Why We Love A Cat

The reason why we love a cat is because we need to express love towards another sentient being. We need companionship. We cannot always rely on human companionship.

In fact there are many people who love the reliability of the companionship provided by the domestic cat.

I was with an intelligent person the past weekend. I was trying get her to like me! And she said she preferred cats to people…oophs. I admired that but was upset at the same time.

I am not sure if she really meant that but I see the argument. She justified it by saying that people relationships are complicated. I suppose she meant that for her they were unacceptably complicated. She must have had some unpleasant experiences. Haven’t we all?

Cats are not complicated. They are predicable. And by God in today’s unsettling climate of economic woes (late 2011) we need, we crave, predictability and emotional support. We feel that we can get that from a domestic cat.

The criticism leveled at people who love cats by the cynics is that cats do not reciprocate the love showered upon them.

They say people anthropomorphize cats and that cat lovers create a kind of fiction that their cat loves them. It is a reliable love from the cat for that reason – i.e. it is a fiction in the mind of the person.

I am not sure that that is true or fair. Cats do not love like we do. But then we use the word “love” in so many different ways and often it is exaggerated and overblown. If we take that into consideration perhaps the love of a cat towards us, on their terms, is a more real way of loving us than our version when we love someone else.

We should not be so dismissive of a cat’s “love” for his or her human companion. In many ways it is better. As I said it is certainly far more reliable and uncomplicated. It is similar, isn’t it, to the love a child has for his/her mother. That kind of love is arguably better than the love between two adults that is in fact lust.

So if someone asks, why we love a cat, say, “because it is a true unconditional love, that gives me more than I can get from a relationship with a person”.

[Michael]

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