Are Cats Left- or Right-Pawed? Paw Preference and Brain Lateralization

When your cat reaches for a treat, does it always lead with the same paw? The feline equivalent of handedness turns out to be real.

Bias appears as the task gets harder

Wells and Millsopp (2009) examined how pet cats used their front paws across tasks of differing difficulty, and reported that the expression of left-right bias varied with what the task demanded.

Simple reaching tends to be ambilateral; the harder, more manipulative the task, the more consistent the bias. Humans work the same way—handedness shows up far more clearly in precise operations than in casual movements.

Females right, males left

Wells and Millsopp (2012) tracked how paw preference develops, testing 12 cats at 12 weeks, 6 months, and one year on a food-retrieval challenge.

Lateralized behavior was strongly sex related. Females showed a greater preference for the right paw, while males were significantly more inclined to use the left. This sex difference has been reported repeatedly and is discussed in relation to the effects of sex hormones on brain development.

The bias settles at one year

The same study also mapped the developmental order. At 12 weeks and 6 months, cats were significantly more likely to be ambilateral than paw-preferent, while at one year they were more likely to show a lateral bias. Preferences at 6 months and at one year were positively correlated, so early tendencies persist.

A cat's 'handedness,' then, is not fixed from birth; it settles gradually through development.

What the bias means

Paw preference is regarded as an external indicator that the two brain hemispheres take on different roles—lateralization. It has been found in many vertebrates and is not unique to cats.

Note that paw preference does not indicate cognitive ability. In humans, no systematic intelligence difference between right- and left-handers has been established. Feline brain structure is covered in what is a cat's brain like?.

How to check at home

Put a treat at the bottom of a narrow tube—an empty toilet-paper roll works—and record which paw your cat uses to fish it out. Three points matter. First, make the task hard enough that the cat must insert a paw; easy tasks produce no bias. Second, place the tube directly in front of the cat so body orientation does not create a bias. Third, record at least about 50 trials spread across separate days.

One or two observations cannot be told apart from chance. Seeing a statistical bias takes repetition (five feline intelligence tests to try at home).

Lateralization and cognition in humans

In humans, lateralization is studied as the division of labor for language and spatial processing (types of cognitive ability). The free NekoIQ IQ test presents non-verbal items on rotation and rule discovery across 20 questions in about 10 minutes. Results are estimates for self-understanding and are not a substitute for an official intelligence test.