Mary Allen
Those who don’t like cats often justify this with the fact that the velvet paws supposedly don’t give a damn about their people and are incapable of deep emotions. Is there something to it? Or do the furry friends have feelings and the allegations are based on misunderstandings in cat communication? A search for clues in the emotional world of our house tigers:
Feelings and emotions are not always easy to understand and scientifically analyze, even in humans. To make matters worse, animals speak a different language and express themselves differently than humans. Cats, in particular, tend to be more subtle and reticent than dogs n when it comes to disclosing their inner workings in a recognizable way for two-legged friends. However, our velvet paws are certainly not cold machines.
Question About Cat Emotions Difficult to Answer
It’s difficult to scientifically research cats’ emotions in a way that provides definitive answers. While humans still have the opportunity to express themselves verbally – i.e. with words – and to tell about their emotions, animals can only express what is going on inside them through their physical reactions, their behavior, and their vocal language. It is true that the brain waves in animals and humans can also be measured, for example with computer resonance tomography, but this situation is then constructed in such a way that general rules for real animal life can only be derived to a limited extent.
The best way is to observe pets in their natural environment. In this way, the results cannot be falsified because the cats are under stress due to the unfamiliar circumstances in a laboratory or in another unfamiliar place and can then only show feelings such as joy or affection to a limited extent. Here, however, the difficulty arises that the observations are interpreted and interpreted by people – this may lead to humanization and misinterpretations.
What Role Do Feelings Play in Evolution?
One approach to avoid humanization is to ask what role emotions might play in cats’ evolution. Scientists assume that emotions must be useful for the survival of an animal species and for its social coexistence, otherwise they would not exist. This means that the fur noses have feelings that lead them to behave in a certain way that essentially saves them from death and also makes their lives as pleasant as possible.
6 Basic Feelings in Cats
The evolutionary approach leads to the conclusion that there is a high probability that cats have 6 basic feelings that even small children already know. These emotions are:
- fear
- disgust
- desire or lust
- heartache
- joy
- anger or aggression
Other feelings cats may experience can be traced back to these 6 basic emotions. Stress is roughly a mixture of fear, grief, and aggression. Frustration is a form of grief caused by the absence of joy or pleasure. Depression is an extreme development of grief. Affection as a kind of love is a mixture of joy and lust. In addition, some cats can experience a kind of euphoria or state of intoxication through catnip, for example, which represents an extreme variant of pleasure and joy.
Fear and disgust make evolutionary sense to protect the animal from danger. For example, disgust prevents cats from eating spoiled food. Fear triggers a flight-or-fight situation: if a cat is able to flee or hide in a potentially dangerous situation, it will do so. If this is not possible, its fear will turn into aggression and it will fight back. Desire and pleasure serve to preserve the species and determine mating behavior. The fur noses feel joy when playing, for example, and it ensures that the cat’s existence is more pleasant. Affection ensures a strong bond between mother and kittens as well as social cohesion in cat groups. Grief can serve as a motivation to overcome this emotional state, and in this respect, it can also be justified in evolutionary terms.
Complex Social Feelings Human Affair?
Dogs are said to lack the complex social feelings that human children develop as late as four years of age—the same can be said for cats. These complex emotions include shame, contempt, revenge, and jealousy. Among humans, these feelings presumably make sense of social coexistence. For example, it can be said that shame arises when a person violates social norms and thereby attracts the contempt of other people. Revenge can arise when people seek to “impose” social norms on others who have repeatedly violated them. Jealousy is part of human mating behavior where monogamy and fidelity are considered socially acceptable.
However, cats gain no benefit from being monogamous, and when they break rules of feline social behavior, they get a paw swipe from their peers or a snarl. They don’t need shame and contempt doesn’t make sense for them either. Revenge campaigns are also useless for our velvet paws from an evolutionary point of view. If feelings such as jealousy, revenge, contempt, or shame are read from the cat’s behavior, it is therefore usually a matter of humanization.
In truth, the cat is defending its territory, itself, or its resources against potential rivals rather than being jealous. If she seems embarrassed, she may have been frightened or irritated because something is different from what is expected. If she seems to be sulking to take revenge or show contempt, that’s also a misunderstanding. It is more likely that she is either confused and has to get used to a new situation, or that she sees no reason to show a certain reaction.