Cats form close emotional relationships with humans, yet little is known about this. This study characterized different types of relationship that cats might establish with their owners. Data were analyzed from 3994 responses to a questionnaire developed using expressions of social support and attachment in relation to everyday cat–owner interactions. Principal component analysis reduced the items to four factors: the “owner’s emotional investment in the cat”, “cat’s acceptance of others”, “cat’s need for owner proximity” and “cat’s aloofness”. Cluster identified three groups of owners with two of these each sub-divided into two. The “open relationship bond” was characterized by a lightly emotionally invested owner and an avoidant cat. The “remote association” and “casual relationship” were characterized by an emotionally remote owner but differed in the cat’s acceptance of others. The “co-dependent” and “friendship” relationship were characterized by an emotionally invested owner but differed in the cat’s acceptance of others and need to maintain owner proximity. In conclusion, as with any complex social relationship, the type of cat–owner bond that develops is the product of the dynamic that exists between both the individuals involved, along with certain personality features, of which, the wider sociability of the cat and owner expectations may be particularly important.

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In outcrossing hermaphrodites with unilateral mating, where for each mating interaction one individual assumes the female role and the other the male role, each individual must take a sexual role opposite to that of its partner. In the polychaete worm Ophryotrocha diadema, the decision on sexual role is likely at stake during the day-long courtship. Here we describe, for the first time, courtship and pseudocopulation in this species, quantify their pre-copulatory behavior, and search for behavioral traits predicting the prospective sexual role (i.e., behavioral sexual dimorphism), by analyzing the courtship behavior of pairs of worms during the day preceding a mating event. We did not find any behavioral cue predicting the sexual role worms were to play; partners’ pre-copulatory behaviors were qualitatively and quantitatively symmetrical. We interpret this as the outcome of a war of attrition where partners share the preference for the same sexual role, and both hide their ‘willingness’ to play the less preferred one, until one individual reaches its cost threshold and accepts the less preferred sexual role.