Walk a While in their Paws…
If you want to understand someone, walk a mile in their shoes.
Many countries have a version of this saying. The only true way to understand another being is to look at life through their perspective. That is not always easy to do with humans. How can we even begin to do it with cats? Cats can be a giant box of contradictions.
How, then, do we learn to walk a while in a cat’s paws? What does is feel like to be a cat? What are a cat’s emotions?
Anytime we use the word emotion and pin it onto an animal red flags start popping up. “No, you can’t do that. Animals are not human.” It makes the animal behavior robot heads start to short-circuit.
It is true that when we use the word “emotion” we start to label a cat behavior as good or bad. Happy or sad. The cat loves us. The cat hates us. We take it personally, based on our emotions. But a cat’s behavior is based on how secure and satisfied they are within their environment. They are not being bad when they pee on your bed. They don’t chew your sandals because they hate you. They are expressing stress in the only way a cat knows how to do so.
When we use the word “emotion” it becomes hard for humans to separate what they understand as humans’ emotions from what is happening within a cat’s emotional states. We also tend to look at cats through the same glasses we see dogs. Dogs wag their tails and run at the door to greet us when we get home. We then have the same expectations for our cats; for them to express love and devotion with the same exuberance as a dog.
Cats’ emotions are basic.
They feel fear and aggression. They experience attachment and an affection towards their humans. They feel grief at the loss of something they had attachment to. And they feel anxiety.
But these emotional states do go deeper. Studies now tell us cats have strong sensitivity to their human’s emotional states. When I talk about a cat’s sensitivity, I am talking about both their senses (hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling and touching) as well as their mental sensitivity. Much of the unwanted behaviors we find with our feline friends come from these sensitive natures being either over stimulated or under stimulated.
When you feel nervous, the cat feels nervous. When you get stressed, the cat feels stressed. When you are angry, the cat is angry. The trouble is, the cat doesn’t have a complex set of human emotional regulators to help them understand and get through the moment of dis-harmony. They are cats with simple emotional reactions: fear, anger, pleasure. Fright, flight, or fight.
How strongly a cat will react to different emotions around them most often starts when they are kittens.
They watch mom cat. If a stranger cat walks by, does mom get worried or angry or does she not care at all? Based on mom, the kitten will know if they should be afraid and run away to hide or if they can simply relax. Mom teaches them how to feel safe and secure; how to react with confidence in any situation. Even if something dangerous is happening, if mom cat is confident, she stays focused and reacts with the proper amount of concern.
When we bring a new kitten or cat into our home, we take the place of mom cat. We are there to help the cat feel security within their new home, help them trust that their humans know what is best, and help build their confidence. They look to us to help them feel safe and secure.
If we are always feeling anxiety when we are around them, our cat will feel anxiety. But they won’t know why you’re feeling anxiety and won’t know how to interpret that emotional state into anything useful. They will just feel anxious. That anxiety turns into a frustration, like a knotted muscle that grows more and more tense throughout a day. If you are angry, the cat will be afraid of you, maybe showing anger back. They will have to find a way to release that frustration, that anger, that unexpressed emotional energy. They will pee or poo, or scratch where you don’t want them to do so. They will try to get out the frustration by finding another pet to attack or by attacking you. They will hide. They will lick their fur off or chew on plastic cords.
Of course, there are others reasons a cat will develop behavior problems, but by understanding that the cat might be reacting to how you feel after a hard day, or by managing your own emotional reactions when your cat has done something you don’t like, you will create a sense of trust and reassurance. When you learn to react with calm, the cat will learn to react with calm. And YOU learn how to take a breath instead of letting anger make you start hating or fearing your cat.
Now go and give your cat some scratches. Let them know you understand what it’s like to walk a while in their paws.
