my cat absolutely not. She was the runt of the litter and is kinda shy because of it. Anytime she gets touched she will immediately look at what touched her and probably run away if it isn’t me.

I’m the only thing she really trusts and oh boy is she comfortable around me

her face shows so many different emotions

I feel like my cat can because it rarely looks up and I just snuck up behind it. Either that or it sucks at survival (it doesn’t, it is jumpy beyond reason at almost everything else).

I assume it’s more than the petnique though, and includes step noise and scent.

All cats I’ve ever had always looked up to see who was petting them. They usually didn’t mind any of us petting them, but they always looked.

People often touch vastly differently from one another. I would assume a dog would become familiar with those who pet them often.

Not always. I was at my sister’s house and her cat was not over-fond of me. That bothered me because cats normally adore me. At one point, the cat was half-snoozing on a stool so I reached over to give him a pet. At first he started to purr and stretched out. Yes! Thought I, finally making friends. Then he looked over his shoulder and saw it was me. He hissed and ran to the other side of the room and started cleaning himself. I’d have been hurt if his expression hadn’t been so funny when he realized that it wasn’t my sister petting him.

My cat could. But only because I would rub my fingers together to make a faint noise, so they could tell where my hand was without looking.

It significantly reduced the number of surprises, and they felt a lot more comfortable around me.

My partner and I pet our cat in very different ways and I truly believe that were our cat blind, she would be able to tell immediately.

Not the best answer as I’m no biology major, but from my understanding, they can smell just as well. So they likely know who’s closest to them and figure it out.

I asked my dog and she said “shut up and pet me”.

Nope. I lived with a girl, and we got cats. Lived with her for the next 4 years with those cats.

We fell apart as a couple. I assumed she was going to take the cats. I wasn’t stopping her. But she wanted nothing to do with the cats.

Which, truth be told, was the outcome I wanted anyways. The cats always loved me more than her.

But for the next 10 years, anytime they’d be sleeping, and I’d pet them, they always snapped their heads up to see who it is.

It’s me. It’s always me.

I can get why they’d have that reaction for the first year. Still in the habbit of multiple people living with them.

But they ALWAYS checked, everytime, until the day they died. They were happy to see me, everytime, but they still checked.

I would imagine so - smell alone probably gives them a pretty accurate idea, but people also pet differently (probably not as uniquely as a fingerprint but differently enough)

Some people are heavy petters some light, some only pet in one direction, some only pet certain areas (head only, flank only, etc.) And so on.

I would assume many dogs could but IDK about cats or others. Most dog breeds could smell you coming without seeing or hearing you.

Of course, at least under normal circumstances.

Like humans or wild animals, a pet is going to have their full sensory array available. Even a blind and deaf animal can pick up vibrations as someone approaches then, feel changes in air movement, etc.

Since hands are different sizes, even if they were asleep at the moment of contact, it wouldn’t take long to figure out whose hand was on them. Obviously , that might be negated if the hands are similar enough, but I would suspect that even then the differences in how a person pets them would be useful.

You could likely create a situation to bypass everything and “fool” a pet, but that’s what you’d have to do.

Yes

Source: am dog

Depends how smelly you are