Prof. Georgia Mason, from U of G’s Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare, spoke to Martha Stewart Living magazine about how to understand a cat’s moods based on its meows, purrs and growls.

Mason said there’s been plenty of research on dog cognition but “hardly anything on cat welfare and communication.” The article said Mason recently co-authored research examining how well cat owners and non-owners read cats’ faces.

“There’s far less we know about cats than we do dogs,” she said.

A professor in Department of Animal Biosciences, Mason is a behavioural biologist who has studied several aspects of animal welfare, including validating and refining indicators of stress across several species, including farmed and laboratory animals.