It has been described in different species that opening and closing the eyes is related to positive emotional communication. Recently, the cat’s response to a human “slow blink”, which corresponds to a sequence of movements squinting the eyes, has been studied.

Different factors have been studied, including the response of cats to slow blinking, if there was a greater tendency for cats to blink slowly when they are nervous in the presence of humans, as well as if the slow blink of cats could influence humans when adopting a cat from a shelter.

Performing different tests, it has been described that cats respond more frequently with an eye movement to humans who slow blink relatively to those who don’t provide any kind of stimulus towards them and this occurs also towards unknown humans.

The second is relevant, since it was also seen that cats not only respond by slow blinking to humans who emit this signal, but they also perceive this type of communication in a positive way. Cats prefer to approach humans after slow blink to humans who are neutrally present.

Another study suggests that slow blinking could have a dual function in cats, occurring in situations of positive interaction (affiliative) as well as submission. It was observed that cats that were more nervous in the presence of humans performed this behavior for a longer period in response to human slow blinking.

Finally, they showed that cats that responded to human slow blinking by closing their eyes themselves were adopted faster than cats that closed their eyes less, so it is a factor that can positively influence the adoption of cats in shelters.