Like… what do cats think of their humans?
“Lol this stupid human feeds me for no reason”
or
“This human feels like my mother”
“This human is a great friend”
or something else?
I’m pretty sure they think of the person taking care of them as some analogous of a mother. We should be careful not to anthropomorphism their emotions as they are probably not quite as complex as we would like. They certainly have some degree of emotions though.
But they have no concept of “human” or “mother” so I would guess it is more like “thing stops hunger, thing warm, thing safe”. Thus they bother you when they are hungry, sit on you when they are cold and come to you when they are afraid.
To support your theory: Wild cats don’t meow when they’re grown up. They usually only do this as kittens. When they grow up around humans they keep this trait to communicate with humans. So yeah, we’re like moms or something to them.
In addition to this they also learned to meow in the frequency of a crying baby to get our attention much easier IIRC
Love this. I’ve also read they can learn and adjust how much they meow based on some of the feedback they get from the owner, ie if you actually respond to each meow with your own voice or similar. Really neat stuff
Long ago, I adopted a cat from a deaf girl. Weirdest thing, going to her house to pick one out, she had several, and none of them meowed. It was months before the one I picked out started meowing.
my cat came from a hoarder and the shelter said she might not be very well socialized because there were so many cats that they wouldn’t have gotten much human attention, but she literally never stops meowing
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My cat guards me while I’m on the toilet, ready to take on any predators while I’m in a vulnerable state. You can’t convince me they have less than complex emotions.
They are inexorably drawn to the comfort of the pants-cavern you create around your ankles
You feed them, if you die while pooping, they don’t get fed.
Eh, my cats would be gnawing on my carcass before I was cold…
Likewise, one of my cats wants me to guard him while he’s on the shitter.
How did you realize that, exactly?
The cat was meowing at me leading me around the house, how he does. One day he led me out to the litter box and dropped a big old fat turd. Then he stopped meowing. Apparently that’s what he wanted to show me? Well this has become a habit and I haven’t been able to break it. He’s really proud of them too.
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We have so many litter boxes we’ve tried. He’s just a proud little pooper
I thought only my weirdo cat did this. He’s my little poop buddy.
They have no concept of “human” or “mother”
Actually, they do. Maybe not in the words we use for it, but a cat can recognize their mother and can determine humans apart from other species. It may not be an complex psychological process of ranking them, but they recognize.
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also humans apart from each other. Our cat chose us (my husband and I) to be her humans, so she’s super affectionate with us. Other humans? She does not give a crap about anyone else. She will never come snuggle with a guest for example, but she will snuggle with me all day.
I don’t necessarily disagree that cats don’t have as much emotional depth as humans, but I also think you’re selling them a bit short on their ability to think abstractly or emotionally. And it of course varies from cat to cat. They can express fear, affection, curiosity, frustration, satisfaction, anxiety, depression, caution, anger, overstimulation, desire, boredom, jealousy and plenty of other emotions. If you pay attention to body language and their vocalizations/ lack of vocalization, you can interpret much of what’s going on in their heads. They’re very expressive creatures much of the time. I’m not really anthropomorphizing either. I do that, cause they’re cute little goofballs, but it’s a voluntary effort I put in when I want to fawn over them a little. It’s easy to notice when I’m anthropomorphizing them and when I’m observing their emotional state, as they’re usually separate from one another
Feral cats I’ve been feeding daily for 3 years still won’t let me get close or pet them. They do not see me as a mother or warm and safe. I think they see me as a slot machine.
Probably all mammals have a concept of “mother” even if it’s just a nonverbal instinct
Yeah, they’re pattern recognition machines like pretty much every animal and definitely every predator
As far as the think, humans feed them at certain times or when they complain loud enough. That’s all the “why” they need.
Basic cause and effect, nothing deeper.
Just like us
True cats don’t have family bonds way humans do. We took in a cat from my ex who is the sister of one of ours and the mother to other and both my cats hate her even though related.
You never met anyone who hated part of their family?
I know some Thanksgiving dinners you could go to…
Had they every met before? If cats grow up together of course they’ll be nicer/more familiar.
Kittens typically aren’t given away before they are a couple months old, so they most probably met each other.
