You are so right. Cats bond and cats remember.
A long time ago I was asked to care for a foster cat. It was temporary. Five years later I ‘inherited” the same cat. They handed it to me in a carrier where it had howled, pooped and peed for hours. The minute the cat carrier came into the house the cat stopped crying. I opened the door to the carrier (reluctantly) and the cat came out, walking low, and it immediately recognized where it was.
Five years is a long time. That’s half a life span for some cats. Cats are smart.
We once went on vacation for a week, leaving her at a vet / pet boarding house.
When we came back the entire staff greeted us, arms folded. "Is that *YOUR* cat?"
Kitty had been inconsolable the whole week, howling like a banshee, doing somersaults, knocking over her food dish.
From then on, she went with us: to Banff, to Alaska, to the Grand Canyon...
Remind me to tell you how she got us through a TSA checkpoint.
That outdoor cat I talked about, he found some canned cat food in our car leftover from our house cat that we take with us.
Three weeks later when the car door was opened, he headed straight for where that cat food was and started looking for it. Their short term memory is also outstanding.
These nut jobs that do animal studies are merely showing to any of us that have been around any animal, whether it be a cat, dog, deer, coyote bear, etc that they are really stupid as they do not have the basic knowledge that comes with simple everyday experience.
For these phd’s or whatever to announce that cats bond is really showing how ignorant these people really are. The sad part is they think they are so smart they want to run our lives for us. I’D RATHER HAVE A CAT RUN MY LIFE, than one of those POS’s.