I Love My Cats. Do They Love Me?

Chili, the angel.

Our cat Chili is an angel. All she requires is regular food and water, a little daily string chasing, a warm lap to curl up in every time she gets a chance, and a hefty amount of independence.

Lemmon, on the other hand, is a whiny pest. She follows us around, mewling and trilling and stretching up to try to turn the doorknobs of doors she wants us to open. When I open the pantry for any reason, she runs across the house hoping to be fed. She stations herself in the path where she knows I will walk next, desperate even for the attention of being kicked accidentally. I can never feed her enough food or play with her for a long enough period of time to satisfy her insatiable desires.

Lemmon, in a calm moment.

Or so it used to be. Although I love her desperately even at her whiniest, I was concerned that she wasn’t behaving in a healthy way. I did quite a bit of reading online about needy and demanding cats and finally happened upon an article stating that focused attention for a few minutes a day could turn these behaviors around. The author wrote of the importance of holding and petting a needy/whiny cat like Lemmon, looking in her eyes, and telling her how much I love her, repeating her name over and over again. Believe it or not, it works! At first it was hard for her to get used to being held like a baby, and she seemed to feel a bit strange about all the eye contact (as cats do). But now she settles right in and blinks at me happily as I repeat her name and coo at her. Sometimes she reaches her paws up towards my face, and a couple of times she has even bitten or licked me softly on my nose and cheeks. Five or ten minutes of this special time calms her down for a long time; a couple of sessions usually last the whole day.

Recently my husband and I watched The Lion in Your Living Room, a Netflix documentary about cats and how, even after millennia of domestication, they retain their wild behaviors. It was fascinating. But the documentary didn’t cover the emotional lives of cats, didn’t seek to explain moments like my special times with Lemmon. Is her growing calmness in my arms simply a reliving of her days as a kitten, turning instinctively to her mother for food and warmth and security? Or do we share an emotional relationship that exists beyond instinct?

Scholars in Animal Studies are currently studying this question: do animals experience emotions and, if so, what is the nature of those emotions? The field bifurcates: domesticated animals whose lives are wrapped up with those of humans may or may not have an emotional life different from that of free-ranging animals. The problem is that scientists cannot ask animals to explain their emotions, so they must infer them from their behaviors. (Of course, just because humans can explain their emotions doesn’t mean we fully understand those either!) Moments of play, courtship, and sharing of food suggest that animals are experiencing such emotion as joy, love, and care, respectively. The behaviors of hanging onto a dead relative or mate with a dejected air - which has been documented in many species of mammals and birds - suggest grief. The next question is how long these “emotions” last. Can animals be said to have real emotions if they are fleeting, unlike humans, who can remember and dwell on emotions such as grief for years?

There are also promising directions in research involving brain imaging, showing what areas of the brain light up when animals see other animals or humans or food or toys. And physical measurements can be taken: heart rate, eye movements, and so on. But then there is the problem of interpretation, as in studies of the human brain: explaining what is happening is much easier than figuring out why.

I think about these questions as I hold my little Lemmon. I’m glad we’re trying to answer them even though I’m not convinced we’ll ever really know the nature of animal emotions. Some scholars argue quite convincingly that humans are simply projecting our own emotions onto those animal behaviors. But it’s amazing enough to me to me that two such very different creatures as Lemmon and I can snuggle, let everything else go, look each other in the eye, and simply feel good in each other’s company. Isn’t that already pretty remarkable? And it sure feels like love to me.

Animal Frenemies

Like many people, I love viral videos about lions that befriend baby antelopes or zoos where tigers decide to be best buddies with the live goats given to them as food. I watch with awe, and knuckles tightened, as people show videos on youtube of their cat playing sweetly with their cockatiel or a bunch of ducklings sleeping serenely on the back of a bird dog. I’m even enjoying my own “lion lies down with the lamb” scenario here at home, with two cats and a rabbit running around in the living room together, giving off an air of happy curiosity, occasionally sniffing each other’s faces. It’s heart-melting stuff.

I’ve been obsessively watching the live birdcam hosted by Skidaway Audubon Society in Savannah, Georgia, trained on a great horned owl nest. (You can watch two live cams here or go to “highlights” for videos of some of the most interesting moments.) It seems as if the spring nesting season will never get here, and fortunately great-horned owls start their nesting season in January. So I can watch the mother - and occasionally the father, when she needs to have a break or go hunting - on the nest, keeping two good-sized eggs warm on cold winter nights.

This morning on the bird cam, I observed a couple of interesting things. First, I heard a squirrel squawking and watched as Momma Owl got more alert and interested, rolling her head around in that amazing way that owls have. I saw the squirrel come up the tree, eye level with the owl, and shake its tail. The owl tensed up, stood, clicked her bill menacingly, and rushed at the squirrel, feathers fanned out so that she looked twice her size. The squirrel ran off but continued to squawk from nearby for at least 15 minutes. Momma Owl eventually relaxed and started looking a little sleepy. Then the pesky squirrel jumped over her nest, from one branch to another, and the process began again. The squirrel was messing with her!

Just after the squirrel incident, there was a moment of much greater tension. I could hear American crows having what I call their “morning coffee”. Crows live in large, extended families and communities, and early in the morning they like to meet together in a group of tens or hundreds and call to each other for half an hour or so. I like to think they are discussing the previous day’s news and checking in about what’s up for the day ahead before they fly off in different directions. This morning the crows were very close to the nest, and Momma Owl seemed to respond with a great deal of concern, even hooting for a while, perhaps as a warning to the crows or to summon her mate in case she needed protection.

