False, is the answer as there are several video stories on the internet of domestic cats saving infants from dogs or falling. And I mean what appear to be clear, purposeful actions by the cat to protect a human, usually an infant. The statement in the title comes from a cat hater. Cat haters usually try to rationalise their hatred by finding specific reasons such as cats never save you when dogs often do. But she is wrong. Below are some examples from YouTube.
There are more but I don’t need to show them here because the cat hater uses the word ‘never’. One example is enough to disprove her statement.
The most celebrated example of a cat saving an infant is seen in the famous video below. Strangely Google Gemini and Bing Copilot do not refer to these YouTube videos when you ask them the question in the title. Both these AI bots prevaricate when asked the question. It is a weak response. Don’t lean to heavily on AI bots for information. They are not infallible.
The video below is almost as amazing. In it you can see the cat telling the infant to release their hands from the balcony railing to keep the toddler safe. I have never seen anything so clearly stated by a cat. This cat is protecting the toddler. The cat seems to have taken the role of mother to the toddler and has become protective. But it means that the cat has assessed the balcony as potentially dangerous because of its height above the ground. This is remarkable. The cat was apparently foreseeing the possibility of a fall. He or she was very insightful and acted very positively. And I don’t think I am anthropomorphising the cat in this instance.
And in the video we can clearly see the family cat protecting the toddler from falling down the stairs:
Below is another story of a cat helping to save a dog this time:
And here we have a black cat jumping in a night to save a family dog from a coyote attack. The cat dived in courageously to drive away the coyote.
So, what is going on? I think it is pretty obvious. Often humans regard their cats as members of the family. The cats reciprocate by feeling that they are part of the family. They might regard their owner as a surrogate mother and they themselves act and feel like a kitten. But sometimes that persona is transmogrified to the situation where they become the mother of a toddler or baby or indeed another pet such as a dog. And being in a mother’s role they are defensive of the said toddler and that’s why we see quite a few instances of domestic cats protecting toddlers inside and outside the home.
