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Anonymous
Humans love eye contact - it is friendly. For a cat, prolonged eye contact is an assertive, or even threatening, signal. The classic case is when several people are in a room for a social occasion and the host's cat walks in. It unerringly goes towards the person who doesn't like cats. Is it simply being perverse? The answer is in eye contact. Cat lovers will be watching the cat, hoping it goes to greet them. Those who don't particularly like cats will ignore it, hoping it will leave them alone. For the cat, the eye contact made by the cat lovers is somewhat threatening. It avoids them. The people who don't particularly like cats are not making eye contact - to the cat, they are signalling that they pose no threat. They are being polite in cat terms, so it goes to socialise with them.
Rival cats try to out-stare each other to resolve conflicts. When a cat realises it is being watched or stared at, it may stop whatever it is doing, assess the "threat" and then continue with its activity, but in a far more self-conscious way. The cat knows it is being watched and becomes uncomfortable. Only when it is no longer being watched, does it relax again. This is one reason it is hard to study cats! Slowly blinking breaks up an aggressive stare and is a reassuring signal between cats and between owners and cats. Yawning is even more reassuring! When relaxed, most cats have their eyes half-open, giving the appearance of being half-asleep.
Cats have excellent peripheral vision and tend not to stare directly at something unless they are getting a fix on a moving object in preparation for pouncing. When a cat sits day-dreaming, it appears to be not looking at anything in particular. It is actually taking in a great deal of information with its peripheral vision. http://www.messybeast.com/cat_talk2.htm
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