🙄 The selective deafness
Why Does My Cat Ignore Me When I Call?
They heard you. Research is fairly clear that they heard you.
They know their name
A Japanese study tested this carefully: cats were played a sequence of four similar-sounding nouns followed by their own name, read by both their owner and a stranger. The cats habituated to the nouns and then showed a renewed response — ear and head movement — specifically to their own name, including when a stranger said it.
So the question is not whether your cat recognises the word. It does. The question is why recognising it so rarely produces a cat.
They also know your voice, specifically
A later study found cats respond differently to their owner's voice than to a stranger's, and — more pointedly — that they respond to their owner's cat-directed speech but not the same owner's adult-directed speech. The higher-pitched voice people use with pets is the one that registers.
Two things follow. First, your cat is tracking who is speaking and how, not just what. Second, if you call your cat in the same flat tone you use for people, you are using the register it is least tuned to.
The honest reason: nothing happens when they come
Dogs were shaped over thousands of years for cooperative work with humans and are strongly motivated by social approval. Cats were not. They domesticated themselves around human settlements, largely on their own terms, and never went through selection for obedience.
That means a cat answers a call when answering it has paid off before. If "Mittens!" has historically preceded a tablet, a carrier or nothing at all, you have trained a cat not to come, quite effectively.
How to get a cat to actually come
Use a specific sound that means one thing: a word, a clicker, a tapped tin. Use it only when something good follows — food, a treat, a play session — and never to summon the cat for something it dislikes. Go and get the cat for those.
Reward every single time at first, then intermittently once it is reliable. Keep the distance short to begin with and build up. Most cats learn a recall in a couple of weeks, and plenty of them will outrun a dog to it.
One caveat worth ruling out: a cat that has genuinely stopped responding, rather than selectively ignoring you, may be losing its hearing. Deafness is common in older cats and in white cats with blue eyes. If they no longer startle at sudden noises behind them, see a vet.
Quick answers
Do cats know their own names?
Yes. Controlled studies show cats distinguish their own name from similar-sounding words, even spoken by a stranger. Responding is a separate decision.
Can you train a cat to come when called?
Reliably, yes. Use one consistent sound, pair it with food every time, and never use it to summon the cat for anything unpleasant.
Why does my cat come to someone else and not me?
Usually history. That person has a better record of pleasant outcomes, or uses the higher-pitched cat-directed voice cats respond to more strongly.