Your cat is an integral part of your family. As proof, you sometimes treat them like your child! But what does it think of you? Does it consider you their mother? Like another cat? As their slave? The answer in this article !
Your cat sees you as a fat cat
You may have already noticed that your cat is not one to make concessions. On the contrary, it even tends to stand up to you when you disagree. For example when you kindly ask them not to climb on the table while you are eating…
Well, know that it does not do so out of pride, rebellion or malice. In reality, if it seems to “look down on you”, it is because, for them, you are not superior to them. It treats you like their equal, that is to say like another cat. So, in their mind, it has no orders to take from you.
You may also notice that it acts towards you exactly as it would towards another feline. Indeed, it rubs against you, grooms you, snuggles against you, blinks slowly while looking at you, kneads you with their paws…
Obviously, your cat is aware that you’re bigger than them, but it doesn’t seem to think you’re that different from another feline. To them, you are a relatively strange and rather clumsy big cat.
Moreover, according to an expert in cat behavior, “cats do not see us as dumb or stupid: a cat would not rub against a another cat if it considered it inferior”.
Note that dogs, unlike cats, change their behavior when they interact with humans. It just goes to show that they know humans are different from other dogs.
Your cat feels a “filial” respect for you
Even if your cat knows full well that you are not the one who gave birth to it, it has a respect and affection for you similar to that which it would have for its mother. You can therefore act as a kind of mother figure for them.
And for good reason, you are the one who feeds them, who provides them with shelter, who reprimands them when it behaves badly, who plays with them, who hugs them, who grooms them (who brushes them)… You do everything their mother did when it was a kitten, basically. In other words, you represent love, food and security.
In addition, our feline friends only use meowing to communicate with humans. Cats don’t meow to each other. However, it seems that they have learned to meow to imitate the cries of human babies, thus triggering in us the “need” to feed them.
This shows that they know how to exploit our emotions and play with our parental instincts to get what they want from us.