Either way: I’ve seen this in action. We had a cat that had kittens, and we were unable to give away one of them. When the kitten started growing up the mother started harassing it, eventually to the point of chasing it off. Luckily we found out that it moved in with some people a couple streets over that were very happy to have it. The point is: Cats aren’t pack animals, and typically don’t like sharing their territory with other cats, even if they are related.
I think it varies from cat to cat. There’s a mother-daughter team here who hang around and even gang up on other cats. Also, siblings almost always get along.
Could also be that the similar genetics but long separation have them thinking of her as not part of the household yet somehow “smells” too similar and it bugs your cats out. Cats, dogs and even fish have Major Histocompatibility Complex genes just like we do.
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I think it depends a lot on the individual cat? In my experience, their attitudes towards humans can vary quite considerably.
Some are more aloof and independent and see their human as a source of food like you say.
But then I think about our current cat. He’s a rescue who’s clearly been through a lot on the streets. When I come home, he just wants to climb onto me and head butt and do that slow blink thing. He wants this more than food, even, which is a first for me.
When we were adopting him, we fostered first for a couple of weeks before he had to go in for a surgery, and in the week or so when e was boarded, the staff said he was wailing every night wanting to go home. So he had clearly developed an attachment to us that transcended simply wanting any human who provides food and shelter.
I agree with this too. Depends on the cat. One I know of will take attention anytime over food, it’s crazy.
Depends on the food. If I got the normal dry food, she will wait until head pats are done. Treats, shes willing to work for and do tricks.
If i got the good wet food, its a life and death situation. Usually she’s so excited I can’t get her to focus on doing tricks.
Don’t teach your cat how to speak for food. It’s cursed knowledge.
Just want to second that “Don’t teach your cat how to speak for food” line, definitely cursed knowledge
Do they end up meowing horribly loudly or something? Haven’t got much experience with cats; enlighten me!
mine started meowing loudly and persistantly any time we opened a can as the sound was similar to the wet food openning. Tuna, soup, etc, cat doesnt know its not for her, lol
edits: spelling, on phone
I mean it depends on the cat
I have a feral who acts like it’s some great coincidence that she lives in the ultimate lap of developed world luxury and humans just happen to be there and no they can’t touch her
I have two kitten brothers who only love because they are fed. If one of us starts being more regular about feeding them then that’s their new best friend
I have an old lady cat who couldn’t care less about food she just wants her belly rubbed and a friend to be with
My husband has his geriatric boy who I’m fairly certain is a small man in a cat suit. He keeps us all on a tight schedule of demands.
I’ve read that cats assume we are a giant, weird looking cat otherwise why are we feeding them? And they treat us as a parent causing them to stay in a juvenile state so they engage in play behavior and such. Normally the mom cat would tell her kids to move out after a few months.
Normally the mom cat would tell her kids to move out after a few months.
Exactly this, we had a cat that did this that I mentioned in another comment. It was quite brutal to watch, as we happily would have kept both mother and child, but cats don’t work like that.
I think people often underestimate the animal mind
It’s not like they have discrete thoughts in words, but animals form friendships even across species in the wild. It’s not abnormal for one animal to partner up with another - with an imbalance in size/strength the smaller one often will scout out prey and the larger one will give them scraps. Sometimes equals will share territory and even raise kittens/cubs together, taking turns babysitting.
With less abundant food, that’s certainly got to be more rare now, but we’ve seen it happen, even captured it at length on video
Cats are going to have all sorts of ideas about our relationship, from a parent to a big predator friend to a giant clueless kitten. Or, maybe just another predator sharing space, or sometimes they totally discard their instincts and live by human rules
It’s not so dissimilar from what we’d think if an alien took us as a pet and we didn’t try to put a label on it - every relationship is unique
And like with dogs different breeds often have particular behavior. For example the Norwegian Forrest Cat tends to bond with one particular human.
In addition, unlike dogs, cats have not evolved their body language to be easily understandable by humans, so we have problems interpreting them. Does my cat turn her back to me because she doesn’t care or because she trusts me, etc.
Their independence can also be off-putting to some humans, but like with humans independence doesn’t have to mean they’re don’t care about us. And then there’s the lessons in consent they try to teach us, which some of us don’t want to understand.
