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On being loved back
Dec. 22nd, 2006 10:54 amWhen the Little Lady was four, I arrived by train up there were they live, and she ran at me, along the platform, deliriously happy to see me. "Damn," I thought, "she really loves me - how did I deserve that?" Of course, you invest the necessary attentio so you're accepted, little bribes etc., but this was something extra. Something special and unexpected.
Something like that is happening with my little red half-grown tomcat at the moment. Lucifer isn't a sulker, he's a cuddler. Instead od sulking under the sofa for hours as Svava the cat does when she's here and incurred my wrath, he comes to me and needs to be cuddled and skritched lovingly for a long time. I might a) have pushed him off the dinner table b) told him off for trying to step on the hob as it was getting hot or c) put him in the sink and clipped the first, needle-sharp millimetre off his front claws - Lucifer doesn't hate me for it, instead, he urgently needs to feel that I still love him and won't be angry at him any longer.
And when I open the door in the morning and step out into the kitchen where the cat sleeps,* he jumps at me and purrs and rubs and is overjoyed to see me. Occasionally, given a choice between fresh food and sitting on me while I have my tea, he chooses me - after the first three or five bites of food, of course. "Damn," I thought this morning, "he really loves me - when I really just got him because I wanted to have that shadow with the triangular ears in my room at night, which I was missing so much when Svava was with her owners. That's really all expected of the little cat fellow in our relationship. And now he loves me - deeply and unconditionally. I thought only dogs did that."
Well, how much of that is love and how much is just behavioural programming, as I'm connected with pleasant things? I can't tell; I can't tell about a four-year-old, either. Does a cat have emotions? How does a human learn their emotions? Do we anthropomorphise the reactions of our pets, or do we, on the contrary, ascribe a special status to ourselves and our feelings that we don't really have? So many questions, and all because of one little red tomcat, and one little red-headed lady.
*I don't think that it's a feline right to sleep in the human bed and disturb the human when turning over, and the Lady Helene who I got Lucifer from whole-heartedly agrees with me there, so.
This was a little piece of depth and meaningfulness for the holiday season - and the first blog entry I cross-post to both my LJ and my German-speaking blog.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wiebke etc., do feel free to compare the versions! And with this, I'm off - I'm leaving Lucifer in the care of Sava's owner and, later, nazgulwears and take the train to visit the Little Lady and the rest of them for Christmas. I'll be online almost as much as normally, due to copious WLANs, so this is not really a note of absence.-
Something like that is happening with my little red half-grown tomcat at the moment. Lucifer isn't a sulker, he's a cuddler. Instead od sulking under the sofa for hours as Svava the cat does when she's here and incurred my wrath, he comes to me and needs to be cuddled and skritched lovingly for a long time. I might a) have pushed him off the dinner table b) told him off for trying to step on the hob as it was getting hot or c) put him in the sink and clipped the first, needle-sharp millimetre off his front claws - Lucifer doesn't hate me for it, instead, he urgently needs to feel that I still love him and won't be angry at him any longer.
And when I open the door in the morning and step out into the kitchen where the cat sleeps,* he jumps at me and purrs and rubs and is overjoyed to see me. Occasionally, given a choice between fresh food and sitting on me while I have my tea, he chooses me - after the first three or five bites of food, of course. "Damn," I thought this morning, "he really loves me - when I really just got him because I wanted to have that shadow with the triangular ears in my room at night, which I was missing so much when Svava was with her owners. That's really all expected of the little cat fellow in our relationship. And now he loves me - deeply and unconditionally. I thought only dogs did that."
Well, how much of that is love and how much is just behavioural programming, as I'm connected with pleasant things? I can't tell; I can't tell about a four-year-old, either. Does a cat have emotions? How does a human learn their emotions? Do we anthropomorphise the reactions of our pets, or do we, on the contrary, ascribe a special status to ourselves and our feelings that we don't really have? So many questions, and all because of one little red tomcat, and one little red-headed lady.
*I don't think that it's a feline right to sleep in the human bed and disturb the human when turning over, and the Lady Helene who I got Lucifer from whole-heartedly agrees with me there, so.
This was a little piece of depth and meaningfulness for the holiday season - and the first blog entry I cross-post to both my LJ and my German-speaking blog.
wiebke etc., do feel free to compare the versions! And with this, I'm off - I'm leaving Lucifer in the care of Sava's owner and, later, nazgulwears and take the train to visit the Little Lady and the rest of them for Christmas. I'll be online almost as much as normally, due to copious WLANs, so this is not really a note of absence.-
