“Although I wish we could, we cannot get into the brains of cats and know if they feel ‘love,'” Dr. Stacy Choczynski Johnson, DVM, veterinarian on staff for Pumpkin Pet Insurance, told Salon by email. “It’s a complicated emotion and this feeling of love is up for debate.”
Yet this does not mean that it is unprovable that your cat is emotionally invested in its relationship with you.
“Cats certainly feel attachment to their owners which could be considered a form of affection or love,” Johnson added. “Even outdoor feral cats form an attachment bond because we provide food and shelter. We also bond with our cats through play and entertainment.”
Love is available without that fishbicycle!
“I’m like love,” Mani explained. “There’s a great deal of love in every cat. Not everyone believes that, but it’s true. Dependency and fawning aren’t love.”
They’ll happily eat you when you die alone in your apartment.
If cats were as clever as everyone says they’d have learnt to simulate love. Unless they are just too proud to stoop so low.
Dearieme – I pity the poor, benighted ailurophobe who isn’t well acquainted enough with the feline race to understand that they do demonstrate love. Cats are exceptionally affectionate creatures, and will also generously share their kills.
Also what HP Lovecraft said:
Between dogs and cats my degree of choice is so great that it would never occur to me to compare the two. I have no active dislike for dogs, any more than I have for monkeys, human beings, negroes, cows, sheep, or pterodactyls; but for the cat I have entertained a particular respect and affection ever since the earliest days of my infancy. In its flawless grace and superior self-sufficiency I have seen a symbol of the perfect beauty and bland impersonality of the universe itself, objectively considered; and in its air of silent mystery there resides for me all the wonder and fascination of the unknown. The dog appeals to cheap and facile emotions; the cat to the deepest founts of imagination and cosmic perception in the human mind. It is no accident that the contemplative Egyptians, together with such later poetic spirits as Poe, Gautier, Baudelaire, and Swinburne, were all sincere worshippers of the supple grimalkin.
Cats are emotional parasites. They will bond to any large animal that will protect and feed them. The mother cat weans them then drops them off where humans are likely to find them. “Oh look, a dear little abandoned kitten.” This works often enough to keep the world well stocked with cats. Obviously I’ve had several. I wish I had one now but my circumstances make that difficult.
They also keep producing them long after the market in humans is saturated – our street is awash with the bastard things.
Cats are proof that playing hard to get works and that it’s better to be pretty than clever.
Cats are honest creatures….
You either provide food, or you are food, or are Big and Scary.
Understand that, and you have (feral) moggies headbutting you, don’t…..
Incidentally….
When a “middle-aged” ( 25+) couple finally gets together, and they , after deliberation, decide to get dogs/cats….
“Oh, so you’ve given up on kids” does not seem to be the Socially Acceptable answer.
Just for reference…
I have kept cats and dogs and like them both. Cats do not have the loyalty that a good dog displays. A cat will defend itself but not (most likely) you. Many –but not all– dogs will die to defend you. God Bless ‘Em. Yes you can talk about instinct and pack etc. But there is more to it than that. The Cat is a welcome lodger but seldom a true friend.
So queenie has a litter. If she doesn’t see her kits for 2 days she won’t recognise any of them as hers. I don’t reckon the cat love can be equated to the human love
A cat will defend itself but not (most likely) you.
Plenty of anecdotes and sometimes there’s even video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEa6jZv-Khc
PJF… That’s Territorial Pissings…
The cat went for the dog, not for the human child **…
Mother Nature is….. Oh wait… wasn’t that the point I proclaim in the Environmental artcles?….
** look for “the dangers of cats” Youtube vids….. Not. Pretty. Or nice.
Not really a dog person but I tolerate them. When I was a kid Mum brought home a stray cat that had been hanging around the school she taught at. Cat got pregnant & had 5 kittens. We found homes for all but 4 gave backword so we kept them. However mum cat told them to go forth when they were old enough and then would attack them. So mum cat lived in her house and the youngsters lived in the kitchen & cellar. Mum cat could be very affectionate, especially if one of us was ill, but she did have a temper on her!
The cat went for the dog, not for the human child
Yes, most remiss not to bring the first aid kit.
Well that cat did a better job than the woman who ended up legging it and left the little lad to escape under his own steam. Perhaps she was the dogs owner rather than the lads mother.Hopefully.
And cats are likely more loyal than a quite high % of women. At least the cat cant clean out your bank account without a lot of help.