Are housecats aware of how much bigger people are?
Are housecats aware of how much bigger people are?
I’m wondering if cats think of us kind of like how a person thinks of a friendly bull: aware that they could easily kill us, but not necessarily afraid of them; or more like a large Dalmatian: they could fuck us up, but most of us don’t really think about that unless they’re being aggressive.
I grew up with dogs and feel like I understand them a lot better than I do cats as a whole. I adopted my cat almost four years ago and I feel like I get her pretty well, but I don’t really have an idea of what she thinks about me. I also don’t really know any other cats, though I’ve gotten along with strays and friends’ cats a lot better since I got mine.
Cat tax:
Making fight decisions based on "could I kill it" is a convenience of human technology. The ability to seclude ourselves during healing and medicine allowing us to avoid infection, heal faster, and heal from more serious wounds has skewed how we think about fighting. Most animals make fight decisions less on "can I kill it" and more on "how badly can it injure me".
Sure a human can kill a house cat, absent technology can the human do it without having the skin on an arm or leg shredded? Will the injuries be significant enough to make you unable to protect yourself from other predators? Will the injuries set up infection and kill you?
Cats are basically the perfect land predators. Even with their small size domestic cats are the most deadly and destructive hunters on earth.
They are ambush predators. They are really good at evaluating prey, identifying strengths and weaknesses, figuring out how, when, and if they should attack. Cats know whether or not they can win a fight. Cats will sometimes charge into fights they can't win, like attacking the bear, because they know that they can inflict damage and that the other animal is making a similar fight decision. The hyper aggression of a 10lb claw tornado flying toward a 200lb bear is usually enough to convince the bear that the fight isn't worth it.
10 pound claw tornado... I'll be stealing that :p
this is 3am rabbit hole material.. very interesting, thanks for the writeup
I don't think that they are too aware of size differences, based on plenty videos that I've seen of cats chasing bears away. Here's one of them.
Instead I guess that what triggers them to think "fuck, it could kill me!" is 99% behaviour.
To be fair, that's a black bear and they are afraid of everything. They are pansies. They will bluff charge you and if you do nothing and just look at them they get awkward and start wandering off. You can charge them and they'll sprint too. They just act on bear reputation but if you don't act afraid of them they short circuit and have no idea how to respond.
Source: Everytime as a kid we went blueberry picking we had to deal with these guys. Same with going to the landfill or hunting.
Bear entertaning the kids by pretending to be the blueberries warden then fleeing as a cartoons vilain
Sorry this is my headcanon now
They can be dangerous if starving or if they're used to humans. That's about it, though.
That was INSANE
Do you think the cat thinks it can win? I always assumed it was just trying to scare off a threat, but I don’t really know. My cat’s an indoor cat and though she used to growl at my neighbors (and get in between us, my heart), I didn’t think she really thought she was more of a threat than me. She also hides behind me sometimes when new people come over, so who knows if she thinks they’re only a threat to her or what.
Cats don't fight to take anyone down, they mostly fight to scare eachother off, as they are so fragile as beings, both in attack and defence
Might be that they just transfer that to anything they want to get rid of.
Had my elderly, whole life indoors cat stare down a British Mastiff (130 kg dog, bred for guard duty), and consequently train it what surfaces she was allowed on and not.
Perhaps; I've also seen the opposite, a cat being considerably scared of a smaller critter (another cat), because the smaller one showed no fear.
Or perhaps the whole idea is to avoid the fight altogether, like some sort of chicken game. Either way they don't seem to take size into account.
If that were true, cats wouldn't naturally fluff their hair to appear larger. I think they'll just go after big stuff when they feel the need and know they're pretty badass.
We do the same when scared, and at least in our case it's outright useless. And more importantly it isn't a conscious reaction, so it's really hard to associate it with the cat potentially assessing the size of the threat and trying to make itself look larger.
Also note that they'll also do it when they feel threatened by a smaller critter.
I've always felt that we are like clumsy giants to them lumbering on throughout the home with the great strength and dexterity to manipulate objects. In spite of all of this they can swing from loving you to down right cold shoulders on a whim!
