Cats Do Have Facial Expressions, We're Just Bad at Reading Them, Study Shows

We generally assume a purring cat is a contented cat. It's safe to say a hissing cat, its ears drawn back, is not pleased.

But aside from the visage of Grumpy Cat - who may not have been grumpy at all - feline faces don't tell us much about how cats feel. Or rather, as a new study on the topic found, most of us are pretty terrible at reading cats' expressions.

Cats have a reputation for being "inscrutable", the researchers say, and their results mostly back up this notion. More than 6,000 study participants in 85 countries, the vast majority of them cat owners, watched brief cat videos and then judged the animals' moods. The average score was just under 60 percent correct - an F, if cat videos were a school subject.

However, 13 percent of participants did quite well, scoring 75 percent or above. The researchers dubbed these achievers "cat whisperers" - and said their results are important.

"Cats are telling us things with their faces, and if you're really skilled, you can spot it," said author Georgia Mason, a behavioral biologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario.

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