Should I slow blink back at my cat?
Yes — it's one of the few cat signals humans can speak fluently. Soften your face, close your eyes slowly, hold a beat, reopen, then look away. Keep your gaze soft and sleepy, never a wide-eyed stare, and let her decide what happens next.
The template is how friendly cats greet each other: get low, avert your gaze, slow-blink, stay still (Bradshaw & Ellis, The Trainable Cat, ch.4). Jackson Galaxy pairs the slow blink with letting the cat close the last of the distance herself (Total Cat Mojo, ch.19) — the blink opens the door; she decides whether to walk through it.
It works even before she trusts you: in a 2020 study in Scientific Reports, cats slow-blinked back and approached more often after a person slow-blinked at them first — even when that person was a stranger they’d never met (Humphrey et al. 2020).
The failure mode is intensity. A wide-eyed, unblinking, loving gaze reads as a challenge display from her side of the room (Johnson-Bennett, CatWise, ch.3). Sleepy face, slow close, look away after — the look-away is part of the sentence.
The full signal, both directions: the slow blink, decoded.
Behaviour and wellbeing only. Nothing here diagnoses or replaces a veterinarian — if something about your cat worries you physically, that’s a call to your vet.
New articles, as we publish them
The everyday moments and the behaviour questions — and first word on what we make, offers included. From Deni & Helen.