Cat Communication

In general, people don't bother with their cats too much.  It sounds very distasteful to say, but it's true: We think of our cats as rather asocial animals, who can generally take or leave us, and when they take us they may well just leave us three minutes later, until the next time we're busy enough that we're worth bothering.  Cats are assholes, we say.

I, obviously, feel very strongly against this.  Cats can be very sociable, loving, even needy as any dog you might find if they're given the attention and the respect, and their communicative needs are met.  Dogs, though they aren't anymore, originally came from pack animals, and are still naturally more gregarious than cats are.  We, as humans, can sympathize with this, and so we have an easier time communicating with them.  Cats, on the other hand, are nocturnal, less interested in consistent, close proximity, and prefer the one on one.  This doesn't mean they have fewer social needs, only that their social needs are different.  They're the introverts of the animal world, and a common misconception about introversion is that it means you simply don't like people.  Introverts don't like crowds, don't like strangers, but the few people that they do like they become very attached to, and require them in their lives more than extroverts might rely on their own friends.  Cats are like this.

So no, don't assume kitty is fine if you leave home for a week and they have no one to interact with.  You may come home and they seem to ignore you, but this is because cats have a more complex social mind in some ways in comparison to dogs: they have the capability to quietly resent, they are vengeful, they can be embarrassed.  Have you ever seen kitty do something stupid, like slip across a kitchen floor chasing a bug only to collide with a counter, and you laugh, and they stalk off to face away from you, licking themselves?  Their humiliation looks a lot like ours, and so do their feelings of being abandoned.  They haven't forgotten you when you get home after that long trip, they just aren't very happy that you left them alone in the first place.  Cats isolating themselves, whether in humiliation or sickness or other upset, is a survival mechanism.

Cats also listen very attentively to verbal communication.  Like the other forms of concealment or deceit listed above, they often know very well what we want them to do or are telling them, but ignore us intentionally.  If one develops a strong relationship with a cat, they may well tear this barrier down, as my own has, and react to your wants and needs almost implicitly.  In return, cats also have a huge range of their own verbal expressions, highlighting how important verbalization is to them.  The more you talk to your cat, the more they'll talk back!

Cats have somewhere between thirty and upwards of one hundred distinct vocalizations, depending on one's source.  This is actually far more than dogs have, which is somewhere in the teens.  For comparison, the greatest number of distinct sounds in a human language is 141 at most.  Coupled with body language, this means a cat can express an awful lot with little effort.

• A content cat will have her ears forward, her eyes almond-shaped, and her whiskers down and forward in what I like to call a 'cat smile', since like a human smile it uses muscles in the cheeks.  The tail will be relatively still, perhaps just flicking at the tip, back and forth like a pendulum.  Content cats obviously will purr, but if you're talking to them and petting them, especially if they're pacing about while you do so so that you can get to their favourite places, they may give short little chirping noises or bubbling sounds from their throat.  A very good way to see a content cat though, apart from all this, is the slow-blink.  A lot of people see this as them being snobby, and in humans this is a rather self-important expression, but in cats they're telling you that they're happy where they are and they appreciate your presence.  Cats will also rub against things when they're happy, and contrary to popular belief, this isn't them declaring your desk or your leg as their property, it's just communication like everything else.
• An excited cat will have a more rapidly flicking tail.  People usually note that an active tail in a cat generally means they're annoyed or angry, but an excited cat's tail may be all over the place as well.  She'll be moving around a lot more, and may even look agitated, but the facial expression will mirror their content state, especially in the ears and the whiskers.  She may vocalize much more, especially if you're vocalizing back to her, with loud purring and meowing.
• An annoyed cat will be making very few vocalizations at all.  She'll have her back to you, perhaps her ears back so that she can hear what you're doing.  Her whiskers will be pushed back as well, and her tail will be flicking.  In this state, it's best to just leave them alone; as humans, our natural response is to try to cheer them up, but they just want time to themselves.
• An angry cat is easy to spot.  Ears back, whiskers back, hackles raised.  They'll snarl and hiss, and generally be very unpleasant.
• A frightened cat is also easy noticed.  The facial expression will be similar to an angry one in that the ears and whiskers will be back, but the tail will be still, and the eyes will be wide.  A cat under consistent stress may actually purr, just as they do when they're injured.  Some have asked me before how one can tell between a purring happy cat or a purring, and it's all in their facial expression and their reaction to stimuli.  We all know what a cat looks like when she's enjoying being pet, curling her body against your hand; a frightened cat won't appreciate attention as overtly, although unless she bristles or moves away from you, comforting her is very advisable.

