Cat Mimicking Person Mimicking Cat
by Michael
(London, UK)
Cat Mimics Person's Hand movements?
I have written about cats training us. There are numerous examples. When a cat rubs against us at a certain time we known that it is time to do a certain task. It could be anything but it is usually about food! After a while we know to feed our cat a certain food at a certain time and, bingo, we are trained.
Here is a video that is on a similar subject. If this is an example of a cat copying or mimicking a person, then I think this is a first. I certainly have never seen a cat copy the specific actions of a person like this before:
Please note that sometimes videos don't work because they are deleted at source (YouTube in this case). I have included a screenshot at the top of the page in case this happens.
If this a genuine case of a cat mimicking a person then it opens doors to training aids and methods that I have not seen as it has the makings of "observational training". Cats do copy from their mothers and close family members when they are kittens and growing up, so cats do learn by copying senior family members. We are senior members of the family so they can copy us. This page deals with the subject in some detail: Cat Training and includes a para on observation training referred to.
Most training that I have seen is concerned with clicker training or ad hoc training methods such as punishment (don't do it please) or it is reward based - cat does something and is rewarded so will do it again. But as stated I have not seen cat training that is solely based on visuals, the simple copying of our actions. Have you?
It is more likely that in this video, the cat was kneading the air. She may have been doing this because she is close to her human mother and had been stroked or was just content. Cats sometimes knead the air and not objects. The person in the video would have copied this action although I am guessing as it has happened before the video starts. Then it seems that the cat copies the human or is the cat simply just carrying on kneading in synchronisation with the person so that it looks like the cat is copying the person? I don't know but it does actually seem as if the cat is deliberately copying as she is looking up at the person at the same time.
Well, there it is. I just find the video interesting enough to write about although the image quality is awful - sorry. What do you think is going on?
I want to thank Dorothy Wandruff for telling me about this video.
