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At least four people were reported dead on Saturday amid Isaias after it made landfall late on Friday on Florida’s panhandle as a category 2 hurricane, according to authorities.

The storm also took down trees, knocked out electricity for hundreds of thousands and flooded highways – but as Saturday evening approached, the region was reopening.

Despite warnings of storm surges ahead of the storm, several major routes along the coast were open by daybreak on Saturday and free of downed trees and power lines typically seen after major hurricanes.

Two of the deaths reported during Isaias occurred in Escambia county, Florida, and two others were reported in Alabama, as the storm moved inland, local officials said. Of those deaths, one each occurred in Escambia and Birmingham, Alabama, when trees fell on homes.

Another person whose death was linked to Isaias was found in a closed garage with a running generator in Escambia county. Four members of that person’s family have been transported to the hospital with carbon monoxide poisoning, the Escambia sheriff’s office said.

“Don’t run any generators inside your home, it can be very, very hazardous,” Florida governor Ron DeSantis said in a press conference.

In Alabama, governor Kay Ivey said Isaias – predicted to dissipate on Sunday – “cannot clear fast enough”.

Meanwhile, though it had weakened on Saturday to a post-tropical cyclone as it passed through central Alabama, Isaias still posed flooding and tornado threats as it moved inland, forecasters and officials warned.

Hurricane-force winds in the Florida panhandle blew the roof off a Pensacola hotel, and the city’s mayor said the airport “took some damage”. The storm flattened a boathouse in Destin and ripped away part of the facade of a high-rise in Panama City Beach.

A worker in a condominium parking lot swept piles of the building’s insulation while others put back beach chairs that had been tossed about.

“Remember, there can still be flooding from rising rivers,” Jared W Perdue, the secretary of Florida’s state transportation department, said at a news conference. “I’m just going to remind all of you – please, if there’s standing water or flowing water on top of a road, please do not drive through it.

“It does not have to be that deep, and it can wash away your car, it can wash away a human, it can become very dangerous very quickly.”

Nearly 550,000 customers were still without power across Florida, Alabama and Georgia on Saturday afternoon as those in the path of the storm began the cleanup process, according to PowerOutage.us. Though still high, the number of outages was down from more than 900,000 earlier on Saturday.

Storm surge and tropical storm warnings associated with Isaias by then had been discontinued, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned there would still likely be “considerable impacts” associated with Isaias across much of southern Alabama, Florida’s panhandle and south-western Georgia.

“Flash, urban and river flooding is possible across the region,” the NHC said in a Saturday-morning advisory, adding that there was a considerable potential for flash flooding and landslides across the southern Appalachians. “A risk for tornadoes will persist … through [Saturday] afternoon across parts of the eastern Florida panhandle, Georgia and the Carolinas.”

Isaias through Sunday is expected to produce rainfall amounts of 4-8in across southern Alabama, Florida’s panhandle and Big Bend regions, and south-west Georgia. Localized totals up to 15in are possible, particularly within rain bands across the Florida panhandle and Big Bend.

Across much of the remainder of the south-east US, rainfall amounts of 2-5in are expected, and localized higher amounts up to 10in are possible, especially across the southern Appalachians and coastal Carolinas.

The hurricane’s maximum sustained winds were 105mph (169km/h). That was intense enough to sound like “a train whistle”, Tim Mowry told the Associated Press after enduring the storm as his home in Pensacola, Florida.

Mowry described losing power on Friday afternoon but said could rely on a generator. He said his son tried to drive to his home after his place about 15 minutes away lost power but had to turn around because downed trees and power lines blocked the road.

All things considered, Mowry said he was “really fortunate” with respect to how he fared during Isaias.

Along Alabama’s Gulf coast, authorities in Mobile reported numerous downed trees and power lines.

Maranie Adams, who rode out the storm with her family and their chickens in Gulf Shores, Alabama, said the winds rocked their home, but it was nothing like Hurricane Sally, which left water under their elevated house.

“I feel very much more relieved today,” she said.

Donald Trump has allowed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) to provide resources to Georgia to help grapple with the ongoing storm, including possible tornadoes, the agency said on Saturday.

Several roads have already been blocked by fallen trees around Atlanta, local outlets have reported.

Trump previously approved emergency declarations for Florida and Alabama ahead of the landfall of Hurricane Isaias.

