The question asked by every cat owner at some point: “I wonder what my cat thinks of me?” Well, according to cat-behavior expert John Bradshaw from the University of Bristol, featured in a post last year from National Geographic, he claims that unlike dogs, our feline friends treat us like other cats.
He states that “dogs perceive us as being different than themselves and as soon as they see a human, they change their behavior.” The way a dog plays with a human is completely different from the way it plays with another dog.
The author of the National Geographic article (Christine Dell’Amore) summarized that cat behavior studies suggest that cats have a separate box they put us in when they’re socializing with us. She states that “Cats obviously know we’re bigger than them, but they don’t seem to have adapted their social behavior much. Putting their tails up in the air, rubbing around our legs, and sitting beside us and grooming us are exactly what cats do to each other.”
The findings seem to indicate that cats behave toward us in a way that’s indistinguishable from the way they would act towards any other cat. Bradshaw goes on to say that “cats think you’re just a a slightly big, dumb non-hostile cat”. Quite specifically, he says that “they treat humans as if they were their Mama Cat.”
This clever video from BuzzFeed takes a fun look at this ever perplexing question:
Unlike dogs who’ve been domesticated for over 12,000 years, cats and humans have shared their lives for only about the last 9,000 years. More research still needs to be done on cat behavior, but perhaps after another 3,000 years of co-habitation, we’ll finally have figured out how our feline friends think!
As any pet owner knows: “Dogs have owners, cats have staff.” ~ anon.
My cat thinks I’m her slave! She’s right.
My cats believe that us humans evolved simply to provide food and empty litter trays, They reward me with affection, but always on their terms………..
i don’t think that my cat think of me as a big dumb cat .cause when time for me to take him to the vet , all hell break lose , i have to trick him . it took me days to get him . to come inside , he is a indoor and out door cat .
No debate in my house…the cats rule and I’m their court jester!
I am so whipped by my cat that it’s not even funny.
I had a huge cat that used to climb the sofa quietly while I was watching TV, sneak behind me on the back of the sofa, and bite the back of my neck. He used to bite the smaller cat on the back of the neck too.
He’d treated me like mother cat because he sat on my lap for hours, his head on my chest or else nestled in the crook of my arm, looking in my eyes and gurgling like a human baby. I live first floor, a foot or so off the ground. A girl walked by and exclaimed, “I thought it was a baby!”
Now I have a feral cat that I took off the streets at age five weeks. She used to climb me like a tree dozens of times a day. She’d sit on my shoulder and tried tearing my ear off, played with my hair, sat on my head. This is exactly how they treat their mother cat.
My cat thinks I am a foolish!!!
she act like a boss with me!!