Once again, we’ve underestimated cats. There’s so much more to the ways in which they communicate than we realize.
We know cats use non-verbal signals to communicate with each other, but recent research suggests we may just be scratching the surface, glimpsing only a portion of the information that passes between our furry friends.
Cats “talk” to each other by the way they position their tails, whiskers and ears, in addition to their overall body language.
It turns out there’s more. A group of interdisciplinary scientists from universities in Kansas, Arkansas and Haifa, Israel, found cats also employ specific facial expressions, and rapidly mirror each other’s expressions during play time to signal they’ve got good intentions and aren’t going to hurt each other.
From there, the coders and mathematicians on the team created an algorithm to record and sort the facial expressions the cafe cats used, employing CatFACS (Cat Facial Action Coding System) to associate each expression with its meaning.
The problem is, we humans are terrible at reading them. Even veterinarians trained in CatFACS still struggle to get it right, but happily this is precisely the sort of task algorithmic AI excels at. Like facial recognition software, a well-trained machine learning algorithm can recognize faces and record them more accurately and much faster than any person could.
In a column praising the facial expressions study, evolutionary biologist and Jane Goodall Foundation ethics board member Mark Bekoff said it’s the kind of labor-intensive work that truly advances our understanding of the ways animals communicate.
For cats and their human caretakers, Bekoff notes, it could help us reduce inter-species misunderstandings and make it easier to read our cat’s emotions, so we know when they’re not feeling well or need something.
“There are no substitutes for doing what’s needed to learn about the nitty-gritty details of how animals communicate with one another in different contexts,” Bekoff wrote. “This study of play opens the door for more widespread comparative research focusing on how animals talk to one another.”
“Do I look happy, human?” Credit: Milan Nykodym/Wikimedia Commons
We also know adult cats very rarely meow to each other, and the meow is reserved for cat-to-human communication. Imagine the frustration our little friends must feel when they have so much to tell us, but the only thing we understand are vocalizations — meows, chirps and trills — that can convey only basic ideas at best.
Cats aren’t equipped to use human language and there’s nothing wrong with that. Our feline friends already go to great lengths to communicate in ways we can comprehend. The least we can do is meet them halfway.
I would love it if my cat could talk to me.
Sure, he never shuts up, but if he could speak English I’d know why he meows at the same spot at the same time every morning, or what he wants on the occasions when he’s still meowing insistently at me despite the fact that his bowls are full, his box is clean, he’s had his play time, and every possible need and want of his — that I can fathom — has been met.
Most of all, I’d really like to know he understands I’ll be back soon when I go away for a few days, and my (mostly ignored) pleas for him not to attack his long-suffering, way-too-kind sitter.
Alas, Bud cannot speak. No non-human animal has ever demonstrated even basic proficiency in human language. People will point to examples like Koko the Gorilla and Nim Chimpsky, but there’s a reason why funding dried up for that kind of experiment.
It doesn’t work. It never did.
The scientists who end up taking on dual roles as researchers and parents to the animals invariably serve as interpreters, get too close to their subjects and swear that a gorilla pounding shiny buttons for “food tree food submarine” means the ape wants to have a picnic next to the ocean, or “car fly house car star” means she wants to ride a Tesla Roadster to Mars and start a colony with Elon Musk.
Koko, Nim, Chantek and the other apes who were the subjects of decades-long attempts to humanize them — and teach them language in the process — were ultimately not much different than Clever Hans the horse, who was reading subconscious nonverbal cues from his owner and convinced tens of thousands of people that he could do math and understand spoken language.
Hans had scores of experts fooled until the German psychologist Oskar Pfungst figured out how the horse was coming up with the correct answers.
Regardless of which famous example we’re talking about, no animal has ever mastered syntax, and the best that could be said of their proficiency with language, or lack of it, is that they learned they’d get attention and food when they pounded on a talking board or approximated a word in sign language.
Even if non-human primates were able to learn a handful of words by frequently reinforced association with an object, there has never been any evidence that they are actually using the words as language rather than simply understanding “Pushing the button that makes this sound means I get a treat!” (And yes, there is a profound difference. The former reveals the presence of cognitive processes while the latter is a conditioned response.)
Despite decades of intense effort, no animal has ever demonstrated the ability to use human language. At best an animal bangs on a few buttons and people are left to speculate on the intent. Maybe Fluffy likes the way a certain word sounds. Maybe it’s just fun to hammer on buttons the way it’s fun to pop bubble wrap. Most likely, these cats and dogs know that using a talking board is a guaranteed way to get attention, a treat and a head scratch from their caretakers.