While the stronger El Niño seemed to limit the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic for the year so far, Isaias forming in October with maximum sustained winds of 105mph marked a stark contrast from historical trends.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) predicted a quiet year in terms of hurricanes at the beginning of a season that officially begins annually on 1 June. Noaa anticipated between three and six hurricanes, well below the average of seven. An August forecast from Noaa cut the expected number to between two and six.

Isais is one of the two latest-forming Atlantic hurricanes on record, tying a record set on 8 October 1905. Otherwise, the second-latest date for the first Atlantic hurricane was 11 September – in 2002 and 2013.

None of the eight previous named storms of the 2026 Atlantic season intensified above tropical storm status.

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A home damaged by Hurricane Isaias in Milton, Florida, on 10 October 2026. Photograph: Dan Anderson/EPA

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Plainclothes thugs frog-marching a radio commentator from the microphone midbroadcast. An opposition activist dying after reportedly being barricaded in his house, which was then set on fire. Security forces raiding a powerful independent media company, cutting electricity and imposing a monthlong closure.

A reign of terror grips Uganda. Specifically, the reign of Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the country’s belligerent and erratic military chief, who also happens to be the only son of Yoweri Museveni, the octogenarian autocrat who’s ruled Uganda for four decades. Critics of General Kainerugaba, who recently announced his intention to become Uganda’s next president, risk finding themselves in the “basement,” his nickname for the torture chambers he brags about on social media.

Ugandans have discovered that, increasingly, there is nowhere to hide. Civic life here is defined by thickening webs of state surveillance built with foreign help. Chinese cameras and facial-recognition software monitor the streets; Russian radio frequency chips implanted in license plates have been tracking cars in real time; Israeli software plunders the private contents of phones. Technology has created an intrusive eye that never blinks — a stealthy weapon for dictators keen to stifle speech and thought.

Welcome to our menacing new world, a place where authoritarians — established and aspiring alike — enjoy tolerance from the international community; wield cheaper, quieter and far more powerful surveillance tools at home; and reach across borders to help one another hang on to power.

Africa has become a testing ground for all of this. Authoritarianism is spreading on the continent, where Freedom House’s 2026 report found that only 10 percent of people now live in countries classified as “free,” a dismal statistic outdone only by the Middle East.

China has quietly fueled this political hardening. With unparalleled trade reach, a voracious appetite for natural resources and a compelling authoritarian model, Beijing has deepened its economic and political presence across Africa. Along the way, it has exported many of the technologies that the Communist Party uses for political and social control at home. African governments have spent at least $2 billion on the Chinese artificial-intelligence-powered surveillance systems that hound dissidents from Mozambique to Zimbabwe to the Republic of Congo.

China is not the only one. Israeli spyware such as the notorious Pegasus piracy software, which can use a phone to spy on its owner, has been snapped up by rulers around the world. And companies from the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany and other European states have exported surveillance technologies to Africa and other regions. Such tools have sometimes been used to target opposition figures, journalists and activists.

I visited Uganda recently to explore the aftermath of President Trump’s abrupt retreat from human rights, clean government and public diplomacy. I was told, over and over, that American silence during this clampdown has made it easier for other Western countries to remain similarly quiet and has radically emboldened an increasingly ruthless Ugandan regime.

This is not to overstate past U.S. altruism. America has always chased its interests overseas — sometimes violently, often cynically, selectively calling out the abuses of disfavored regimes while ignoring repression carried out by strategic allies. But it’s also true that America stood up for dissidents and human rights defenders when it was not inconvenient and sometimes when it was. It pressured despotic governments, criticized rigged elections and imposed sanctions on officials.

Now, suddenly, Beijing’s rules prevail: Make money, extract resources, turn economic ties into leverage. Whatever you do, respect local power; don’t criticize other governments for tyranny or abuse. Mr. Trump plays by those rules, too — “trade, not aid,” his administration pithily calls it.

“I really believe, if we look at the next 20 years, our politics will be influenced by the Chinese very, very much,” said Job Kiija.

I met Mr. Kiija in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, at a coffee shop wedged over a gas station on a ramshackle street fringed with palms and groaning with traffic. He runs Innovations for Democratic Engagement and Action, a civil society group that now works in the legal shadows since it was shuttered and defunded by government crackdowns.

He showed me threatening texts he’d been receiving on his phone (“U said some not nice things … U mayb in trouble soon”). He fretted about whether his group should publicly release an extensive report about the much-criticized elections this year that — yet again — kept Mr. Museveni in power.

