by Michael
How do you approach your cat? What I mean is, how do you walk up to your cat? I guess it depends on our cat’s character. But we can do things that help to make our cat more relaxed and settled.
I have said it before, domestic cats live in a land of giants. We are the giants.
Most cats are, at least potentially, a bit nervous about people, particularly strangers.
If we approach our cat, who is on the ground or floor, in a vigorous, busy and perhaps noisy way the average cat might retreat slightly or a lot in the case of a nervous cat. Some cats will be OK with it and some cats will actively move away.
No matter what kind of relationship we have with our cat we need to respect what our cat is seeing and feeling.
We tower over our cat if he or she is on the ground. It is at least potentially intimidating.
To counteract this we need to approach our cat slowly, gently and quietly, except for some reassuring sounds from us in a melodic voice.
I know this might sound a bit extreme. In some cases a cat will be relaxed no matter how you approach him or her.
But a lot of cats might feel a bit of anxiety if you walk up to her noisily and plant your feet close to her etc.
We need to employ a good amount of gentleness. This is not being soft and silly. It is simply eliminating the kind of things that can cause our cat some anxiety.
As I said, it depends on the character of the cat (and us!). But I feel that in general people might understandably forget that we are so much larger and therefore intimidating to our cat.
It is best to remember that. Do you think about this sort of thing?