing the results of the survey to the movements of the cats we’ve tracked we’ll be able to better understand why certain cats go where they do!

The survey itself takes about 25 minutes to complete in its entirety and we hope that a lot of you will take the time to help us uncover more of the mysteries surrounding cats! Even if you don’t own a cat, we’d still love to have you take the survey! There is a portion strictly about people’s attitudes towards cats and knowing that is helpful info for us too. We hope you learn something new about your cat!

Take the Cat Personality Test Here

This post was written by Brandon McDonald. If you have any questions about Cat Tracker feel free to send us an email at cats@yourwildlife.org.