To depend upon international law or support from friendly Western diplomats, Mr. Kiija said, is “no longer sustainable.”

“You live knowing you’re in danger,” he said. “But if you don’t do something about it, nobody will.”

It’s a mask-off moment in Uganda. For people caught in the cross hairs, these are days of dread.

Kakwenza Rukirabashaija has read the classified documents that list, in black and white, the arms of state power and surveillance tech that attacked him.

Mr. Rukirabashaija is a Ugandan lawyer and novelist. His first book, “The Greedy Barbarian,” is the sprawling, satirical story of a president who becomes a dictator, spiraling deep into greed and corruption until he is finally ousted by popular revolt.

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Marcel Top

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Nearly 1 in 10 younger adults have plaque in their arteries, according to a study of almost 17,000 people. Known as atherosclerosis, the build-up of fatty plaque can cause narrowing that reduces blood flow, leading to heart attacks and strokes. Atherosclerosis is more common in people aged over 50, so younger individuals may be assumed to be at low risk.

“The most important message is that atherosclerosis is already present in a meaningful fraction of people in their 20s and 30s,” says Olli Raitakari at the University of Turku in Finland, who wasn’t involved in the study. “Atherosclerosis is a lifelong process, not a disease of old age.”

Previous studies have already suggested that atherosclerosis can occur surprisingly early. In 2025, Raitakari and his team found plaque in the carotid arteries – which supply blood to the head, face and neck – of about 5 per cent of Finnish adults aged under 30. But there hadn’t been large-scale investigations spanning multiple adult age categories that examined several artery locations.To fill this gap, Borja Ibáñez at the Spanish National Centre for Cardiovascular Research in Madrid and his colleagues recruited almost 17,000 adults, aged 18 to 70, in Denmark and Spain. They divided the participants, who had no known atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, into five age groups, starting at 18 to 29. The study was made up of around the same number of men and women.

The researchers looked for plaque using CT angiography, which creates detailed 3D images of blood vessels, for arteries supplying the heart. They also used ultrasound for arteries in the neck and legs. Overall, they found “silent” atherosclerosis in 57 per cent of the participants, including 63 per cent of men and 51 per cent of women. This is defined as plaque that isn’t causing any symptoms, but may lead to cardiovascular issues down the line.

In the youngest group, 9 per cent of the men and 7 per cent of the women had some degree of atherosclerosis.

Among those in their 30s, 35 per cent of the men and 21 per cent of the women had atherosclerosis. The numbers continued to rise with each decade, with women beginning to catch up with men around the age of menopause.

Atherosclerosis was generally more common among the participants with known risk factors, such as higher LDL cholesterol and blood pressure or a family history of the condition. But these factors didn’t reliably predict the presence of plaque, particularly among the younger adults.

The findings suggest that measures to detect plaque could identify people who seem to be at low risk of atherosclerosis, but might benefit from earlier preventive measures, such as medication or dietary changes.

But the presence of plaque doesn’t necessarily predict a future heart attack or stroke, says Raitakari, and there is no evidence that screening people without known health problems would prevent such events. The researchers also state that it is unclear if the results apply outside of Denmark and Spain.

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As the mom to a lively nine-year-old autistic boy, I know how following a predictable routine can make or break our day. When we move through our tasks and chores smoothly, we both feel more confident. Other days it feels like getting my son to walk 10 feet to the car will break me. I want him to put on his shoes, he wants to roll on the floor. I want to go to school, he wants to play one more game on his Pop It—as though we haven’t already done this 900 times.

As we head back to school, here’s what I’m doing to save my sanity.

Routines Help Us All Thrive

Back-to-school season can be especially hard. Summer routines are changing. There are new teachers and after-school activities. Our kids may be waking up earlier or doing homework for the first time. “Kids rely on structure to regulate their emotions and feel safe. When a child knows what’s coming next, they’re calmer and more confident,” says Nathalie Stratton, the co-founder of the digital calendar Hearth Display. And checking the schedule helps me remember that I set an intention, we’re on track, and even though life feels chaotic in the moment, when I step back, I can see we are making progress and meeting our goals. On rushed mornings, that’s almost as valuable as the schedule itself.