My obligatory cat tax. :)
To be honest, I don't think your cat thinks about things the way you're thinking about them. Your behavior has shown your cat that you're safe, so your cat isn't afraid of you. If you start acting aggressive or scary it will treat you like a threat and fight or flight based on what it decides in the moment, but that's about it. It's not thinking, "this giant ape could kill me if it wanted, I'm glad it's my friend," it just has a positive association with you based on your pattern of behavior.
Also, cats social cues aren't as obvious as dogs, but if you don't know what you're cats thinking, here are some clues: is your cat walking around with its tail up a lot, usually curled at the top like a little question mark? Your cat feels super happy and confident in it's territory (AKA your house). Does it ever look at you and narrow or close it's eyes and look away, sorta like it's nodding off? Your cat is saying it trusts you enough to let it's gaurd down, it's basically a cat hug.
Edit: cat tax.
Oh, one more I forgot, cat-loaf! Cats put their paws underneath them to conserve heat. It also means they're putting their primary weapons away, so they only do this when they feel happy and safe...or they're very cold. If your cat is loafing a lot, it's either very happy or you need to turn your heat up.
I once saw a self-proclaimed 'cat expert' YouTuber say that a cat loafing was a bad sign. Like a sign they were being abused and scared or some other crock of shit.
I turned off their video when it got to that piece.
Got to love that picture: shares an insightful post about cat psychology regarding how to tell when a cat feels safe. Follows up posting a picture of a scared/triggered cat :D
Nah, she's just spazzing out over the baby bouncer she's sitting on, it was new and she wanted to get her sent all over it.
When cats square up to each other they arch their backs and their hair stands on end, to me, that's an effort to make themselves look bigger. Therefore they know bigger == more dangerous.
Cat tax:
They use the same communicative signals with us as with their young. To cats, we are overgrown, clumsy kittens that never learn to hunt but know a mysterious way to get food.
this makes sense as the ownership model is that cats own people not the other way around
Cats don’t have to worry about size because they already know that they have all the power in the relationship.
I mean, that’s true. If I treated her like she treats me, she’d leave, lol
My last cat had 100% faith that he would be completely safe when I was near, basically trusting that nothing bad could happen to him. If he was lying on the leather couch, stretched or turned and started slowly sliding (more like flowing like a liquid) out of the couch, then he'd not react, he'd just continue sliding until I caught him and put him back on the couch. The kind of trust that a toddler can have in the infallibility of the parent to catch them. As long as it never gets betrayed, they don't lose that trust.
I imagine that if I had been clumsy around him: tripping over him when he was standing in the way or not always catching him, that he would have lost that trust.
The cat before that only was adopted when he was already older and more world wise, he was always attent and seemed aware of the size difference and the possibility of accidents if we were to trip over him.
lmao my orange boy will jump onto my lap and then go limp and if I dont catch/support him then he will flow off of my lap (50/50 chance he will grab my thigh with claws at the end)
Hmm interesting. I have terrible eyesight so I don't always see my cats when they're somewhere I don't expect them to be. But they're not afraid of me. They're still very affectionate with me and they do seem to trust me a lot. One of my three cats has figured out that if she makes any kind of noise I'll notice her but the other ones don't, but still don't seem to get too mad at me when I do accidentally run into them. I do love them very much though and I'll spend as much time with them as I can or they let me. So maybe they have internalized that I don't do it on purpose. Might also just be how I react to when it does happen though. I genuinely feel bad every single time. That same cat also figured out that if she stands on her hind legs and knocks on the glass door I will always hear it. Scared the crap out of me when she did it for the first time but if only I could get my other cats to do the same...
So cats are ok with us tripping over them, as long as we profusely apologize afterwards, interesting :)
It sounds like the 2 cats count on the smart cat to get the door open for them. They have no reason to learn as long as the present system works.
