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Not in the clinical sense. Researchers developed CAT-Tri+, an owner-rated questionnaire that measures cat behaviors related to a personality framework called triarchic psychopathy. It is a research tool—not a veterinary test that can diagnose a cat as a psychopath or determine whether it is dangerous.
What is the CAT-Tri+ test?
CAT-Tri+ adapts ideas from a human personality framework—boldness, meanness and disinhibition—to descriptions of domestic cat behavior. The researchers also identified two dimensions concerning how cats relate to other animals and people: pet-unfriendliness and human-unfriendliness. Together, these make up the questionnaire’s five-factor model.
The 2021 paper by Rebecca Evans, Minna Lyons, Gayle Brewer and Emily Bethell is titled “A domestic cat (Felis silvestris catus) model of triarchic psychopathy factors: Development and initial validation of the CAT-Tri+ questionnaire.” Its wording matters: this was questionnaire development and initial validation, not the creation of a clinical diagnostic standard. Read the paper in the Journal of Research in Personality or see its Liverpool John Moores University repository record.
What do the five dimensions mean?
These are separate behavior-rating dimensions within one questionnaire, not five alternative diagnoses. The paper reports different relationships between some dimensions and owners’ reported relationship quality:
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| CAT-Tri+ dimension | What it broadly concerns | Reported relationship-quality result |
|---|---|---|
| Boldness | Bold or confident behavior | Predicted lower owner-reported relationship quality |
| Meanness | Behavior represented by the framework’s meanness dimension | Predicted lower owner-reported relationship quality |
| Disinhibition | Behavior represented by the framework’s disinhibition dimension | Predicted higher owner-reported relationship quality |
| Pet-unfriendliness | Unfriendliness toward other pets | Predicted higher owner-reported relationship quality |
| Human-unfriendliness | Unfriendliness toward people | The available abstract does not state a corresponding relationship-quality result |
The study does not establish that any one behavior has a single psychological cause. Nor does the relationship finding mean that a cat with a higher score on a given dimension will necessarily have a particular kind of relationship with its owner.
How was the questionnaire developed?
The paper describes three stages: candidate items were developed from owner responses in a sample of 549; questionnaire work then involved 1,463 owners; and an activity study included 30 cats. These are study sample sizes, not estimates of how common any trait is among cats. A 2021 IFLScience report describes the final questionnaire as having 46 behavior items; that detail comes from the report, rather than the paper’s available abstract.
Can you use CAT-Tri+ to find out if your cat is a psychopath?
No—not as a diagnosis. CAT-Tri+ organizes owner ratings of behavior for research. The study does not establish a clinical threshold for psychopathy, show that a particular score identifies a dangerous cat, or demonstrate that all—or most—cats meet a clinical definition. “Cat psychopath” is a provocative shorthand for the framework, not a veterinary conclusion.
If a behavior worries you, describe what your cat does and when it happens rather than relying on a label. A veterinarian can help assess a health or behavior concern; the CAT-Tri+ findings do not replace that assessment.
What the findings can—and cannot—tell cat owners
The questionnaire offers researchers a structured way to examine cat behavior and how owners perceive their relationships with their pets. Its results also resist a simple “psychopathic traits mean a worse bond” interpretation: boldness and meanness predicted lower reported relationship quality, while disinhibition and pet-unfriendliness predicted higher reported quality. Those are associations in owner-report data, not proof that a trait causes a better or worse bond.
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