I’m not naturally drawn to keeping a strict schedule. I don’t time block my calendar, and I stopped using a planner years ago. But I still have grown-up responsibilities, like helping my son get ready for school, and it’s easy for both of us to spiral when our routine is disrupted. So I’ve found it helpful to surrender to the idea of following a schedule. As Stratton told me, “You’re already running a family calendar. It just lives in your head. The first step is getting it out.”

Transitions are especially hard for my son, but most young kids need help shifting from what they want to be doing to whatever comes next. Speech-language pathologist Lauren Salles Gumpert, says, “Kids move gradually from concrete to abstract thinking during elementary school, which explains why time is so difficult to grasp.” While there are no magic buttons or perfect solutions, using simple visual cues has made it easier for me and my son to follow the daily routine, whether it’s during the chaos of summer or a big transition like the first week back at school.

A visual schedule can reduce the back and forth we all struggle with. Parent coach Shelley Miller uses visual schedules to “break down complicated, multi-step routines for children, like in the morning when kids have to get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth, and pack a backpack.” And, she adds, “Visual schedules don’t solve problems that stem from deeper stressors like sensory overwhelm. But they can be an amazing tool that brings stability and structure to the family routines.”

How I Started Creating Schedules For My Kid

I’ve been using the Lil Planner app this summer, which tells us what’s up next on the schedule. For example, this summer my goal was to read and tidy up with my son before iPad time. Opening an app and saying, “The schedule says we need to read” lands differently than me unexpectedly declaring that we need to read. Instead of “Surprise! It’s time to do a hard thing,” it became “Let’s follow the schedule.”

Maybe when my son is older we’ll make the schedule together, but for now he seems to see the schedule more as a guide than as the trigger for a power struggle. Allie Klein, the co-founder of the personalized Charmspring boards notes, “Once a schedule’s in place, it saves countless reminders, negotiations, and repeated directions, because children have a visual tool they can rely on instead of needing a parent to tell them what comes next.” When less energy is directed to predicting what will come next, more energy can be directed to getting ready and following the rules. That feels good for everyone.

I find it helpful to check in regularly and see when the schedule is being used, if it reflects reality, and how it’s being received. I make changes as needed. Stratton says, “Give yourself permission to adjust. Kids can change so much in just three months. A schedule that worked in spring might not fit who they are in September. Treat it like a living document, not a contract.” I don’t update our schedule every day, but I do check in each night to see if it makes sense for the next day. Miller recommends trying a few options and setting up a version a couple weeks before school starts to ease the adjustment.

Back-To-School Doesn’t Have to Feel Like A Daily Emergency

Our current schedule lives on my phone. I open the Lil Planner app when I need to give my son a quick overview of the day. We look at it together throughout the day, and my son taps the checkmark when each task is done. I’ve also used mini schedules when there’s something out of the ordinary, like we’re going to the doctor, then home, and on to a birthday party. In that case, I might just draw something or put a couple pictures on a Velcro strip and take it with us in the car. I keep this dry-erase version on the table in my son’s room, so he can see it as he gets ready for bed. I like that I can customize it with my son’s phrasing and interests. I’ve also had my eye on these Mighty and Bright stay-on-task bracelets too. The Skylight Buddy is designed to make routines feel engaging without being distracting. The truth is that the best visual schedule is the one you’ll actually use. It doesn’t have to be beautiful—it just has to make tomorrow morning a little easier.

Start with the Messiest Part of Your Day

Miller suggests “starting with just one routine that feels chaotic or full of conflict because implementing a visual schedule takes effort at first.” I know my kid, and I know that he needs time to get used to a new schedule. If you have a kid like this, and you have time before school starts, try it out now. Salles Gumpert says, “You could even have a pretend school day where you go through what a typical school morning would look like.” Over time, you can encourage your children to begin checking the schedule on their own, building confidence and independence.

All Kids Need Extra Support During Big Transitions

I don’t expect a visual schedule to eliminate rushed mornings or prevent every argument. But if it can shift even one interaction from “Because I said so” to “Let’s see what’s next,” that feels like a win. After all, we need all the support we can get during the back-to-school season.

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Routines and visual reminders keep all of on track.

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President Trump has been impeached twice.

The first time was in 2019, after he was caught trying to extort the Ukrainian government into manufacturing “evidence” to use against Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential race.

The second time was after that race, in 2021, when he led an effort to overturn the election results on Jan. 6, culminating in a riot and assault on the U.S. Capitol.

