Various animal species can make a priori decisions about the passability of openings, based on their own size knowledge. So far no one has tested the ability for self-representation in cats. We hypothesized that cats may rely on their size awareness when they have to negotiate small openings. Companion cats (N = 30) were tested with incrementally decreasing sized openings, which were either the same height, or the same width. Cats approached and entered even the narrowest openings, but they slowed down before reaching, and while passing through the shortest ones. Because of their specific anatomical features and cautious locomotory strategy, cats readily opt for the trial-and-error method to negotiate narrow apertures, but they seemingly rely on their body-size representing capacity in the case of uncomfortably short openings. Ecologically valid methodologies can provide answers in the future as to whether cats would rely on their body awareness in other challenging spatial tasks.

John Gray’s 2020 book "Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life" is a 128-page essayistic work that uses the temperament of domestic cats as a lens to critique human self-help culture and academic philosophy. Gray, a British political philosopher known for earlier pessimistic titles such as "Straw Dogs" (2002) and "The Silence of Animals" (2013), presents this book as a lighter, more accessible postscript to those works. He argues that humans are uniquely anxious because they constantly seek meaning and happiness, whereas cats live spontaneously and contentedly without abstract goals.

The book is divided into six short chapters. Chapter 1 frames the project: learn from cats’ integration with the present moment rather than from humanity’s restless quest for transcendence. Chapter 2 claims that philosophy itself is a symptom of human anxiety; cats experience fear only in immediate danger, never the chronic existential dread that drives people to formulate systems of thought. Chapter 3, "Feline Ethics," draws on Taoism and Spinoza to contend that morality is culturally relative; the ethical life consists in approximating one’s own ideal nature, not in obeying universal rules. Chapter 4 contrasts human love—clouded by self-deception—with the straightforward attachment cats display. Chapter 5, "Time, Death, and the Feline Soul," asserts that cats accept finitude without rumination, modeling an acceptance of mortality that humans could emulate. The final chapter dismisses the search for life’s ultimate purpose and closes with "Ten Feline Hints on How to Live Well," distilled advice such as "forget about pursuing happiness, and you may find it."