Influencers and their talking boards
TikTok, which spawns inane trends with the reliability of an atomic clock, has provided a platform for people who insist their cats and dogs can talk. Using “talking boards” — elaborate set-ups in which words are assigned to their own buttons — they “teach” their cats how to express themselves in English and provide proof in the form of heavily edited, out-of-context clips that require the same sort of creative interpretation pioneered by Penny Patterson, Koko’s caretaker.
Seriously?
I just watched a video in which a woman claims her cat, named after Justin Bieber, was describing an encounter with a coyote by stomping on buttons for “stranger,” “Justin,” “Mike,” and “stranger.”
The woman says she thought Justin was asleep at the time, but now she believes the orange tabby saw the coyote outside and was still stressing about it well into the next day.
While she’s repeating Justin’s “words” back to him, two of her other cats come by and step all over the talking board. I guess whatever they had to say wasn’t important.
Justin’s talking board has 42 buttons, which stresses credulity well beyond the breaking point. More than half of the buttons are used for abstract concepts.
But forget all that for a moment and ask yourself how our own efforts to decode the meow have been going.
Despite our status as intelligent, sapient animals, despite the powerful AI algorithms at our disposal, despite the benefit of being able to digitally record and analyze every utterance, we haven’t come close to a reliable method for interpreting feline vocalizations.
Likewise with dolphins, whale song, corvid calls and the sounds made by other animals at the top of the cognition pyramid.
Mostly, we’re learning we’ve underestimated the complexity of our non-human companions’ inner lives, especially when it comes to the kind of multi-modal communication humans also engage in, but only subconsciously. We say what we want with our mouths, while our eyes, facial expressions and body language say what we’re actually thinking.
Likewise, the meow is an unnatural way for cats to communicate, and it contains only a fraction of the information cats are putting out there. It’s just that we can’t reliably read feline facial expressions, let alone tail, whisker and posture. (Studies have shown most of us, even when we live with cats, don’t get measurably better at this. In fact, we’re often no better than people with limited feline experience, but we think we’re better.)
Putting the burden on our furry friends
If we can’t crack a simple and limited system of vocalizations, aren’t we putting unrealistic expectations on cats? The average person has a vocabulary of tens of thousands of words, yet somehow we expect cats can latch on to an arbitrary number of them, approximate mastery of syntax that has eluded even our closest cousins, and bridge a cognition gap we haven’t been able to bridge ourselves.
It’s all too much.
I’ve had Buddy since he was eight or nine weeks old, and in more than nine years I still don’t know why he makes this praying motion. We may be best buds, but some things just don’t translate.
There’s a simple truth at the heart of this: Cats did not evolve to speak or parse human language, and that’s perfectly fine.
The little ones already meet us more than halfway because they understand we are hopelessly incompetent at reading tail, whisker or body language, and they understand we communicate with vocalizations.
By forgoing their natural methods of communication in favor of ours, cats are already taking on most of the burden in interspecies communication. Asking them to do more than that, to learn many dozens of words and the rudimentary rules of language, seems like laziness, wishful thinking or insanity on our part. Pretending that certain cats are successful is an exercise in the same kind of cynical opportunism that fuels every other desperate attempt by people trying to turn their pets into influencers. People do it because the reward is money and attention.
Worse, it contributes to the spread of misinformation. TikTok’s talking board videos routinely net millions of views, converting a credulous audience into an army of true believers who are convinced that, with just a little effort, their feline pal can shoot the shit with them.
If people want to construct elaborate talking boards in their homes and pretend their cats are expressing themselves in English, who am I to object? It’s not the smartest use of time, but have at it. What I won’t do is participate in the delusion that felines are a few buttons away from being able conversation partners, nor will I pretend these efforts have any relationship to science.
So to the journalists who keep writing credulous stories about these supposedly talking animals: please familiarize yourself with the example of Clever Hans, and please, I beg you to stop promoting these videos as if they’re anything more than wishful thinking. You are doing your readers a disservice for the sake of a few clicks.
