It's an interesting question — wondering how your cat sees the world and how it’s different from your view. Knowing what and how your cat sees can help you improve their environment, encourage play and interaction with toys, and give you a bit better understanding of their reactions to things.

So, can cats see color? The simple answer is yes, but the detailed answer is much more interesting.

How People See Color

To help you understand how your cat sees, it's helpful to understand how our eyes work. It's the eye and brain working together that turn light into color. We have millions of light receptors covering our retina that send signals to the brain. Those signals are translated into colors, but those colors aren't actually part of the thing we're looking at. It's reflections off those objects that we see as color.

Three primary colors are in the color spectrum — red, blue, and green. The amount of each color coming together determines the final color your brain registers. It's thought that people can see as many as one million colors.

How Cats See Color

Cats have rods and cones in their retina, just like people. It's the cones that pick up on different colors. Both people and cats have three different types of cones, allowing us to see that red, blue, and green – this gives us trichromatic vision. The big difference is that cats have considerably fewer overall cones than people, and they're distributed differently. As a result, they're not able to see as many different color variations as we are.

There's also a difference in the richness of color they see because they are much less sensitive to changes in light than we are.

What Colors Can Cats See Best?

There are varying thoughts on this, but the consensus is that cats tend to see blues, greens, and grays best¹. Cats can easily tell the difference between these three colors groups. However, reds and pinks, and likely yellows, are difficult for cats to distinguish.

Cat Vision vs. Human Vision: Who Sees Better?

It's a bit more complicated than who has better eyesight – it's a split vote. We can see more variation in color and, for those people with clear vision, we tend to see crisper, cleaner edges from a distance than our feline friends.

However, cats can see much better in low light than we can. They have more rods (responsible for detecting motion) than humans, so they better detect small movements that are significantly farther away. Cats have broader peripheral vision since their eyes are set more on the sides of the head.

Interestingly, cats can't see well close, right in front of their face. If you've been wondering why your cat doesn't play well when you dangle a toy right in front of them, it's because they can't see it. They're using their whiskers and other receptors, picking up on air movement and other subtle shifts in the space around them, to figure out where that toy is.

How You Can Use Color to Your Cat's Benefit

Now that you know what colors your cat sees, use this information when you're shopping for them. You'll find cat toys and other products in a variety of colors, but your cat will better see toys with greens, blues. Remember, just because it's made for a cat doesn't mean it is designed with the cat's needs and abilities in mind.

If you're playing with a red toy on a pink rug, your cat will have a hard time picking up on the toy's movement, but make it a green toy, and they'll see it more clearly.

Many people do target training with their cats, teaching them to interact with a colored ball on the end of a stick. If that target is blue, green, or even yellow, they'll likely respond better than they would to a red or pink target.

Even food puzzles with blue, green, and yellow doors, drawers, and switches will be easier for them to understand and work through.