Many a person has referred to their cat as their own little fur baby. Research out today hints that for some felines, that comparison is even more apt than we knew.

Scientists in Japan surveyed hundreds of cat owners about their furry angel’s disposition and behavior. Some cats, they found, were often fearful about unfamiliar things and people but still willing to approach them—a kind of curious shyness seen in human infants. Though further study is needed, the findings indicate that cats are more complicated than commonly assumed, the authors say.

“I hope this research encourages people to reconsider stereotypes such as ‘dogs are friendly’ or ‘cats are aloof.’ Animal personalities are much more diverse and complex than these labels suggest,” lead author Madoka Hattori, a cat researcher at Kyoto University in Japan, told Gizmodo.

When she was six, she wrote a paper on the experiments she conducted to determine whether her pet cat—Cedric Hanzo Hattori—was right- or left-pawed (he was right-pawed). More recently, she and her colleagues have studied how oxytocin, a hormone important to social bonding between humans, might also influence cat-human interactions. And it was during these experiments that the team noticed some cats with an infant-like shyness to them.

Human babies starting around the nine-month mark often display a seemingly contradictory attitude toward novel things such as an unfamiliar person: they’re easily spooked by strangers but still highly curious about them. If you’ve ever noticed a friend’s baby staring intensely at you, only to dart their head away with a coy smile when you catch them looking, then you know what I’m talking about.

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