John Bradshaw, anthrozoologist and author of The Animals Among Us explained to Business Insider why dogs tend to respond better to their owners than cats. Bradshaw says, "Dogs are descended from wolves which are very social animals so right from the word go...
Cats had a different starting point; they were originally solitary predators and they only really became sociable with one another probably during domestication, so perhaps only 5,000 years ago or something. So they have much less of an evolutionary basis for understanding our body language, for understanding our intentions and so on."