Cat Lab? Are you . . . doing experiments on cats? 

No! We’re interested in the way and the why of what cats think and how that might be related to their humans and their history. Our tools are surveys, not scalpels.

So who are you?

We are two scholars at the University of Maine at Farmington: Karol Maybury, a Professor of Psychology who specializes in personality studies, and Bryce Cundick, the Library Director who specializes in knowing how to find information. We share a love of cats and questions, and the Maine Cat Lab is one of the results of that.

What other studies have you done?

We’re just getting warmed up, but we launched with a study about the connection between the personalities of cats and their humans. You can check out all our results over on our YouTube channel.

Studying cats? Is this real science?

Yes! We’re both trained in the creation of scientific, reliable studies. We submit the design to our Institutional Review Board at UMF before we run them, and we use standard scientific analyses to evaluate the results. Just because a study is actually interesting, doesn’t mean it’s not science. 🙂

Are my tax dollars paying for … cat research?

Worry not. No UMF funds or resources are spent on this study. It’s done as a labor of love by the researchers in their spare time.