When was the first time you realised that your cat really loved you? The question was asked on the Quora.com website and it was answered by the person who asked the question; a Filipino lady living in Manila which is the capital of the Philippines. I’ve called her a lady deliberately because she certainly is. She sounds like a very classy woman to me with an abundance of resolve and courage. She also likes animals and lives with cats and dogs judging by a lengthy post on the quora.com website.
Her story is remarkable with gazillions of viewings. She tells the world that her parents were violent. Her mother was particularly violent towards her throughout all her childhood up to the point when she was big enough to fight back. It seems that her father stood by and let this perpetual child abuse of a very violent nature take place very regularly.
She says that her mother was stressed when she came back from work and she would release this stress by hitting her and her sister. This was not mild abuse but violence which caused wounds, bruises and bite marks. Her mother would hit her in areas of their bodies hidden by clothing. Therefore, she knew that what she was doing was illegal and a crime which indeed it was. That makes its even nastier because it was premeditated and done with knowledge of wrongdoing.
The photograph below is of her sister. In her narrative she leads up to the photograph with the following words:
“One time she hit me so hard on the head with a heavy scissor that it bled. She would kick me in the chest and stomach hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs. The worst moment was when my sister was sent to the hospital with her head bleeding profusely. She bled all over the floor, on her shirt and her blood dripping on the streets as we headed to a nearby clinic. We could not tell the nurses about what happened despite their persistent questioning. We knew they were bound to tell the authorities, but we did not want our father to land in jail.”
She was often beaten so heavy that the bruises bled on her back. She would accept all the punishment silently. When she tried to ring child services for help and protection see put the phone down. She was frightened of losing her family. On the rare occasions she spoke up about it she wasn’t believed.
She turned into a good woman working in human resources but she is frightened of having a family because she believes that she might be like her mother. She is now 30 years of age and waiting to have a family at a time when she feels able to do the job well.
But this is a cat website and here’s the cat bit. On one occasion her cat protected her. She had rescued her cat from a local wet market. She describes her cat as being “a bitch”. She puts this down to a very difficult life during which she was abused just like her. Perhaps she adopted her cat because of the empathy she had for her.
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During one of these ritualistic beatings by her mother her cat was in attendance. Her mother was beating her with a metal rod and she crawled away under the stairs to escape. Her mother dragged her by her hair. She was on the floor shielding herself and bracing for the next blow. Then she looked up and saw her cat who she says normally ignores her. This is what happened next in her words:
“I looked up and saw that my cat — my mean, perpetually angry cat who ignored me every day — shot up and bit her in the arm. My mom shook her off but the cat was aggressive and positioned herself for another attack against my mom. She hissed and placed herself between my mom and I. Now i never cry when my mom hurts me, but that was the time I broke down. I could not wrap my head around the fact that my real asshole of a cat would protect me. Pain was certain, but she risked herself for me. She was my angel that night.
It was selfless. It was love.”
That is when she realised that her cat loves her. It’s a great story but a mightily sad one. To have suffered such a difficult and horrendous childhood at the hands of your mother is shocking.
But there’s this bright spark among the mayhem and the dark clouds: her bitch of a cat in her words who came to her rescue. When she got two dogs, her mother used to lock the door before she beat her and her sister. I guess she was frightened that they would protect her.
I’ve seen this before: cats intervening to protect a person who they consider to be their mother. I’ve seen the same thing with a dog in a very well-known video who protected a boy from another dog. Domestic animals have the presence of mind and intelligence to intervene like this.
Perhaps on this instance the cat was relating to this lady as her offspring and protecting her for that reason. Normally cats relate to people as a surrogate mother or perhaps a sibling but they can get confused and the relationship can be turned on its head. We know how courageously cats defend their offspring when under attack by a predator.
