Oh sure, cats pretend to like you. They will purr until you bring out their food, then roll their eyes, walk away, and forget you even exist. At least that’s their reputation. But it turns out that many cats actually like people. In the first ever study of its kind, researchers at Oregon State University offered 38 cats a choice between food, a toy, an interesting smell, or attention from a human. While 37 percent of the cats preferred food to anything else, 50 percent chose the company of humans over every other possibility. (Eleven percent liked toys, and 2 percent were drawn to smell.) Demonstrating that some cats are more social than others could help animal shelters, which house an estimated 3.2 million cats in the U.S., to match adopters and pets, says Kristyn Shreve, a graduate student who worked on the study. “If we know an adopter is looking for a cat that’s very cuddly, we would pick a cat [that prefers] social interaction.”