Squirrels and crows are the prey of great horned owls, which eat just about anything in the size range between frogs and large Cooper’s hawks, including other great horned owls. But Momma Owl looked vulnerable when the squirrel and crows were on the scene. If she were in the air, and could swoop down on that squirrel, the squirrel would be lunch. Sitting in her nest, needing to protect her eggs from cold air or egg-stealing species (such as squirrels and crows), however, she was vulnerable. A great horned owl is not agile enough to suddenly rise up in the air and fasten her powerful talons around a squirrel, nor do the size and shape of her bill allow her to grab at a quick, clever, squirrel-sized mammal unless she already has it subdued within her talons. There was nothing she could do except try to scare the squirrel away. The squirrel finally gave up; it had made its point. But that squirrel had better sleep with one eye open tonight, if you know what I mean.

I’ve noticed Momma Owl’s fear of the crows on other days. Her best strategy there seems to be to lay low and hope they don’t notice her. Crows are not afraid to mob and harass owls and other predators when they are in flight. But it is hard to believe that crows would try to force Momma Owl out of her nest. Why would they want to get her in the air, where she’s more of a threat to them? Nevertheless, crows are often seen harassing and taunting nesting owls for long periods of time. Again, crows seem to enjoy messing with them! This interesting column offers a thought-provoking explanation that the crows are acting out their fear and hatred of owls. There is also the possibility that crows - and squirrels - are engaging in signaling behavior, a well-documented survival strategy in which a prey animal deliberately gets close to a predator in order to say, “See, I’m so fast and strong that I know I can get away from you - so you might as well not even try!”

My point here is that there are always conditions when the prey can have a little fun with the predator or when the vulnerability is temporarily reversed. But predators are predators and prey are prey - and a change of conditions will always right the situation. In other words, I put my money on Momma Owl every time.

Same with our domesticated or encaged animal frenemies. That recent lioness and antelope video, when analyzed by experts, showed that the lioness was simply playing with the baby antelope just as a housecat plays with a mouse. It can look sweet at times, but it’s really quite cruel and always ends in mangling and death for the mouse or antelope. A tiger and a goat can be buddies in the rarefied environment of a zoo, but that should always be seen as an exception rather than a rule. Our rabbit Ollie can play with the cats while I am there to supervise, but I rely on the fact that Ollie is as big as they are, and can run faster and navigate the small spaces of our house with more agility if she needs to. The cats are well fed and lazy; if they were outside and hungry and saw Ollie streak by, I have no doubt their instincts would kick in and they would chase and kill her.

We all love the thought of the lion lying down with the lamb, and viral videos suggest that it can happen from time to time. And we apparently love to set up unusual conditions in which cross-species “friendships” can occur and then allow ourselves to extrapolate these to visions of world peace. But it’s wise to remember the old story about the girl who found an injured snake and nursed it back to health. The snake bit her, and she died from the venom. The moral of the story? A snake is still a snake.

The Cat's Meow

You may think writing about our house cats doesn’t fit the purview of a blog about nature. But I would argue that much of our interaction with nature comes through pets - and that we can learn a lot about wild animals (and ourselves) by observing their domesticated counterparts. If you doubt me, then read Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’s book, The Hidden Life of Dogs.

We’ve had Lemmon for a little over three years now and Chili for about two. We found Lemmon as a kitten on an isolated stretch of highway, and Chili was a street cat who was picked up and loved for a few years before being given to us because of allergies. Two somewhat wild cats, at least at some point in their lives.

They are very talkative cats. I have whole conversations with Lemmon. She trills every time she enters the room or passes me in the hall. She purrs and blinks to show me she’s happy. She meows a questioning little meow when she thinks I might be heading toward the food pantry, and then she yowls insistently as I start to get the food out, put it in the bowl, and carry the bowl to her spot. Chili was silent when she came to us, but now she makes a heartbreaking little shriek when she’s ready for food. And, when she needs attention, she drags her favorite toy (a bit of Christmas ribbon) into the room, rolls around in it, and yowls until one of us comes and jiggles the ribbon in the air in front of her.

I poked around on the internet a few months ago and read that cats don’t meow to each other; it’s a sound they reserve for humans. Kittens meow a bit to their mothers, and cats yowl and hiss at each other about territorial or reproductive issues. But the trilling and meowing of adult cats are strictly for their human friends. That’s true in our house. Lemmon and Chili greet each other with silent face licking. We recently left on vacation for a week. When we got back, after what was apparently a week of silence, it took them a couple of days to remember their sounds and get back into the habit of talking. And they didn't always do this. These behaviors have developed over the years.

So we as humans have brought out a form of communication in animals that wasn’t really present in their natural, undomesticated lives. It’s not language exactly, as explained in this article, but it’s something. But that’s not what fascinates me the most. Instead, I am amazed to think what cats have done to us. When Lemmon trills, I trill - and give her a chin scratch. When Chili yowls, I yowl - and get up to go play ribbon with her. They’re both “pleasantly plump” from all the extra little bits of food their meows have gotten them over these years. And note the above wording: “I have whole conversations with Lemmon.” We go back and forth, with me meowing at her as much as she is meowing at me, sometimes spurring her on to louder and more insistent yowling with my own. So we humans, too, have developed a form of communication that wasn’t really present in our natural, undomesticated-by-cats lives.

One of the ongoing themes of this blog is how we as humans are shaped by nature, sometimes in ways that we don’t even realize. If two little furry animals can manipulate my behavior and get me to develop a whole new mode of communication, just imagine how much I as an individual and humans in general are shaped by the natural world around us.

Well, that's all I have time to write - I hear some insistent meowing in the kitchen.