How much can a person's appearance change before their pet can't recognize them?

How disguised or obscured in various outfits or clothing can you be, and still have your cat or dog recognize you?

Seeing as they rely on scent a shit ton more than we do, I’d say an awful lot if there were no barriers between you.

I’m sure my cat’s smell my presence before they even bother to open their eyes and acknowledge my existence (and get off the freakin’ bed!) so I don’t think they would even notice clothing at all.

I’m pretty sure animals can recognize faces. I read an article a long time ago about a man who was researching seagulls, and the seagulls recognized him no matter what he wore–he had to wear a mask before they wouldn’t recognize him. He eventually had to end up wearing a mask whenever he worked with the seagulls because they would dive bomb him on the beach.

Having said what I said about my cats and smell, let me amend that with this anecdote. My neighbor’s dog yelped in fright and suffered a fatal heart attack when their uncle (or grandpa, I can’t remember) walked into the room dressed as Santa Claus one Christmas Eve. It did not make for a merry Christmas for the little kids, that’s for sure. But I don’t know how well the dog knew this person, or if the dog had smelled them before that moment. All I know is he took one look at Santa and died.

I can tell my cats are scared of me whenever I wear a hat. They look at me funny and flinch when I touch them. Once I take off the hat, they’re normal.

We used to have a blast scaring the hell out of one of our cats during Halloween. Poor Carmichael.

One of my dogs has pretty poor eyesight*. She freaks out whenever we wear a garment that changes the shapes of our bodies like a poncho or a hat. She won’t get close enough to us to smell us so I think she genuinely doesn’t realise its her “pack members” when we’re wearing that sort of stuff.

*She can’t catch a small object thrown to her-- it has to be bigger than a tennis ball before she can track and catch it.

woah.

My cats like to sit at the front door and watch the world. When a stranger approaches the door, the cats scamper off. However, when I approach (from the outside) they don’t budge. Obviously they recognize me on sight; scent isn’t a factor what with the glass door.

We used to have a black rubberish mask that covered the eye area and had a big crooked nose. I think the same type of mask was used in “Eyes Wide Shut” if anyone remembers that movie.

Mr. Athena once put it on and crept up the stairs to where our Shiba Inu was hanging out. His face was at floor level as he slowly came up the stairs.

Dog took one look at the critter coming up the stairs and went bonkers. Started screaming and let his bladder go. Basically, if he were human, he would be pissing his pants in fear.

We were torn between laughing our asses off and feeling sorry for the poor bugger. He hadn’t meant to scare him THAT much.

My dog treated me like a stranger when he first saw me wearing a suit jacket, so I figure it changed my outline enough that he didn’t recognise me (or maybe he just doesn’t like pink and yellow pinstripes.)

Yeesh . . . who would?

Joking aside, your dog probably doesn’t dislike pink and yellow pinstripes: it’s unlikely that he can see them all that well.

Dogs* do *have color vision, but it’s somewhat poor. They can see bright, primary colors, especially red, but the colors are much more dim than they appear to us. I once saw a television documentary about dogs and they had a visual of what the world looks like through a dog’s eyes. Their color vision is much like ours is at twillight: very muted but still present.

Pastels probably appear as shades of grey to them, so likely the stripes would have blended into whatever color the background of the suit was. Likely, the dog was disturbed by your change in shape, or the posture you had to assume while wearing the suit in order not to put strain on the seams.

My mother used to tell the story of her St. Bernard dog who sat attentively and watched her put up her hair in an elaborate hairdo, then repeatedly barked at her when she tried to leave the bathroom. It didn’t seem odd that the dog was confused by her changed appearance, but it seemed a break in logic since the dog had watched the whole transformation.

Chalk me up for smell matters much more.

I have two cats who are from the same litter and have spent every second of the past nine years together. One went to the vet last week for about an hour. I guess he smelled of other cats when he came home because the cat who stayed home acted like we had brought some brand new cat into the house. He was hissing and growling as if he had never seen his brother before. It lasted more than 24 hours.

Well, it’s obvious to me what was going on. The dog hated your mother’s hairdo.

My daughter went overseas to study and was gone for 11 months. When she returned both the dog and the cockatiel immediately recognized her, if only as a person who used to give them food.

I’ve also heard of at least one dog who barked like mad when his owner wore a hat. However, this was a rescue dog, and was kind of touchy to start with.

I remember watching on TV a case where a dog had an irrational fear of bald men, since his previous owner was abusive and happened to be bald. Unfortunately, his new owner’s husband was also bald. But this problem was easily solved by simply wearing a hat.

Purely anecdotal but my somewhat anti-social cat of 10+ years seemed to recognize me just fine when I came home to visit for the first time in a year and a half sporting blonde hair and having lost a good ninety pounds and then again almost a year later with a third hair color and even less weight.

The pink and yellow pinstripes bit was a joke, the jacket was a dark charcoal colour.