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Why We Think Cats Are Psychopaths


Page Turner

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The survey, Evans hopes, is just the first step in devising a way to measure psychopathy in cats. She’d like to eventually study cats in their natural habitat—their house—so as not to rely on the word of their owners. The ultimate goal of the research is to devise a test for shelters so they can better match cats with owners. Whether it’s fair to call a cat a psychopath, we naturally do it, and it affects how well new owners and their cats will get along.

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/02/cat-psychopaths/583192/

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12 minutes ago, donkpow said:

I had a cat that went mental. It was a result of a change in her environment, albeit temporary. She had to stay with my brother for a couple of weeks. He had a very noisy house with a dog. When she came back home with me, she was a totally different person.

I doubt you say that to her face!

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45 minutes ago, donkpow said:

I had a cat that went mental. It was a result of a change in her environment, albeit temporary. She had to stay with my brother for a couple of weeks. He had a very noisy house with a dog. When she came back home with me, she was a totally different person.

Poor kitty was just sensitive.

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Cats, she pointed out, simply don’t have the facial muscles to make the variety of expressions a dog (or human) can. So when we look at a cat staring at us impassively, it looks like a psychopath who cannot feel or show emotion. But that’s just its face. Cats communicate not with facial expressions but through the positions of their ears and tails. Their emotional lives can seem inscrutable—and even nonexistent—until you spend a lot of time getting to know one.

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Rachel Gutman launched into a tribute to her childhood cat K.C., who terrorized everyone but her immediate family members and, for some reason, Carmine the electrician. He’d bite anyone who dared to pet him. He’d attack her grandfather’s ankles. He’d pee in her grandmother’s bed when she came to visit. “In conclusion,” she said, “he was the best cat, and I miss him every day.”

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6 minutes ago, Page Turner said:

...it's all fun and games until someone gets clawed and starts bleeding. :( 

I once had a neighbor who was so poor that he would come over to my house and ask to make a phone call.  I also had a 20lb no fat siamese cat who wandered into the kitchen one day where the phone was and jumped to the top of the refrigerator in one clean bound and sat there watching the man.  He never returned.

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6 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

I once had a neighbor who was so poor that he would come over to my house and ask to make a phone call.  I also had a 20lb no fat siamese cat who wandered into the kitchen one day where the phone was and jumped to the top of the refrigerator in one clean bound and sat there watching the man.  He never returned.

He couldn't have been too poor. Now if the cat disappeared and never came back ...

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47 minutes ago, donkpow said:

He couldn't have been too poor. Now if the cat disappeared and never came back ...

He was terrified of that cat.  It just sat on top of the refrigerator, chin on paws and watched.  He was huge, the sort of cat who could stand, hind feet on the floor, front legs on the counter top watching what you were making for dinner.  We loved that cat, but then we had children.  The cat was not happy and we found him a good home with a gentleman who was never going to have children.

This was the cat that walked on a leash like a dog and used to accompany us into stores like Sears back in the day when they didn't freak out about things like that.

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