Experiences of parents of autistic children who adopted a cat

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction and communication. Autistic children suffer from social cognitive difficulties. There is no specific treatment for ASD, but ongoing individualized care can lead to an improvement in symptoms. Adopting a pet into a family with an autistic child is increasingly recognized as beneficial for improving some of the child’s social skills. Cats are the second most common pet in the homes of autistic children. Previous studies showed that adopting calm-tempered shelter cats to autistic children decreased anxiety and improved the child’s social skills. In the present study, we aimed to qualitatively explore the experience of parents of autistic children who adopted a shelter cat. 11 families participated in the study, and were asked 6 open-ended questions every 2 weeks for 18 weeks after the cat's adoption. Five main themes emerged from the analysis: benefits of cat adoption, challenges of cat adoption, parent-cat bonding, child-cat bonding, and family impact of cat adoption. Adoption leads to the creation of a strong relationship between the family members and the shelter cat, and an improvement in the child’s social skills, with some difficulties related to the maintenance of the cat. These findings highlight the beneficial impact of adopting a shelter cat into a family with an autistic child, and open the door for future research to generalize these results.