It’s actually kind of interesting - cats have culture. I’m sure there’s a generic competent too, but cats apparently get their social skills crammed into them by their mother in a crash course when they’re weaning. It’s apparently very slow and difficult to change after that period. They’ve studied certain marker behaviors the way they study how language branch out, and they estimate it takes upwards of a dozen generations for a line of cats to fully adapt to the local “dialect”
It’s not just that cats are standoffish and hard to understand, it’s that western cats are in particular. In Japan, they’re far more “extroverted”, they’re far more likely to approach humans and perform “cute” behaviors like big kitty eyes and “cute” juvenile sounding meows for attention
It makes you think - up until like the 70s, people would just kill cats for fun, cheap fur, or because they annoyed them. A lot of older people have stories about watching someone drown kittens
English has a ton of words and idioms relating to killing cats in the context of it once being a relatable behavior
In Japan, they have idioms like “[I’m so busy] I’m in no position to turn down a cats help”. Eastern cultures also generally see their presence as lucky, say they can see and protect against spirits, and Japan has a spirit called a bakeneko which is a two tailed cat who has lived 100 years, and is now a powerful trickster that sometimes will curse someone with fatal levels of bad luck.
It kind of makes sense - they were largely seafaring and have all sorts of annoying critters around, whereas in Europe and America they were brought on the ships to defend the food, but once they got there they became an invasive species inland, where they’re far less valued
It makes sense they’d be more standoffish - they want to be around because they’re adapted human settlements. They’re definitely social animals, but maybe their fickleness is a way to remind people that they can do some damage if their cornered
Anyways, I saw a documentary about the trainability of cats and thought it was interesting… I’m definitely more of a dog person, but it made me think - out of about a dozen cats I’ve spent a significant time around, 4 were assholes and 2 I formed a deep bond with.
It made me want to add a couple cats to the dog and local wildlife I’d adopt if I ever manage to afford a place in the boonies
“I deserve this”
“Once again, the ransom payment is on time.”
Fixed it:
Hey, cat here. I just deserve it.
pretty sure cats know they’re gods in the human world
Not related to food, more to your second question…
“What do cats think of their humans?”
I had one cat that apparently thought something was wrong with my face because I wear glasses. Any time he got close enough to my face, he’d try in his own silly gentle way to ‘help’ me by gently biting the hinge on my glasses and pulling them off my face LOL!
Was the weirdest cool quirk I’ve ever seen out of any cat. I could tell he was deliberately doing it in his own effort to try to ‘help’ me. Never could totally break him of that habit either, I just had to make a point to not let him get that close to my face.
My cats are more likely to wonder why they aren’t being fed RIGHT NOW.
I have one that will relentlessly attack anything plastic - like Ziploc, trash bags, store bought bread - until someone refills the food. Had to buy an honest to goodness bread box so she’d stop destroying the loaves.
They probably wonder why we don’t more often.
I’ve seen my cat look at his empty food bowl after he ate everything in 2 seconds and then look at me like “hey, what the fuck dude? Give that back!”
If my cat can’t connect his relentless walking over my head while I’m sleeping, and then guiding me to his bowl, with me actually feeding him, there’s no hope for the little shit.
“Annoying the human will magically summon food. Must annoy the human more!”
-😺
Cat: “Why has it taken you so long to feed me? I can see the bottom of the bowl, WTF is going on? Do you know how close to death I was?”
In the wild, cat moms would share mothering duties. So a kitten would have a mom and a bunch of aunts.
Wild cats generally only meow when they are kittens communicating with their mom. Kneading (‘making biscuits’) is also something they only do to their mom (it stimulate milk production).
Domesticated socialized cats basically… Mentally stay in the kittenhood phase. So they literally think you are their mom or aunt.I think it depends on the cat and also on the moment. Sometimes it’s “Thanks fam, I know you can be relied on to bring the cat food.” Other times it’s “Okay kid, you need to work on those clumsy hunting skills, try practicing with this dead mouse.” And sometimes it’s " Hey, fam, come you never share the good stuff, like that pizza?!" It’s a bit like stepsiblings in a feral cat colony, they teach each other and sometimes fight but also defend and share and groom each other.
I don’t think they question it. Just like if you feed a stray cat, they will often continue to come back
“Human gives food. I stay with human.”
It was this evolutionary trait that allowed us to domesticate animals in the first place. I don’t know if they have the complex psychological capacity to question or doubt it to that level. It’s a trust bond, not a superiority one.
I am quite sure it is not like “HUMAN, WHERE IS MY FOOD?”