I have fought an angry cat before and I’m not certain I could kill it with my bare hands. Maybe if I got lucky and had both hands around its neck before the fight began, but I’m not convinced a cat couldn’t sever my hand tendons to get out of that.
Cats are fucking insane when they’re in battle mode. Maybe if I got lucky with a spine breaking hit before it got my eyes. Maybe.
I don’t know if I could be in a room with a fully loaded Glock 19 in my hand, and win a fight against a cat. It would do some Trinity shit up the wall and still scratch my eyes out.
If cats are that crazy, then dogs are even worse. My neighbours dachshound killed off an adult cat a few years ago. Apparently the cat didn't stand a chance.
The dachshund was bred to scent, chase, and flush out badgers and other burrow-dwelling animals. The miniature dachshund was bred to hunt small animals such as rabbits. >
Yeah, I think dachshunds are gonna have an easy time with a cat if they were bred to take on badgers. Ultimately, hunting dogs were bred for the purpose, whereas house cats and feral cats weren’t bred for anything beyond looks, even if they were utilized for their mousing skills. Dachshund /= mouse
I remember reading on the old site that cats saw us humans as "big, neutral cats".
i heard this too lol
specifically i heard that they see us as incompetent cats and want to take care of us x3
The trouble I have with this idea is that adult cats meow at us. They don't do that in the wild with each other. Kittens do it to get mom's attention, but not adult cats. They mostly communicate with body language.
Yea that's right, except kitten at their mothers. Perhaps they see us as caretakers, surrogate mothers ?
My Izzy (cat tax:)
Isn't even slightly afraid of me; I'm her favorite sleeping surface, she doesn't hesitate to climb up on me, step on the most sensitive giblets she can reach, curl up and take a nap. I'm pretty sure she does know how much bigger I am than her, but she doesn't seem to let it bother her. She's not even afraid of getting stepped on, judging by how much she likes being underfoot.
Yes. And they know you won't do shit about it. After all, if they stick around, from their perspective, they think you are theirs.
My wife and I adopted a kitten when we got engaged. And up until we had a baby a few years later, that cat 100% thought it was going to grow up to be like us.
Cats can be pretty enigmatic and have a lot of individual differences in personality. At least size can't be the whole picture, based on tiny tiny kittens squeaking terror into the hearts of giant four-ton beastly hounds, bears, what have you.
Maybe we humans are just size queens, as nothing stops a chihuahua or something from doing the same.
Some people have suggested that cats get to see you as a "pack member" - dead birds and mice and stuff are gifts because you're just too incompetent at this hunting stuff, so they graciously help you out.
I have no idea if it's true but I remember someone saying that animals don't understand the concept of bluffing so if you get charged by something that's a lot bigger than you but you stand your ground then there's a good chance it turns around because it assumes that there's a reason for your confidence.
I doubt it's that simple however. After all animals bluff too.
I doubt it's that simple however. After all animals bluff too.
If animals bluff it’s because their bluffing ancestors survived to reproduce. There’s something to it.
I think the thing is a fight is costly, even if you win the fight. So sometimes it’s not a bluff so much as a demonstrating of fighting spirit, and killing even a weaker animal is more costly when it displays fighting spirit, ie the willingness to fight even if it’s a losing battle.
They would notice if they cared. They do not.
I always think of my cat as a lovable idiot little brother. Sometimes he wants to be like me. Sometimes he thinks I'm a huge idiot and wants to go his own way.
I like how the link makes it look like scientist cats are being talked about.
My cat makes up for it by sitting on my shoulders. I specifically have several canvas or thick jackets I wear around the house to protect me from his claws (we do trim them) because he just hops on me like a Taxi.
When I got the bus to college, there used to be a guy I'd see a couple of times a month who'd have a shoulder-cat riding him on the bus
My cat is afraid of breezy weather. It probably won't work. But I wish it did. I would try to take him to work.
I am sure they are aware of it. I think it's like us and horses: yes, this creature is much larger and could hurt or kill me if it wanted to, but horses are basically cool and friendly and we trust them.
I've been with my SO for more than 4 years, and I often don't understand her motivations either.