Note: Jackson Galaxy isn’t a fan either, saying he’s “got some serious problems” with the talking board trend. Calling it “problematic,” he points out that cats are not only partially domesticated and the only animal species in history to take that step without human prompting, but humans have never selectively bred cats for specific behaviors or to bring out intelligence traits as we have with canines. (Think of sheep dogs or retrievers, who are the products of thousands of years of breeding for well-defined tasks.) There simply hasn’t been a need to breed cats for behavioral traits since the thing humans traditionally valued most about them — their ability to reliably eradicate rodents and protect human foodstuffs — is innate. No one had to teach cats how to hunt or breed them for the task. It’s only in the last two hundred years or so that certain human societies began breeding cats, and they did so for aesthetic attributes like coat patterns. Galaxy also notes that animals do not express emotions the same way humans do. Like monkeys, who “smile” when they’re terrified, felines express joy, anger and fear with their tails, whiskers, ears and body language. It’s not in their nature to tell us they’re happy or scared by padding up to a contraption and hammering on a button.
Top image of “Justin Bieber” the cat credit Sarah Baker.
Oscar the Cat lived in a Rhode Island nursing home where he became famous for knowing exactly when a patient was dying.
There’s a scene in the film adaptation of Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep that shows Ewan McGregor’s character, Danny Torrance, working the night shift as a hospice orderly when a cat jumps up onto the desk and nuzzles his hand.
“Hi, Azzie,” Torrance says, and watches as the cute feline pads down the hall and enters a patient’s room.
Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) pets Azzie in Doctor Sleep.
When Danny pokes his head in, the patient is distraught. He knows he’s going to die.
“Cat’s on the bed,” the man says. “I knew he would be. That cat…always seems to know when it’s time. Guess it’s time.”
Danny shakes his head.
“No,” he reassures the old man. “It’s just Azrael being a silly
old cat.”
“Nope. Been that way since I got here. The cat knows when it’s time
to go to sleep, everybody knows that. I’m gonna die.”
It’s a pivotal moment early in the movie because it marks Danny’s evolution into Doctor Sleep, a man whose innate ability to “shine” allows him to comfort the dying. (Yes, Doctor Sleep is the sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Do yourself a favor and watch the Director’s Cut, which is the definitive and most satisfying version. It’s a long film, but worth it in every sense.)
It turns out Azzie is based on a real cat: Oscar, the resident feline at Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island.
Oscar, who died in 2022 at the age of 17, had an uncanny ability to sense the imminent deaths of patients. When someone was near death, Oscar would leap onto the person’s bed and stay with them until they passed.
Oscar at the nurse’s station in the Rhode Island nursing home where he lived.
When his story was first publicized in a 2007 essay in the New England Journal of Medicine, Oscar had “predicted” the deaths of a few dozen patients.
“Thus far, he has presided over the deaths of more than 25 residents on the third floor of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island. His mere presence at the bedside is viewed by physicians and nursing home staff as an almost absolute indicator of impending death, allowing staff members to adequately notify families. Oscar has also provided companionship to those who would otherwise have died alone. For his work, he is highly regarded by the physicians and staff at Steere House and by the families of the residents whom he serves.”
In a follow-up story by Reuters in 2010, Oscar had snuggled with more than 50 dying patients.
To be clear, no one’s suggesting Oscar is peering into supernatural realms. Cats are known for their remarkable hearing, but they’ve also got an exceptional sense of smell. In fact, they have a unique olfactory organ in their mouths, the vomeronasal organ, that allows them to “taste” scents.
We know very little about what kind of information they’re able to glean from scent alone, but we do know animals can sense things that would otherwise require sophisticated machines for us to detect, including cancers and other diseases.
A cat’s Flehmen response looks like a disgusted reaction, but actually indicates cats are processing a scent through their vomeronasal organ.
It may be that the most unusual thing about Oscar’s case is that he was allowed to live in a nursing home. The vast majority of medical facilities have strict prohibitions against allowing animals due to potential allergies and the perception that they’re dirty, despite the fact that they have significant therapeutic benefits. Even the facilities that do allow animals typically do so under controlled circumstances and for short periods, as when therapy dogs or cats are brought to visit patients.
Perhaps we’d hear about Oscars all the time if they were resident cats in hospitals and nursing homes.
“I don’t think Oscar is that unique, but he is in a unique environment,” Dr. David Dosa told Reuters. “Animals are remarkable in their ability to see things we don’t, be it the dog that sniffs out cancer or the fish that predicts earthquakes. Animals know when they are needed.”
It’s a reminder that just because we can’t see, smell or hear something, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. When dogs “bark at nothing,” they may have caught the scent of a stranger in the neighborhood. When a cat stares at a wall, it could be picking up mice making sounds that are too high in frequency for human ears to detect.
