Or indeed respond to them. I suspect not. Cats obviously have good hearing if they are healthy. But I have not seen any evidence that they recognise a ‘name’. We have several, and I have not seen any sign that one will respond to a call for a particular name.
They do react to a song I sing at afternoon feeding time… but that’s probably just routine. I guess I should try an experiment by singing a different song in a different key…?
I think they are capable of recognizing their names and I have seen cats respond to their names just like dogs. Most cats just don’t give a damn.
This. Cats are plenty smart, but are not pack animals and don’t have a great motivation to please us. “My human makes that sound to refer to me. I get the feeling it wants me to react when it does that, very endearing actually. I don’t do anything to encourage it but I admit I find it amusing”
After sufficient conditioning with prime beef and fresh herring (Dutch here) our cat came when called.
My cat IS smart - he can tell time and count. His feeding time is at 7am and 7pm, and if you are more than a minute late he will look at you disapprovingly and “lead” you to where his food is stored in the kitchen. Somehow he manages to do this even after setting the clocks back and forward for DST - so I suspect he can actually read the clocks 
He also gets two scoops of cat food per meal, and if you just put one scoop in his bowl you get glared at until you put in the second.
If you consistently use one name to refer to your cat, they absolutely understand that the name refers to them. My cats routinely look at me after I say their name, but not at other times I make mouth noises. They don’t come running and don’t do anything I ask them to, but they know their names.
Our cat comes when called if they aren’t sleeping because they want food. I don’t know if it actually makes a difference in this respective, but this cat was raised by a dog and has some marked dog-like characteristics.
yes, my cats know their names. koritza also knows lager’s name. lager does not care to learn koritza’s name.
Yeah, this. At least for some of them. I caught my old cat Hector responding to his name once, when he was fighting with the other cat for cat treats. When I called his name, he whipped around to see if I was tossing more treats.
Then he looked disgusted with himself for letting on. It was like the time I found him sitting on a window sill 5 feet off the ground. He really didn’t want me to know he could jump that high with no assistance.
Sneaky little buggers. Lucky for them they’re cute.
That is what I planned to post, verbatim.
I found Dennis in the crotch or a dead, barkless, otherwise limbless tree, twenty feet in the air, meowing for help. I left him to I feed the other cats. When I came out with cat food, he was down and waiting.
Back to the OP. Perseus and Andromeda (Rosie of the 'Dope said there were no other names for cats rescued from a dumpster during the Perseid meteor shower) will occasionally turn to look at me when I use their names. Rarely. If they have nothing else to do.
Just try calling your older cat by the new cat’s name and solve two questions
Do they know their own name
How long can a cat carry a grudge
There was a Netflix documentary during which they tested just that, and the cat did indeed come when called. So, apparently yes?
My cats both know their own names and the other’s as well. The older cat will swivel an ear towards you if you say her name in passing - it’s not just tone of voice - and if you say her little brother’s name, she’ll jerk her head around to be sure he’s not within pouncing range. If you ask him where she is, he’ll go look for her, but we try not to do that often, because it’s mean.
According to Scientific American (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cats-recognize-their-own-names-even-if-they-choose-to-ignore-them/) they can, though according to the end of the article: ’ “Cats are just as good as dogs at learning,” Bradshaw says. “They’re just not as keen to show their owners what they’ve learned.” ’
Two of my three cats know their names, but their response varies according to mood and current hunger.
The third either doesn’t know or militantly doesn’t care.
One of my neighbors has cats that she lets out for a few hours in good weather. They’re nice cats, although Hank is a shy boy and sticks close to home. Zisi likes to roam, and our Max (mostly dachshund – who we were told lived with a cat) likes to nose boop with her.
Once as I was coming out of my door, I saw Zisi and called her name. She definitely tweaked her ears in response. Most of the time she tries to play it cool, though.
Yep. I trained the aforementioned Hector to come home when I whistled. When I got the second cat, he actually helped me train her to come home when I whistled - because he knew I wouldn’t feed him until they were both inside. He’d go to where she was lounging around on the front lawn, and chase her back to the front door.
Once upon a time, my Dad was determined to teach our cat not to use the sliding screen door (affiliated with a sliding glass door) as a scratching post. Whenever the cat did it, he’d grab the cat and fling him outside.
Cat learned very quickly. Every time he wanted to go outside, he’d indicate it by scratching at the screen door.
You can very easily train a dog to look for a certain colored container by putting their food in it. Dogs are red-green colorblind, but as long as they can distinguish the color, they will quickly learn to go for the container that has the correct color.
Cats will not do this. You can’t train a cat to look for a specific colored container for its food. So, for a very long time, we thought that cats were colorblind. We knew that they had color receptors in their eyes, but they simply could not train cats to look for a specific color.
Or so we thought. It turns out that if you train a cat for some ridiculous amount of time you can train it to go for a container of a particular color. So while a dog can be trained in maybe half a dozen attempts, a cat will take maybe a couple thousand attempts.
We have two cats. One knows his name and will come when called. He also knows that if I snap my fingers over something that I want him to go to that spot (i.e. if he’s on top of my desk where I don’t want him, I can snap my fingers over a nearby chair and he will jump down from the desk and jump up into the chair). The other clearly knows his name, but refuses to come when called. Personally, I don’t think that it’s that he doesn’t give a damn, I think he is intentionally stubborn.