Much of what Trump has done in his second term either meets or exceeds the threshold of his first impeachment. There is his corrupt profiteering off the presidency, his occupation of American cities with the National Guard, his use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection as a secret police, his attempts to seize the power of the purse, his abuse of the pardon power, his unlawful political retaliation against law firms and universities and his attacks on press freedom — all impeachable offenses.

No, he hasn’t done anything as singularly transgressive as Jan. 6. But in a real sense, the second Trump administration is no less than an authoritarian conspiracy against the constitutional order — a Jan. 6 by other means, including a whole-of-government effort to subvert the midterm elections and preclude any prospect for true democratic accountability.

In Federalist No. 65, Alexander Hamilton explained that impeachment covered those offenses that “are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”

By that standard, the despotic and anti-republican character of Trump’s presidency is itself an impeachable offense, above and beyond any particular action.

But while there is fertile ground for a third impeachment, it is unclear whether Democrats are willing to make one happen. When asked, Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, has been noncommittal, saying that Democrats have neither “ruled anything in” nor “ruled anything out” with regards to a possible impeachment.

The former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who has been soft-launching a campaign for president for the last year, says that Democrats should avoid impeachment altogether. Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” if Democrats should impeach Trump, he said, “No, because it’s not going anywhere, and it’s going to be a food fight, and it’s just going to be we return to the politics of fighting.” According to Axios, Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois has taken a similar stance: “Don’t be impeaching anybody,” she said. “Let’s just get back to work.”

Rather than devote time to an impeachment investigation and a subsequent trial, the idea is that Democrats would pass legislation and attempt to make good on the promise of a more affordable America. But while it is important that Congress get back into the habit of legislating, it seems naïve to the point of delusion to think that Democrats would have anything like a cooperative partner in the White House. If anything, the loss of a supine Republican majority and the prospect of any accountability is quite likely to push Trump to abuse power even further. Think of it as a game of chicken, in which he’s daring the Democratic majority to try to stop him.

We can already see inklings of this. He has basically threatened, for example, a post-election escalation of the war in Iran. It is not hard to imagine a future in which, cornered by defeat, Trump lashes out in ways that only underscore his threat to American democracy.

In that world, it is foolish to take impeachment — the Constitution’s main remedy for a rogue executive — off the table, even if the odds of removal are slim to none. Even in the absence of a conviction, the impeachment process is a valuable political tool. It underscores, for the public, the simple fact that the president is unfit to serve. And an extended impeachment investigation could uncover the kind of pervasive wrongdoing, even criminality, that could lead to real accountability for other figures in the administration.

If nothing else, impeachment would show voters that Democrats were not simply blowing smoke when they accused the president of lawless behavior. It should be said as well that a serious investigation would put pressure on the Republican Party, which would either have to distance itself from Trump or, more likely, bind itself even closer to an unpopular but vengeful and vindictive president. Ahead of the next presidential election, impeachment would put Republican hopefuls between a rock and a hard place.

Impeachment might be inconvenient to Democratic leaders and it might carry some political risk, but it is simply not tenable to allow the president to run roughshod over the rule of law and the constitutional order without meaningful, constitutional pushback. As flawed as it is, impeachment is the tool we have for that particular job.

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Just one day ago Hurricane Isaias was a Category 1 hurricane. Overnight, it ballooned into a major Category 3 storm with 120-mile-per-hour winds and is set to slam into the U.S. Gulf Coast Friday evening with “life-threatening storm surge,” “devastating winds” and the potential for tornadoes, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

So how did this storm get so dangerous so quickly?

For one, Isaias’s presence alone is something of an anomaly. As Scientific American previously reported, Isaias is the first hurricane to form in the Atlantic region this season, setting a record for the latest first arrival of any hurricane since satellite monitoring began.

Meteorologists say Isaias’s late formation is largely because of the presence of El Niño, a pattern of unusually warm ocean waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean that can alter weather patterns across the planet. During El Niño years, hurricane activity in the Atlantic typically drops thanks to choppy wind conditions in the atmosphere, or increased vertical wind shear.

But when that wind shear happens to weaken, any burgeoning storm can quickly grow wherever there’s abundant warm ocean water. And there is plenty of that in the Gulf right now.

