My cat wants attention
How we misunderstand our pets and why it matters
My cat’s name is Fred and he uses his (frankly corrosive) meow and strategic scrabbling to entreat me to stroke him or have him on my lap. It’s sweet. It’s annoying. Why does he do it?
His “attention entreaty portfolio” (let’s call it AEP) is additional to the other noises that he uses to elicit being fed, let out, let in, or other things he can reasonably expect as an ageing suburban felid. Perhaps he suffers from attachment anxiety tinged with boredom? Yet received wisdom says that domestic cats are far less socially complex than domestic dogs and the depth and breadth of attachment a cat has to its owner are limited. Indeed, some would argue that cats are duplicitous co-habitants with no ability to express real affection. Certainly, Fred seems to have an under-developed sense of empathy.
Or does he? What if he does show me fellow feeling, but I miss the cues? Cats have been shown to respond to how we smell when we’re afraid and the emotional signals in our voices in ways that we tend to miss (such as slight movements of nostrils, ears and eyes). And cats often seek our company in contexts unrelated to us feeding them; the concept of clingy “Velcro cats” is ubiquitous on owner forums. Indeed strong emotional tethers to humans can be stamped in to kittens via imprinting.
Fred’s AEP runs rampant at night if during the day he has not received adequate stroking, brushing or simply being consciously sat with (if my mind is elsewhere, he knows… he knows!). The F-word has been known to escape my lips as he scratches at the door just as I’m dropping off to sleep, yet he doesn’t do it to be “bad”, or because he wants to be let out (he has a perfectly serviceable cat-flap) or is hungry or thirsty (his food and water bowls in their separate rooms are invariably amply topped-up). Rather, having established that I am safe and of benefit to him, he requires confirmation of my patronage. If the currency of love is focussed attention, he wants my love. Of course, he doesn’t perceive love as I do — he may not be a stimulus-response machine, but cats likely have limited relational capacity and no theory of mind. Yet from his behaviour towards me — quivering tail-up posture and purring — both indicative of pleasure (although the latter also self-soothing/ solicitation) — it seems his felt experience — somewhere between physical sensation and emotion — is positive in my presence.
So this AEP has presumably developed during the co-evolved acquaintance of our two species — either being currently or historically adaptive; not adaptive but linked to other traits that are (e.g., via a process called antagonistic pleiotropy); or accidentally procured via genetic drift. It might be due to micro-changes accrued from his environment or experience over his lifetime — his personal ontogeny, via epigenetics. His attachment to me is clearly pliant. Having apparently been kicked by a burglar at some point during his previous life (at least two owners before me) the environment of his youth was not conducive to boundless trust in humankind. Indeed, he is always prepared to reverse his nervous system’s opinion of me — the gestalt of safety between us is countered by our disparate sizes — I am at least 100 lbs heavier and pretty clumsy to-boot, so he needs to be vigilant and nimble. Now too, he is under stress from our street’s neighbouring hordes invading his territory (these cats have been variously named: “The Grey Peril”; “The Yub”; “MelBobPerry” and “Ed Sheeran” — some but not all by me). And he is an old, neutered cat and thus doomed to inhabit a landscape of fear pegged out by the scent sprays of the aforementioned toms.
Wild cats and humans domesticated each other between 10,000 and 3,000 years ago (let’s say 5,000) in an area termed the fertile crescent (modern-day Iran and Syria). Our mutual taming started as a symbiosis based on pest control and was achieved over several “attempts”. And yet Fred and I seem to persistently misunderstand each other. Our strikingly different characteristics may explain this — I’m diurnal, he’s mainly nocturnal; I’m visual, he’s kind of a smell guy; our garden and street represent potential dangers to him, less so to me. I communicate to him largely via speech (“Oh Fred, you’ve just BEEN out!”) but the ability of cats to decode fine-grained emotional information from our vocal cues is limited. And whilst the meaning of some of his postures are obvious (His flashing eyes! His floating tail!) his scent messages go completely over my head — or into my hand where they are promptly washed off. Yet the domestic cat genome has considerable variation and thus potential for game-changing mutation — the currency of evolution. We could have co-evolved a different relationship, in which we communicate and respond to each other’s needs better. Why has this not happened? Perhaps selective pressure has not been adequately acute. Perhaps 5,000 years is just not long enough — it’s a (slow?) blink of an eye in evolutionary terms after all.
I undoubtedly overestimate the breadth of the bond between my needy, mouldy old cat and I. Although our interactions are informed by our shared past experience, it is unlikely that Fred has a conscious narrative timeline of our history, as I do. Perhaps this explains why he seems to regard me as if anew every time we meet. Most of his responses to me are likely simple reversible conditioned responses. For example, he has learned that if he scratches at the door or knocks my mouse-in-tuxedo trinket off the bookshelf, he will get “strokes” in that I will respond to him, in irritation or concern — good or bad, no matter! But I would argue that despite this — or perhaps even because of it — the depth of our bond is real and enduring. The more I attempt to navigate our interspecific differences, the greater my attachment to him, and the more intense his response. I care not a jot that the mechanism underpinning his “love” is different than mine — it merely makes the puzzle of his little cat brain more enticing.
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So, our companion animals have different agendas from us and that sometimes includes what we perceive to be unwarranted demands for attention. We, in turn, regard our pets with a parental gaze, having been ruthlessly exploited by the “Teddy Bear effect”. How else do you explain my emotional response to Fred when, following his release into the front garden, he skims the foliage with the side of his lips, performs a photic sneeze and looks back at me, blinking in the sunlight? I melt with the cuteness of him, even though I know that cats have inferior vision to humans in full daylight and vomeronasal organs that harness the Flehmen response. He is only assessing what in the garden might be dangerous to him or of use. Yet he is also pulling my strings, as evolution requires. My cat wants my attention because it helps him survive and by giving it to him, I am rewarded by the endorphins of non-judgemental mammalian touch and lessened anxiety of my own. Our co-existence relies on both our abilities to respond to the other and I am still learning my part. I will need to continue doing so until such time as he evolves to meet me halfway.
Further Bibliography
Bradshaw, J. (2013). Cat Sense. Penguin Books.
Coleridge, S. T. (1816). Christabel; Kubla Khan, A Vision; The Pains of Sleep. London: John Murray.
Foster, C. (2016). Being a beast. Profile Books.
Yong, E. (2023). An immense world: How animal senses reveal the hidden realms around us. Vintage.