In general, the way you interact with a cat will be very different from how you interact with a dog or a person.  People often lament that they dislike cats but cats in houses always seem to like them; this is because cats enjoy being ignored.  Most cats don't enjoy intense physical attention, but even the most casual pet or ear-scritch can make them very happy; if she decides she wants to go somewhere else, do something else, don't follow her.  She'll come back on her own.  The petting may get more intense, and some cats love being brushed roughly, or having themselves underneath your body, making them feel loved and protected, but one way to almost always engage with your cat is just through verbalization.  If you observe cats in the wild, big or small, most of their interactions are very brief physical contact, along with quite a few more vocalizations, often at long distances apart.  Tell your cat her name in the right tone and you're guaranteed a cat-smile and a slow-blink.

Zoophilia and Veganism

It's been some time since I've really involved myself in any sort of zoophilic community, the only good one I've ever found still being at knotty.me, but one thing I recall people discussing in places is whether it's moral or not, especially as people who prefer the company of animals over people in matters that go beyond mere introversion, to eat meat and consume other animal products.

The argument has been made that we as zoos don't just love certain animals, but all animals, and we understand them better than the general population due to both our interest and our proximity to them that we try to maintain, both physically and emotionally.  It's been said that anyone who can do that and still feel that they are not morally in the wrong for consuming animals cannot be doing it right.

I would argue, however, that if we understand our animals the way we say we do, we also understand our own animal nature, which historically has included eating meat as a crucial part of our lifestyle and our development as a species.  It may be today that we can exist on certain proteins, synthesized supplements, all from non-animal products, but to me doing this denies some of my basic nature, the same as just giving my cat beef-flavoured supplements would deny hers.

Morality goes beyond floaty pieces of philosophy, though, and it would come down to whether or not I feel a sort of sympathy for the animals I consume.  And I do.  Ideally, we would live in a world in which animals and humans are free to live their own lives without interfering with one another without consent.  Wild horses would never have gone extinct everywhere outside Mongolia.  Bears would leave alone campers.  Birds wouldn't get sucked into jet intakes.  Unfortunately, that isn't a world we live in, and isn't a world we can live in; humans are taking over and I don't believe it will even be a possibility without a literal apocalypse for us to stop it.  So to me, there are two options: The first is that we press the philosophy that animals need to be protected, away from humans, and be allowed to live free lives without our meddling.  And this has merit, morally; freedom is good, but unfortunately it often is juxtaposed against safety.  If animals as a whole were allowed, and made, to live without human interference, that would also necessitate that they're living without our protection.  We already of course see this when we compare the lives of animals within human society versus without; despite our consumption of them, cows, pigs, chickens are not in danger of going extinct, because we measure our consumption.  Meanwhile, even though consumption of them has been made completely illegal, many endangered species are only dwindling in number, and continue to dwindle apart from within reservations specifically set aside for them.  Imagine, for a moment, if rather than insisting they are wild animals, we managed to domesticate the Amur tiger.  They're bred, selected for docile behaviour, and sold as pets.  Suddenly they're a business, and now the tiger is nowhere near the brink of extinction.

But we're talking about slaughtering animals here, not simply keeping them as pets.  Let's disregard for a moment the fact that most of the animals consumed in the United States are kept in pretty horrible conditions, and this, I agree needs to change.  And it can change, it has changed in other parts of the world, with greater regulation of animal welfare in farming and a decrease in the immense amount of waste that requires the United States to slaughter so many more animals than they should.  Let's pretend that we have done that, because it will happen, and that every hamburger is raised free-range, hormone free, and so on.  We're still slaughtering these animals, but in the wild, these animals are naturally prey animals as well.  Yes, they may perhaps live longer lives out there, but they more often will actually live shorter ones, riddled not only with the promise of eventually being eaten by a predator but also sickness, injury, accident.  It's arguable that the ideal possible artificial habitat for cattle is more humane than the wild that would be the only alternative.

To me, the PETA-style notion of animal liberation is silly.  If all animals were free of human influence, we would also be free of theirs, which would be an absolute tragedy, I say not just as a zoophile but as someone who benefits from the fact that dogs were domesticated for hunting, that cats were first used in agriculture, that horses were first bred and raised for not only riding but meat and milk.  Cows don't make the best pets in my opinion, having raised them before, but I'm happy nevertheless that they're in it with us, guaranteed survival (at least as their modern, selectively bred incarnation), rather than being bulldozed by the relentless tide of industrialism like the rest of the wilderness.  I'd like to see every animal included in human society, humanely, alongside us, and I think if we manage this, we ourselves will become more human in the process, more understanding rather than neglectful or fearful of our nonhuman fellows on this planet.