There are likely thousands of sounds, smells and even forms of tactile feedback to which we remain oblivious, but are noticed by animals. Migratory birds, for example, have magnetoreception abilities. That is to say, they can detect Earth’s magnetic field and magnetic dips, an ability they put to use when navigating as the seasons shift.
And then, of course, there’s Buddy and his incredible ability to detect catnip. Little man could be in a deep sleep in another room, yet the instant I open the sealed container of the good stuff, it’s a matter of seconds before he’s at my feet, meowing happily. In fact, it’s a reliable way to find him when he’s in some novel hidden napping spot, doesn’t respond to me calling for him, and I get worried because I haven’t seen or heard him in some time.
So next time your cat freaks you out by apparently staring at a corner of your living room, remind yourself she’s probably been alerted to something you can’t sense — and be wary of any cats who aren’t snugglers but suddenly climb into your bed.
Plus: The awesome and terrifying cats and proto-cats of prehistory!
OMG, you guys! No cap, you gotta totally check out this adorbz video of a sweet widdle kitty witty becoming best fwiends with this mountain lion!
Phoebe the cat sees this cute AF puma near the back door of her home, curiously looking inside. It’s love at first sight as kitty and kitty see each other! Per Parade Pets:
“[T]he kitty in this TikTok video is completely fascinated by the big kitty outside her window. There’s no getting her away from her new friend!
On Sunday, August 25, @cricketandstrawfl shared this footage of her Tuxedo Cat posted up at the back door in their house, where a cougar was hanging out. It goes without saying that the cougar in question was many times bigger than Phoebe, but that didn’t seem to scare her at all.
It seemed like the cougar was pretty curious, too. He didn’t appear to be aggressive; instead, he was staring at Phoebe and gently pawing at the glass, trying to figure out who the tiny cat in the window was.”
OMG-hee! Look at the big kitty gently pawing at the door! He wants to give the little kitty a huggy-wuggy!
SO ADORBZ! The puma pawing at the door wasn’t testing its strength to see if he could snag a quick meal, those were totes signals of love! Teehee!
Felid predators of pre-history: They will eat you
If you’re in need of a palate cleanser after all that sugar, the BBC’s Discover Wildlife has a rundown of prehistoric cats and their particularly fascinating proto-cat ancestors, some of whom looked more classically cat-like than several species of true cats. Isn’t convergent evolution cool?
There’s the famous smilodon, the saber-toothed cat, xenosmilus, the so-called shark-toothed cat, and homotherium, the scimitar-toothed cat. Outdoing each other with increasingly sword-like teeth was apparently a big thing in the felid world back then.
There’s also the cave lion, the last of the UK’s big cats, and miracinonyx, the American cheetah, but did you know that simbakubwa, the “great lion” of Africa, topped out at almost 3,000 pounds?
Simbakubwa was massive, making modern lions look almost like house cats in comparison.
Dinictis looked like a cat, behaved like a cat and hunted like a cat, but was not part of the felidae family. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Simbakubwa and dinictis were examples of “false cats.” That is to say, they were not part of the felid lineage, but closely resembled cats in body plan and behavior through convergent evolution. Nature found a niche, and several different species filled it for a time.
Dinictis in particular looks strikingly like modern big cats, which makes it even more surprising to learn it’s not part of the genetic lineage of the felid line.
Finally — or firstly — there’s proailurus, the first cat or “dawn cat,” from which all true felidae species can trace their lineage. Appearing almost 31 million years ago proailurus enjoyed napping, climbing trees and eating Temptations. Okay, we made that last part up. But still. If proailurus were around today, it would probably go just as crazy for the kitty crack as our house panthers do.
A cat’s affection has to be earned, but the good news is it’s not rocket science. A little patience and consideration for your fluffy little pal goes a long way toward building trust and a strong bond. Once you do, you’ll have a loyal friend for life.
“How do I make my cat like me?”
That question comes up regularly on social media posts, in cat-centric discussion groups, Q&A sites and even in our inbox. People adopt a cat, and whether the little one dives under a bed and refuses to emerge, or just seems reluctant to snuggle the way people imagined, they turn to the internet to find out why they don’t have a purring, contented feline in their lap.
The short answer is you can’t “make” your cat feel anything, and it’s best to dispense with that notion as quickly as possible so you can acknowledge the truth: cats are individuals with their own thoughts and feelings.
The good news, however, is that you can earn your cat’s affection with patience, respect and love. Our patience and respect for our little buddies leads to trust, which in turn creates and strengthens the special bond we share with them.