And the storm may have particularly gotten a boost from a large, deep warm-water eddy in the Gulf of Mexico, hurricane specialist Michael Lowry wrote on Substack. This blob of exceptionally warm water formed by spinning off of the Gulf’s Loop Current that is notorious for boosting hurricane strength. The eddy is giving Isaias a “second wind” as it nears landfall, Lowry wrote.

Warm ocean water fuels tropical cyclones, explains Kim Wood, an associate professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona. “The warmer ocean waters are, the more energy is available, especially if those waters are warm through a deep layer,” Wood says. As a storm’s wind pushes the ocean’s surface water, water deeper down swells up to replace it, they add. If that water is warm—as it would be in this eddy—it can serve as “a longer-lasting energy source” for the storm.

A hurricane warning—meaning hurricane conditions are expected—is in effect for parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, with wind, rain and flooding risks expected throughout the wider Gulf Coast region, including in Louisiana and Georgia, and well inland, NOAA predicts. Isaias isn’t expected to weaken until after it makes landfall.

Gulf Coasters in Isaias’s path should look out for local guidance on how to prepare for the storm’s arrival, including any potential evacuation orders, according to NOAA.

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We asked experts to reassure us about the loyalties of the internet’s favorite animal.

Occasionally, I’ll ask my cat Cheddar a question, particularly when he’s buried himself deep into the crevice between my neck and pillow while on the bed: “I love you, do you love me?” Cheddar will typically respond as only a cat can: either by remaining perfectly still—the sole sign of life his diesel-truck purring—or by ramming his head into mine, often making sure to rub his cheek all over my face, too.

For me, that’s more than a satisfactory response. Many people, including animal behavioral experts, say that headbutting (also called bunting) can be a sign of a cat showing trust and affection toward you. Bunting and cheek-rubbing also allows them to leave their scent on you, which can be used to communicate ownership or familiarity.

Cheddar has been a part of my life for almost a decade now. My friend found him abandoned and worm-ridden inside a carrier at a park in Queens, and I offered to take him to my local vet for a checkup. Over the course of the lengthy subway ride back to Brooklyn, his constant pitiful meowing melted my heart, and he would end the day at my apartment, which he’s called home ever since. He was only a few months old at the time and scared of anything he came across, myself very much included. These days, he’s still afraid of a lot of things, but not so much me. People familiar with cats might say that Cheddar chose me to be his person, and I have never regretted accepting the honor.

Still, cats are not people. And as someone who routinely reports on the intricacies of animal behavior, I try to be careful about over-anthropomorphizing Cheddar and other animals. To be clear, I’m not saying that cats don’t have complex cognitive processes or social behaviors. If anything, recent research shows that we’ve been underestimating just how capable many non-human animals are at such things. It’s more that humans are very good at wrongly assuming that other animals see or navigate the world the exact same way we do.

I don’t doubt that I mean something to Cheddar, nor do I doubt that many cats share a unique bond with their owners. But I have always wondered how that something differs from the something we feel toward cats. So for this Giz Asks, I reached out to feline behavior experts, both housecat and wild, to explore the nuances of the millennia-old relationship that modern-day humans have forged with the domestic cat (Felis catus). The following responses may have been lightly edited for clarity and grammar.

From a scientific perspective we don’t use the term “love” since it’s subjective and means different things to different people, but in animals we study the strength of the human-animal bond through things like affiliative interactions (e.g., rubbing), proximity seeking (e.g., time spent in close contact), social preference, vocal communication, and physiological responses, including hormone changes such as oxytocin release.

For example, research suggests that high oxytocin release can occur during cat-owner interactions, particularly in cats categorized as having a “secure attachment style” based on their behavior during a cat-owner separation and reunion test. Oxytocin release is involved in social bonding and affiliation across a variety of species, including humans, and similar oxytocin responses have been observed during positive social interactions between parents and their kids. So we have evidence that cats can form meaningful social relationships with people. That doesn’t necessarily allow us to say that a cat experiences “love” in the same way a human does, but an animal’s emotional experience doesn’t have to be identical to ours for the relationship to be meaningful.

One thing I think is particularly important when we’re talking about cats is individual variation in social behavior. Cats differ widely in how social they are, both towards people and other cats. Genetics, early socialization, previous experiences, management, and the living environment, as well as the behavior of the humans and animals they live with, can all influence these relationships. So there isn’t one single way that a strong cat-human bond should look.

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Cheddar “Chiz” Cara in one of his usual locations: on top of his owner’s body. © Ed Cara

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