So as a member of a historically rather carnivorous species, I will continue to eat meat, but I will also be conscious of where that meat comes from, and how I, as a carnivore, might impact the humanity in the raising of that meat.  Am I getting chicken from a factory farm, or is it local, free range?  Just how far can the dairy cows who produce my milk move?  Do you know the answers to these questions?  Eat meat or do not, but if you do, be responsible about it.

Man vs. Wild?

I just finished watching a program that contained a refuge for ex-domesticated 'wild' animals.  Three people were in an enclosure feeding the inhabitants.  The narrator was going on about how quickly these animals can move and how the individuals needed to be constantly aware of where each animal was and be prepared to react.

The enclosure was home to four bobcat kittens.  They were about the size of your housecat and with the temperament of your typical semi-domestic apprehensive kitty.

This annoyed me, hopefully for obvious reasons.  As far as I know, there has never even been a bobcat attack on a human being in the wild.  Even in captivity I've never heard of a bobcat trying to eat a person, and sure as hell never a kitten.  But here are these so-called professionals tip-toeing around these babies as though they were afraid of waking up fully grown lions.

The same people go on to say that the most tragic thing about the refuge is that all the animals were once kept as pets.  I can agree with this to some extent, but to me, it's equally tragic that you, dear hostess, seem so fond of drawing such stark lines: if it's wild, it must be wild, and it's therefore so much more dangerous than anything manmade.

That's when the real problem arises.  We have such a divide from nature, and these folks see themselves as naturalists when all they are actually doing is pushing our species further and further away from considering itself a part of the natural world, and therefore devaluing what we see as the natural world - or in this case, perpetuating fear of it.  No one considers that puppy and kitty are descendants of wolves and wildcats that were adopted thousands of years ago by loons like me.

The tragedy expressed should be that there are people in the world who think it's perfectly OK to keep a leopard in their basement, or a hippo in their backyard.  Unlike our nomadic ancestors, we do not always have the luxury of space and ready-made habitat for our wild animal companions.  According to this show host, I imagine, this marks an impossibility, but clearly it is not: some of us do in fact have large tracts of property where certain animals that require a lot of land can be kept.  Some of us have the inclination to devote great amounts of time and money to those animals.

We see examples of this in the media, and it's not even hard to meet such people online: those who give their animals a lot of space, care for them, and have a very happy and healthy critter who adores them.  Smartly, these individuals do not tend to call their animals "pets" and advise others that just because they are doing it doesn't mean any joe can fork over a couple thousand dollars and stick a wolf in his living room.

Does it remain a bad thing simply because, as this hostess put it, it is "unnatural"?  As prone as I am to falling back to it, we know that this is a logical fallacy, so let's examine it more closely.  The main issue seems to be that there are a lot of people out there who are complete imbeciles and either don't know or don't care to know how to take care of a non-domesticated animal.  They are the problem.  Suppose the individual in question does know and happily applies their knowledge.  The animal is as happy and healthy as their domesticated counterparts, and likely much more so than their wild counterparts: we know that, while many animals are not naturally social, just from experience that even they do much better when they do have some mode of socialization.  Speaking with someone who raises leopards, he said to me that it is actually better to have two rather than one for just this reason.  They will also be more healthy, since they have a regular source of food, hopefully still of exercise (again, this comes down to knowing how to care for the animal), and have someone to care for them if they fall ill.

So if anything, there is an upside to these few individuals existing who have the capacity, both in terms of property and finances and in knowledge, as well as in inclination, to care for non-domestic animals: the animals are safer, better cared for, and happy.  The humans... well, we get one of the few life-lines we have to the natural world: something that says hey, wait a minute, just because it hasn't been hacked together using opposable thumbs doesn't mean it is strange and dangerous and must be avoided at all costs.  There are things we can learn from them, things we can learn about them in order to not only gain a better understanding of the animal but also of ourselves: where we come from, and where we fit in.  There is so much ignorance out there: I have even met a veterinarian that believes most mammals do not have a clitoris, because clearly God made man and gave him sexual pleasure, but not to other animals - process of sexual differentiation from clitoris to penis be damned. (Don't ask how we got to that conversation; it's not what you think.) And now I have come across someone who runs an animal refuge who thinks bobcat kittens are highly dangerous.  Let's get off of our high horse, people, and out from under our bedsheets and strive instead for a little more understanding here, shall we?