The love of a cat isn’t as easily won as the love of a dog, and in many ways that makes it even more special. Cats don’t love just anyone.
It starts with acknowledging your cat has feelings, and understanding that you have to respect those feelings as you would those of a person.
Don’t make your cat do things she doesn’t want to do.
Despite what you might think or what you may have been told, most cats don’t like being picked up, held or feeling restricted. The majority of felines don’t like belly rubs, and people have a habit of mistaking a sign of trust — a cat showing her belly — as an invitation to pet.
A cat showing its belly is a sign of trust. It’s a vulnerable position for a cat, and not an invitation for belly rubs. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Every cat is different, but generally the best way to make sure your kitty doesn’t want to approach you is to ignore her personal boundaries and treat her like a stuffed animal.
Those “cute” videos you see on TikTok of terminally online people spinning their cats to Taylor Swift songs, holding them like phones to reenact scenes from The Princess Diaries, or forcing them to wear ridiculous outfits?
Don’t do that. It destroys your cat’s trust in you, and the cheap dopamine hit you get from strangers “liking” your content isn’t worth stressing your furry pal out and damaging your relationship.
Don’t do this. It’s not funny, the meme is lame and you’ll teach your cat to fear you. Credit: TikTok
If you tend to restrict your cat and hold her in your lap, you’re discouraging her from sitting there in the future. If you give kitty unnecessary baths, you could create a situation in which your cat fears you.
Even if you think you’re not doing anything wrong, if your cat is reluctant to approach you, there’s something that needs fixing, and it’ll require patience.
Don’t subject your cat to forced petting sessions.
Unlike dogs, cats have a limited tolerance for physical affection, and they don’t always want to be touched.
Your pal will be much more likely to regularly approach you for physical affection if you let him come to you. Ignore the impulse to reach out and start petting him like you would a dog. Instead, put your hand out and let your cat initiate the petting. You’ll develop a physical shorthand in which he signals he wants chin scratches or head rubs by leaning in and rubbing his face against your outstretched hand.
All felines have scent glands in their cheeks, and the initial contact of a cat rubbing his cheek against your fingers is an olfactory signal that says “This human is my family. I like this human.”
Even though our noses can’t detect those pheromones, they’re still important to our cat(s), and they’re the reason why cats will scent-mark objects by brushing past them in your home, just like tigers will mark their territories by scent-marking trees with urine. Same concept, but thankfully our miniature house tigers generally don’t feel the need to do the latter. (If yours does, take him to the vet. If he’s not “fixed,” get it done ASAP.)
Less is more when it comes to petting
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “I just don’t get it! I was petting my cat and she was purring and loving it, then without warning she bit me!”
Pro tip: A bite like that never comes without warning, it’s just that most of us don’t see the signs right in front of us.
Cats communicate by tail and whisker, and we communicate by making noises with our mouths. Adult cats don’t meow to each other. The little ones are smart enough to understand how we exchange information, so meows, trills, chirps and grunts are their way of trying to speak our language, to communicate on our terms.
But sometimes — like, say, when they’re purring and relaxed — they’re distracted and forget to meow, or they meow and we ignore them.
That’s when they bite, or swipe at us with their paws.
If you pay attention to non-verbal cues, you’ll notice your cat getting overstimulated when her tail starts swishing and her pupils dilate. If those signs aren’t enough, there are others: twitching ears, shifting positions, moving away.
The best way to avoid misunderstandings is to give kitty a few head rubs and chin scratches, then stop. If she wants more, she will let you know. If she doesn’t, she’ll be content to remain on your lap or by your side, knowing you’re not going to keep going indefinitely.
No harm, no foul, no bite.
This cat is not enjoying selfie time with her human. Credit: imgur via Reddit
Don’t take your bad day out on your cat
Remember when you were a kid and your mom or dad came home from a bad day at work with a storm cloud hanging over their head? Maybe they snapped at you for apparently no reason, or made family dinner miserable with fraught silence. Maybe they unfairly got on your case about something minor.
Either way, the tension in the house was palpable because, as kids, your parents controlled your lives and you were dependent on them for everything.
That’s what it’s like for our pets. Whether we call ourselves “fur mommies” and “cat daddies” or not, the fact is that the pet-human dynamic absolutely shares some elements with the parent-child relationship.
Our pets are utterly dependent on us, they’re subject to our moods, and they’re deeply attuned to our emotions.
