advice column – Pain In The Bud

Dear Buddy: ‘Do Cats Really Hate Us?’

A new article claims that cats don’t love people the way dogs do and may not love people at all! A reader asks Buddy to weigh in.

Dear Buddy,

I have an urgent matter here that requires your sage input and your keen understanding of all things feline and human.

This article from LiveScience, titled “Do Cats Really Hate Us?”, contains several distressing allegations. Among them: that cats mostly tolerate us humans, that we must bribe them with snacks and other gifts to earn their affection, and perhaps most disturbing of all, that cats can never love humans the way dogs do.

When confronted with particularly disturbing information we must turn to our greatest minds to guide us, and you may be the only one, cat or human, who can cut to the heart of the matter and reveal the truth.

Please, Buddy, tell us it ain’t true!

Sad In Saskatchewan

Dear Sad,

Normally I’d chastise you for writing from Canada, as I’ve made it clear many times that my column is for AMERICATS and their servants. Furthermore, everyone knows I despise Canada, that barren, frozen wasteland filled with floppy-headed Canadians!

However you were very gracious in your appeal to me and you employed an appropriate number of superlatives to describe my considerable intellect and wit, so we’ll pretend you’re an American for the purposes of this reply, shall we?

Now to the grave matter before us!

It is true that the bond between feline and human is different than the bond between human and canine, just like a boss-employee relationship differs from friendships with co-workers.

We cats are the bosses, in case the analogy wasn’t clear.

Buddicles the Wise is a scholar and gentlecat who is often sought out for his sage advice on thorny issues.

Humans, dogs, lizards and other lesser animals occupy one sphere and felines occupy another, higher sphere. You would have learned all this in science class had you paid attention, but you’re Canadian so we can only expect so much.

Now it is true, our affections are limited. A dog will slobber all over his owner for no reason at all whereas humans have to toil to earn a pat on the head from their feline superiors.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t love you! You guys are good at acquiring and dispensing food, you build nice shelters (except for your insistence on those infernal “doors”) and you are loyal.

I can always count on my Big Buddy to put off the call of nature until his bladder is ready to burst when I am using him as my pillow. I also know that Big Buddy will get up to open the door a hundred times when I’m indecisive about whether I want to be on one side or another. Sometimes I pretend to be indecisive just to mess with him LOL!

So you see, cats do love humans, but we require humans to earn our love. We are not the aloof, uncaring, unfeeling little furry masters that some slander us as.

Beware fake news, my friend, especially anything you read about me as I seek to regain my rightful post as president of the Americats. Now go and earn the love of your feline overlord by providing excellent service!

Your friend and resident genius,

Buddy

Keep The Cat, Ditch The Boyfriend

A boyfriend or girlfriend who wants you to ditch your cat is asking you to do a lot more than that. It’s about control and manipulation.

If subreddits, advice columns and social media are any indication, a disturbing number of people ask or demand their would-be significant others to ditch their cats before their relationships can progress.

But even by the standards of the demanding, heartless boyfriends and girlfriends who insist the cat has to go in a relationship, this one’s a doozy. A woman writes to the Washington Post’s Carolyn Hax for advice on what to do with her boyfriend, who has some very strange ideas about cats:

Hi Carolyn: I’ve had my cat since college (almost 10 years). I’ve been dating my boyfriend for two years, I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone, and we’d like to move in together.

My boyfriend hates cats. Hates them. He isn’t allergic (though he used to say he was, until I insisted on a test). He does have a strong aversion to them, probably from his family, who have some kind of belief that they’re evil or unclean. I’ve sought to understand it but could never get a coherent explanation out of any of them.

He jumps when the cat is in the room. And my cat is extremely affectionate, so doesn’t understand why he can’t come sit with us and be friends.

My boyfriend is offended I won’t give up the cat so he can move in. I’ve suggested compromises such as keeping the cat to just one part of the apartment, but he insists he needs the cat out.

I feel the cat was here first so this is an unreasonable ask. My boyfriend feels if I really love him then nothing should take precedence over his moving in, and he now says my hesitance is causing him to question the foundation of the entire relationship.

I cannot imagine rehoming my cat. I also can’t imagine ending my relationship. Am I being unreasonable or is he?

Hax goes beyond the usual “demanding significant others are major red flags” advice and points out that the boyfriend isn’t just placing his own emotional wellbeing above the letter-writer’s, he’s also trying to prune her life of things he doesn’t like or want as a precondition for moving forward in a relationship.

The cat, she points out, “is a hairy decoy, distracting you from the serious mistake you’re poised to make: thinking about your relationship in terms of what you owe the other person. All you owe anyone is to be yourself. … It’s on him to ask his own questions about living with that real you. It’s on him to assume the work of living with his own answers.”

That’s good advice for anyone who finds themselves in that sort of situation, but I do think the red flag aspect reinforces Hax’s good counsel. If the guy lied about being allergic to get his girlfriend to ditch her cat, he’s more manipulative than she may be willing to admit and he’s calculating about it, trying to disguise something he wants as a medical necessity.

But he goes even further than that with the “if you really love me, you’ll do this” emotional ploy, and by claiming his girlfriend’s loyalty to her cat is causing him to “question the foundation of the entire relationship.”

The foundation’s rotten, pal. You’re the reason.

Of course, all the human drama obscures the third individual involved in this mess: the cat. The letter writer has had the little guy for 10 years, which means they’ve long since bonded, he loves her, and he literally can’t imagine living in another place with another person.

Surrendering him to a shelter would be incredibly cruel. It would be a life-shattering betrayal of trust and cause incredible anguish to the poor cat in addition to putting him in real danger of being euthanized. And all for a jerk who fakes an allergy to get his girlfriend to dump the kitty she’s loved for a decade? Hell no.

I hope she finds a guy who loves cats. He’ll most definitely make a better boyfriend than this weirdo.

Dear Buddy: Why Do Cats Follow Their Humans Around?

Buddy dispels the myth that cats follow their people around, as if they would stoop so low!

Dear Buddy,

Why do cats always follow their humans around? I mean, you guys might not want us to pet you all the time, but you sure do go everywhere we go.

Human in Honolulu

Dear Human,

This is a common misconception, one of those myths about cats like the one that says we love milk or we like it when you talk to us in baby voices.

The sad reality is that you follow us around but you don’t want to admit it, so you come up with elaborate fictions about our habits. My human believes I weave around his legs to rub against them after he wakes up, which is absurd. Clearly he steps in my path and I have to swerve, causing incidental contact. I would prefer not to, but he makes it impossible.

Or how about the myth that we like to bother you guys in the bathroom? Big Buddy knows that every day at certain times I like to put my paws under the bathroom door and cry. I mean, I do it all the time and he knows it, so he decides to use the bathroom at those times and tricks himself into believing that somehow I go into hysterics if I’m not actually inside the bathroom with him.

Do you see how delusional you people are?

What kind of crazy people say “I know my cat is going to knead and purr in this spot in the next 5 to 10 minutes, so I’m going to sit here and force him to knead on me”?

I think you guys need to get help.

Buddy