Does your cat prefer one hand over the other?

Whenever Junior walks up to me to be petted, he almost always noses my left hand, regardless of what position each hand is in at the moment. If I reach out with my right hand after that, he will sometimes let me pet him and other times back away but then come back to the left again.

However, if I initiate the petting, then he prefers whichever hand I start with. If I start with my right hand then later switch to the left, he will change positions so he can nose my right hand. Same goes if I start with my left hand.

Mez

Hmm, I've never really noticed, but I'll start paying more attention now to see if there's a pattern!

I bet it depends on the owners. It's easily noticed when your training dogs to heel or working with horses. A dog is always worked on your left while a horse is always worked on your right. Often times dogs will naturally do things off their right because they are worked on the right side and the horse will be better on the left side because we lead, mount, and handle them off their left side. It can take twice as much work to train a horse to do something on it's right or bend to it's right because we don't bend them that way or do things as often on that side. When you reached down to pet the cat you (or whoever owned him while he was growing up) probably always used your left hand either naturally or because your right hand was busy holding or doing something else so the cat always ended up on the left. When you play you probably always had empty hands so you could use either hand and the cat didn't come to expect one or the other.

I'm right handed so I go with the right usually, I'm not sure if he reacts differently to the left, but I do think when he wants to be pet he does go for my right knowing I'll pet him with my right simply because that's the side I naturally favor. I'll have to try my left and watch... that's interesting.

Originally Posted by Sham

When you reached down to pet the cat you (or whoever owned him while he was growing up) probably always used your left hand either naturally or because your right hand was busy holding or doing something else so the cat always ended up on the left. When you play you probably always had empty hands so you could use either hand and the cat didn't come to expect one or the other.

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Interesting point. I'm right-handed so my left hand is empty more often than my right.

Mez

I haven't noticed this with my cats, but your question reminded me that my cats prefer to sit or be carried in certain directions. Twinkie likes to be carried facing to my left, for example. When Mellie sits on my lap when I'm at the computer, she likes to face to the right. If I turn her around to face to the left, she'll turn back around to the other direction. Funny little idiosyncracies!!