Exploring the quality of life in cats: How caretaker perceptions shape simple and systematic assessments

Assessing animals’ quality of life (QoL) often relies on caretaker reports providing insights into behavioural and health changes, but possibly overlooking key welfare factors. Understanding which aspects shape caretakers’ perceptions of their cats’ QoL and how these perceptions align with structured, multi-domain welfare assessments can help improve the validity and usefulness of QoL tools. We hypothesised that health, age, outdoor access, enrichment, and human–animal interactions influence caretakers’ perceptions of their cats’ QoL, and examined how these perceptions relate to structured, multi-domain welfare assessments. We used a single caretaker rating of overall QoL (QoL_scale) and explored its relationship with a systematically derived measure (QoL_extensive) based on behavioural, emotional, and health indicators. Caretakers (N = 421) completed an online survey on their characteristics and health (e.g. age, body condition, signs of good/impaired health, medical needs), husbandry (social environment, outdoor access, environmental features, e.g. resting places, enrichment), human-animal interactions, cat behaviour (e.g., frequency of different behaviours towards conspecifics and caretakers including play, aggression) and impressions on emotional states. A principal component analysis (PCA) on 54 of these behaviour, health and emotional states items was used to derive a comprehensive measure of QoL (QoL_extensive). This measure comprised six components: (1) Vitality, (2) Attentiveness, appetite, and enjoyment, (3) Negative emotions, (4) Healthy appearance, (5) Affection towards familiar humans, and (6) Aggression towards familiar humans. Two regression models examined predictors of QoL_scale and QoL_extensive, incorporating factors such as health condition, medical needs, body condition, outdoor access, human-animal interactions and enrichment. For QoL_scale, the six QoL_extensive components were also included to investigate how they relate to the simple assessment. Our findings revealed that caretaker ratings (QoL_scale) were mainly shaped by visible health and emotional states, with attentiveness, appetite, and enjoyment showing a positive (β = 0.25, p < 0.001) and negative emotions showing a negative association (β = –0.21, p < 0.001). Structured assessments (QoL_extensive) highlighted the importance of age (β = –0.29, p < 0.001), body condition (β = 0.16, p = 0.001), and affiliative human–animal interactions (β = 0.17, p = 0.001), underscoring the central role of human-animal relationships in welfare. The weak correlation (r = 0.295, p < 0.001) between the two measures suggests they capture only partly related aspects of feline welfare. Overall, caretaker judgments and structured welfare indicators reflect related but distinct QoL aspects, confirming our objective that comprehensive, multi-domain assessments are required to capture feline welfare accurately. • 3 – 5 bullet points of maximum 85 characters, including spaces, per bullet point. • Predictors of two quality-of-life measures were analysed. • Subjective caretaker ratings reflected health, emotions, and natural behaviours. • Structured assessment revealed the importance of age and body condition Human-animal relationships plays a central role in cat welfare.' Combining subjective and structured assessments improved the QoL assessment scope.