It seems like almost any time I visit someone who has a cat, the cat always seems to like me. A few people I know say that animals can tell someone has a good spirit. Is this true?
My roommate’s cats, who love to open my bedroom door and sleep on my bed with me, would beg to disagree.
Rub a little bacon grease on your shoes; dogs and cats will love you.
If this makes you a good person, then goodness is a lot easier to attain than anyone knew.
I feel dogs can sense an evil person so would not be surprised if cats or other animals had a similar ability. I had a 2 year old german shorthaired pointer that had never shown any sign of aggression and was perfectly mannered and trained. I brought him into the house one time to show him off at a party I was having, maybe 50 or so guests. He turned on one particular guest and wanted to tear him to shreads. This was the boy friend of my wifes best friend. A few months later we found out he was arrested for the murder of his former girlfriend.
I doubt it, although their definition of ‘goodness’ has to vary from that of humankind, most of which define their own group definitions.
Some of the ghastliest people have been cat-haters, Bonaparte, Lord Roberts, Genghis Khan… Some cat-lovers have pretended Hitler hated cats, — just as some disassociating vegetarians pretend he wasn’t vegetarian; but there is no evidence, and there was a cat in the Bunker. Cats get everywhere.
However, some of the greatest cat-lovers were also ghastly people, Clemenceau, Lord Byron, Churchill…
The only reasonable conclusion is that cat-haters will rot in hell for a long time, regardless of their other actions.
The cat, unlike the dog, refuses to return good for evil, or to turn the right cheek when struck upon the left. These revenges. however, are extreme. A cat usually flees a persecutor or ignores him.
Carl van Vechten
However it doesn’t seem that cats care whether people hate them or not, unless injured.
No.
Cats have their own set of standards. There are courtesies among cats that humans generally know nothing of, and follow only by coincidence.
A few examples:
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Prolonged eye contact is rude. It’s a challenge, at best. If you look at a cat for a prolonged period, and the cat notices, it will probably think you’re being a jerk. Depending on the cat and the circumstances, it will probably either respond by avoiding you or by displaying aggression.
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Increasing your apparent size is rude. Decreasing it is conciliatory. If you loom, a cat will probably think you’re trying to get it to go away. Sitting down, squatting down, or otherwise reducing your profile is sort of like a cat going from the hair-raised, inflated intimidation stance to a more relaxed, accepting posture.
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Acknowledgment is polite. A glance, a slow blink, then look away. It means that you are acknowledging the cat’s presence and tacitly stating that you’re okay with it, or at least that you aren’t interested in a confrontation. For a territorial predator, that’s friendly.
If your habits and natural body language happen to fall in line with these behaviors, and you don’t mistreat the cats when they approach you, cats will probably like to associate with you. You’re making them comfortable, because you aren’t doing things they regard as threats or challenges. Of course, most of these are also behaviors you could expect from people who aren’t interested in the cat, so the occasional apparent perversity of cats seeking out people who don’t want anything to do with them actually makes a sort of sense–it’s a mismatch in body language. Some human “go away” signals are similar enough to feline “I’m friendly” signals to cause confusion.
As to cats identifying “good” people–no. Or at least, not as such. I would imagine that people who display what humans would interpret as shyness or diffidence in their body language would also appeal to cats, so they may have some tendency to prefer people who are quiet and nonconfrontational. We might consider a person with those traits to be nice (if they don’t have other traits that are unpleasant enough to outweigh those), but the appeal to cats would be from a somewhat different angle.
One can carry out a conversation with cats by blinking. They like this.
One easy way of being liked by both cats and dogs is: When approaching a strange cat or dog, FIRST stick out your hand below their head level and let them smell you. Once the get their fill, go ahead and pet them. But pet them on the side of the face first (So they can see you). Then if the body language is right, pet them on the top of the head. (or wherever)
It might be true, but it’s certainly never been tested and/or proven. Firstly, what criteria would you use to establish ‘a good spirit’? Then you’d need to devise some kind of double-blind test whereby cats are introduced to people with good/bad spirits and observe the differences. 
So, what does it mean if one of my brother’s cats comes up and begs to be petted, while the other one bites/scratches if I try to touch him? Maybe I’m only semi-evil.
The day my cat tells me, I’ll let you know.
Cats cannot tell a good person from a bad one. What they can tell, very quickly, is a person who likes cats and a person who dislikes them. The latter especially fast. And not just from being yelled at or threatened with physical harm, just body language is enough. Cats are keenly sensitive to that. And cat owners are to how their cats behave.
The animal psychology explanation would be ‘Cats do NOT respond to negative reinforcement, while dogs do’. And its very true. Cats can not (or will not) associate physical punishment with any action of theirs, just with the individual doling it out. This is the main reason guys (myself excluded) prefer dogs and often hate cats. Dogs are drooling sycophantic slaves which is kinda what a guy is looking for in an animal. Cats are partners, they share their lives with you and you theirs.
This fantastic scene from Meet the Parents sums it up nicely! (by Robert Deniro no less!)
Oh, and Claverhouse- Why do you consider Churchill to be a “ghastly person”? 
One of my cats once attacked someone who broke in and then attacked me while I was in bed. While I did brag that my cat loved me enough to do that…its also possible it happened because I threw the cat at the attacker’s face. (Up until then, my cats loved that guy, he was very non-threatening and a very nice guy.) So, I don’t trust my cats instincts.
You were quoting Mr. Van Vechten, not I.
As for the off-topic question, I am British: there is a long tradition here away from the pious hype, starting with his colleagues in the Edwardian Liberal party, both left and right, progressive and reactionary, to consider Churchill a vainglorious, publicity-seeking, incompetent bounder and war-monger [ the latter not in the sense that WWII was wrong, but that, like his model Bonaparte, — or Trotsky and Hitler — he needed wars to thrive and considered himself a genius at them ), Anyone willing to consider re-arming the defeated German army in 1945 to fight Our Glorious Ally was not thinking clearly. I have always regarded him as a fat little vulgarian.
Plus he hated Prussia.
Based on the amount and ghastly level of cruelty I’ve seen both cats and dogs endure both from owners and strangers, the answer is unequivocally no. No, they cannot tell who is a good or bad person.
Cats are basically amoral, if not actively sociopathic. So I’m not sure a cat taking to someone is an endorsement of character.
I hear tell Hitler’s German Shepherd was fond of him.
Most dogs I encounter seem to like me. That’s probably because 1) they’re intrinsically friendly, 2) I’m at ease around dogs, and 3) I do good ear-scratching and belly-rubbing.
I’m not sure. Are Ernst Stavro Blofeld and Doctor Evil good spirits?
In my experience, what cats can tell very quickly is whether someone can handle a can opener and whether they have a warm lap. They’re mostly interested in food and body heat. Evolution has brought them up to be amoral killers of small cute things – that’s a pretty crummy benchmark for judging if you’re Mr. Nice Guy.
Animals can’t and don’t make good judges of character.
But they CAN sense when someone is nervous, and nervousness is contageous. If you just don’t like cats or dogs for some reason, you’re liable to act fidgety around them. They sense that and they don’t like it. A little terrier will start yapping at a fidgety person… and some superstitious owner may start thinking, “Muffin has always been a good judge of character. There must be something… OFF about thsi person.”