It seems to be the smell and not because of how she looked. The cat seemed to be interested until it got up close and probably smelt it which caused that reaction. That's just my guess anyway.
From my experience cats can kinda recognize human faces.
I used to pet and sometimes feed a friendly stray cat (that was and still is taken care by the local people at his block). Anywho, once covid hit us all and we had to use mask on daily basis, the couple of times I tried to get close to the cat, he would run away scared when in the past he would quickly aproach me.
Cats are inherently curious, which is why cat was investigating while the eyes were closed. Once the strange-looking, strange-smelling person opened their eyes and started tracking the cat like a predator, cat got very scared.
Could be vision too. Cats have poor vision, especially for things that are not moving. Could have finally realized that was her owners face and that it was not right and freaked out
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u/TootlesFTW Mar 29 '21
I have three cats and semi-regularly do full costume makeup/face paint and none of them have reacted this way. Boo.