As a result, how we’re feeling has a big impact on them, for better and worse. Unlike children, who at least have some concept of redirected frustration, cats and dogs have no idea why we have bad moods and no way to insulate themselves from the consequences.
We’re all human and we all get frustrated with our feline friends at some point. If you’ve been sitting in traffic for three hours and come home to find Socks pooped all over the rug or threw up on your comforter, frustration is a natural response.
But for the sake of the innocent little ones we share our homes with, it’s up to us to be mindful of our moods and do our best not to let external factors impact how we treat our pets. Things as seemingly small as our tone of voice can have a major impact on their emotions.
A cat chowing down. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Don’t feed them crap
This has been covered exhaustively elsewhere, so we’ll direct you to catinfo.org if you have in-depth questions about feline nutrition.
In general, wet food should make up the majority of your cat’s diet. Cats don’t have a high thirst drive and they’ve evolved to get most of their hydration from meat, so a cat who eats mostly — or only — dry food is in danger of developing serious health problems.
Aside from that, more expensive doesn’t always mean better, and the important thing is that your cat’s food has real meat as the top ingredient. If the primary ingredient is a filler like corn or grain, or poultry/beef byproducts, steer clear and find a better alternative.
Feeding quality food means kitty will be happier, healthier, less prone to health complications and more active.
Keep things interesting
You don’t have to spend a lot of money on toys, and everyone who’s ever lived with a feline knows the fluffy little guys are just as likely to take a shine to a new box or the little plastic ring from a milk bottle as they are to the $10 new toy you bought from the pet store.
That said, there are certain toys that are almost universally beloved by felinekind, and the more you keep things interesting for your cat, the happier your furry overlord will be.
You can never go wrong with wands for interactive play. Keep it simple and manipulate the toy at the end of the wand like prey so your house panther can feel like a mighty hunter. Track toys with balls that cats can bat around are good for relatively quiet solo play. Cat tunnels are great too, especially if you toss treats inside them for kitty to find randomly.
A cat playing with a toy mouse. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
You don’t need a special occasion to surprise your little buddy with a catnip and play session, and you’d be surprised how enthralled felines can be by “cat TV” on Youtube. There are dozens of channels that provide hours-long videos of birds eating seeds from outdoor feeders, aquariums filled with interesting fish, and critters like squirrels and rodents.
You can also engage your cat by training her to do simple things like come when called, sit on command high five you. Those “tricks” are very easy to teach and require no more than two or three practice sessions a day, maximum 10 minutes each. Your cat will love it, especially with rewards for learning, and it’s fun to show skeptics that, yes, cats can do tricks just like dogs.
Sometimes “fun” is just something unusual, something your cat rarely gets to do or see. On occasion, I let Buddy walk up and down the hallway with me in my apartment building late at night when chances are low we’ll encounter anyone.
Elevators: products of foul sorcery that swallow humans and sometimes spit out Korean rappers.
He loves to stop at each door, listen and take in the strange sounds and scents. If anyone emerges from one of the doors or the elevator opens, he just makes haste back to our apartment, where I leave the door slightly ajar for that reason. As for the elevator, he seems to think it’s some sort of product of foul sorcery — it rumbles, the doors open by themselves, and when people walk in, they don’t walk out. Sometimes they enter only to emerge as a different person a few minutes later!
I’m happy to indulge his paranoia with regard to the elevator, because it means I don’t have to worry about curiosity getting the better of him.
If you’ve got rooms your cat doesn’t normally have access to, a yard with cat-proof fencing, or an activity you only do sometimes, consider breaking up your cat’s day with a little exploration or some ‘nip-fueled fun.
“Extremely accurate portrait of the Buddies” commissioned by Buddy the Cat in 2024.
Treat your cat as a friend
Your cat may not have legal personhood, but he is a fully sentient being who feels emotions just as strongly as people do. Cats experience the full range of primary and secondary emotions, but not tertiary emotions. That means kitty can feel happy, sad, excited, anxious, jealous, bored, depressed and overjoyed, but she’s not going to be embarrassed if another cat’s wearing the same collar or fret over whether people and other cats like her.
The important thing is remembering cats have feelings.
It’s not rocket science, and it doesn’t cost us anything to treat our cats with respect, patience and love. Bonding with a cat requires more than just feeding, watering and scooping, but the effort is always worth it and you’ll have a loyal friend for life. Good luck!
Top image of incredibly sexy beast (Buddy) copyright Pain In The Bud.
Pain In The Bud 