Yes, cats can be left-pawed or right-pawed, and most of them are. A meta-analysis of paw preference studies found that about 78% of cats show a consistent preference for one paw over the other. The remaining 22% are ambilateral, meaning they use both paws without a clear favorite. Unlike humans, where roughly 90% of the population is right-handed, cats as a whole don’t lean toward one side. The split between lefties and righties is close to even.
How Paw Preference Breaks Down
One well-known study of 109 cats using a food-reaching test found that 49.5% were right-pawed, 40.4% were left-pawed, and about 10% were ambidextrous. That’s a far more balanced distribution than you see in humans. No single paw dominates at the population level, which makes cats fundamentally different from us in how lateralization works.
The picture changes when you separate cats by sex. Female cats are significantly more likely to favor their right paw. In that same study, 54% of females were right-pawed compared to 43.5% of males. Males, meanwhile, showed a slight lean toward left-paw use at 45.7%. The difference becomes even more striking when you look at strength of preference: 44% of females were strongly right-pawed, compared to just 28% of males. This sex-linked pattern mirrors what researchers see in humans, where males are also slightly more likely to be left-handed.
Why Paw Preference Exists
Paw preference is a visible sign of something deeper: one hemisphere of your cat’s brain is taking the lead on motor tasks. A cat that consistently uses its right paw is relying more heavily on the left hemisphere of its brain for those movements, and vice versa. This kind of brain specialization lets each hemisphere handle different jobs efficiently rather than duplicating effort.
For cats, this likely traces back to hunting. Domestic cats still share the same hunting instincts and motor skills as their wild ancestors. Catching prey requires complex, coordinated paw movements, and having one paw that’s reliably more skilled gives a cat an edge. Research supports this: lateralized cats (those with a clear paw preference) perform better on problem-solving tests than ambilateral cats. Having a “dominant” paw appears to be a genuine cognitive advantage.
Personality Connections
The more surprising finding is that paw preference links to temperament. Ambilateral cats, those without a strong preference for either paw, tend to be more aggressive, less affectionate, and less friendly than cats with a clear left or right preference. They also show signs of greater stress susceptibility. This isn’t just about which paw a cat uses; it reflects how their brain processes emotions.
Left-paw preference reflects greater reliance on the right hemisphere, which is associated with negative emotional processing, heightened fear, and stronger stress responses. When cats hear a threatening sound, like a dog barking, it’s the right hemisphere that activates. Stress in cats even shows up physically on the right side of the body: elevated cortisol coincides with a temperature increase specifically in the right ear, a sign of increased right-hemisphere blood flow.
Cats with stronger paw preferences, regardless of direction, are perceived as more confident, active, and friendly than cats with weak or no preference. So the strength of lateralization matters more for personality than whether your cat is a lefty or a righty. The one exception: left-pawed and right-pawed cats do differ on playfulness, with that being the only personality trait where direction of preference made a measurable difference.
How to Test Your Cat’s Paw Preference
You can figure out which paw your cat favors at home, but you’ll need patience. A single observation won’t tell you much. Researchers typically record 50 or more repetitions of a behavior before drawing conclusions, because cats can switch paws casually on any given attempt. What you’re looking for is a pattern over many trials.
The classic method is the food-reaching test. Place a treat or small toy inside a container that’s wide enough for your cat’s paw but too narrow for its head. Set it on the floor and watch which paw your cat uses to fish the item out. Take a break between attempts and repeat at least a dozen times, ideally more.
A simpler approach: shine a laser pointer on a wall and note which paw your cat swats at it with. Again, repeat multiple times across different sessions. You can also track everyday behaviors. Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast had cat owners record which paw their cats used to take the first step downstairs and which paw entered the litter box first, logging each behavior 50 times.
One important detail: cats tend to show stronger paw preferences during complex tasks than during simple ones. In problem-solving tests with increasing difficulty, half the cats appeared ambilateral on the easiest task, but by the hardest task, every single cat showed a paw preference. So if you want a clearer signal, use a task that requires some effort, like extracting a treat from a narrow tube, rather than just watching which paw your cat lifts first.
Even Sleep Has a Side
Lateralization in cats goes beyond paw use. A 2025 study published in Current Biology found that two-thirds of cats prefer sleeping on their left side. This positions their left visual field outward, giving the right hemisphere of the brain a better view of approaching animals. It’s likely a subtle survival behavior, keeping the brain half that processes threats on alert even during rest.