I have no idea who this person is. I can’t even be sure what sex they are. The hand looks female but it is far from clear. What is clear is that this person allows themselves to be bitten or scratched by their cat to an extent which is unhealthy for them and I’d argue also for their cat. The picture comes from Twitter and is unattributed. OR…the person handles lots of feral or semi-feral cats and finds it very hard to avoid scratches. I am proceeding on the first assumption!
I have described the person as a masochist. That may be extreme but it might not because you don’t let a cat do this to you unless something is wrong.
It may be an example of what I’d describe as self-harm by proxy. It’s not doing self-harm directly to oneself which is very obvious and direct but placing oneself in a situation where harm is done to oneself and encouraging it.
The ‘damage’ is minor in that the scratches are superficial but they are extensive. I have never seen a hand so extensively scratched and bitten. They are mainly scratches as opposed to bites but their is inflammation as well.
It is quite easy to achieve this sort of damage to your hand when interacting with your cat. All you have to do is know what motivates your cat to bite your hand as if it is toy (e.g. overstimulate the belly area) and then while your cat is full engaged in biting it you try and remove said hand. Your cat will resist and hang on as if she is holding onto prey. The forepaws as you can see in the photo grasp the hand. I suspect the claws of these paws are the ones that caused the damage and/or the hind claws raked the hand as well.
Domestic cats will hang on to a person’s hand and rake it with their hind feet. If you want to stop it you (1) distract your cat with your free hand using a tease or some other object which catches the cat’s eye and (2) ensure that the trapped hand is passive while moving it slowly out of harm’s way.
Those simple steps appear to have been deliberately ignored in this case. In the UK, a study found that a lot of school children, the majority being girls, engage in self-harm to help feel that their lives are in control. It is surprisingly prevalent. I have read that in the UK up to 30% of students do it. It is a shocking state of affairs and a terrible reflection on the state of the nation. It is going wrong and the kids are feeling it.
There is another element to this where you could argue the cat is scratching and biting because it doesn’t like it. This is an ambiguity. If this is so then it means the cat is stuck in its own trap, something too big or an anomaly in their configuration. Like when a pigeon nods its head as it walks. One part is telling them to cling on and the other part to kick out hence the rasping with the lower legs. Autistic people tend to be good at probing and hacking including finding these weird zones. If you are playing with the cat with a piece of string you’re simulating prey. This is getting lazy and using your hand instead. You sort of wrestle with it and train it to tackle a tough prey at the edge of its limits. I would normally intermittently stop and give the cat the initiative to see what it would do. If they get really fed up they are able to detach on their own if you play dead with the hand. You would have to pin them in place or something otherwise. I suppose if considering the welfare of the cat you could debate whether or not it’s tickle torture though it’s standard to subject human children to that anyway so shouldn’t be such a big deal.
John Baker: Wow 😊. It is rare for a visitor to share so comprehensively. I am impressed with your extensive contribution to this article. Your comments are very helpful and a genuine contribution to the page. You provide some great background material to the article which makes it much more informative. All I can do is observe and comment. You experience and comment. A whole different world of authenticity. Many thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and the best of luck for the future.
You’re welcome. I can provide a random amusing piece of information to consider, you could investigate it and write an article on it. When fishing there is a kind of fish called a dogfish. It’s not really a fish but a bottom feeding shark. Although at a different orientation they do this thing a bit like cats do, ironic they’re called dogfish. Though in other places catsharks. They have skin like sand paper and it goes in one direction, you really don’t want to stroke them the wrong way. Historically their skin used to be used as sand paper. It’s like stubble. When you get them out of the water you have to be careful unhooking them. They do this thing where they bend their tail around and stroke you the wrong way, it can give a nasty graze. It is oddly similar to what cats do though not identical. Cats are quite renowned for their flexibility and it is another example of that albeit at sea instead.
Actually I will add another thing. This is common with autism. Hitting a button over and over or something. Our play style is much more mechanical. I did notice that indeed you could touch them or move in certain ways that would make them clamp down more and engage more. Though after so many times you realise it’s like tickling a kid. It’s no longer fun after a point for the cat. When it comes to sense and stimulation we’re quite different. It takes a lot more to stimulate me than others. In that context it might make more sense to provoke the cat to try harder. In a sense the cat is also a kind of machine like we all our. I would not advise having people with more severe autism than I have play with cats as at least I can read the cat well enough at least to know when it’s really bored or tired of it. They may just not stop at all rather than just pushing it to the edge. There’s not stopping even when you are hurt and then there’s not stopping evenwhen someone else is hurt.
I hope that gives you some closure. I can’t tell you how funny it was when I scrolled through on twitter and then saw that. It was a really surreal moment. Hang on a minute I thought, that’s my hand. I think this photo is a decade or so old. I have no idea who uploaded it. There are a few possibilities. I am from the UK though this picture appears to be quite popular in Asia.
I will add a little more. Most people should not be doing this. If one person does this there is some useful information that can be imparted. It’s useful for learning about neurodiversity not that I like the term and cats.
In play there is a tuning mechanism. Humans have it without realising. Animals will bite a little harder each time to see how much is too much. A yelp or in some cases if really to hard a pinch back for a lesson in empathy is given. I can’t really do this well especially the latter.
These are not cats I owned. Oddly this has not been so common with cats I’ve owned. I can speculate but don’t really know why.
I have often noticed a frustration in the cat. They are trying to work out what my pain point is. When playing you actually expect to go a little too far and get either a pull back, yelp or hit back.
The cats would get very frustrated so I would then stop. They would try to bite as hard and scratch as hard as possible but could not do more than superficial damage and never got the feedback they expected of what the level was so they would try harder and harder, hard as they could.
Strangely, the cats also taught me something about communication and autism, certain things I lack that people take for granted and don’t even realise like not being able to communicate automatically and effectively when enough is enough.
I would however notice when the cat was getting too frustrated at me not biting or barking back so to speak and disengage. The cat would express this with tonality which despite being a bit autistic I can pick up on.
If you have to learn things others take for granted then it is beneficial to at least share. One of the reasons I would also do this and not care is in part due to a kind of social apathy seen in autism. I often would do things and still sometimes do without caring what others think. Other people would naturally be very restrained not doing things because of what people might think without even thinking about it.
For typical people it’s just instinct. For me when it comes to things like that, cat scratches my hand, no big deal to me, I don’t then think or feel that it might be a big deal to others like someone else might.
This is not really an example to be followed. People like myself are so different that what works for us often will not work for the typical person. We should not really be seen as human but instead alien such as a Vulcan. Though not truthfully correct which we normally most prefer socially it’s a more accurate perception and in that sense is at least functionally correct which is also preferred even if not mostly so.
I believe that this is a picture of my hand. If you look closely you should see a boomerang scar on the right finger and a cross scar on the top of the hand. There’s a chance it’s not but it almost certainly is my hand.
I used to do this. I am mildly autistic, was also severely abused and neglected during childhood which has a far more substantial impact. I had a rough upbringing, minor scratches like this are not a big deal in that context. People with my neurology also communicate, play and feel pain differently. Experience can also change or reinforce certain things. I also have strong masochistic tendencies in some areas. In my background getting minor grazes, scrapes and bumps all the time was just perfectly normal. It is considered nothing, merely a flesh wound and only makes you stronger.
I think my hand has been like this a few times. It’s not a super common thing but I definitely recognise it as mine. I don’t feel much pain from this. I am used to it. My immune system is quite battle tested from things like this so it’s not really something I would normally worry about. I remember most of the times playing with a cat like this I didn’t notice that my hand was so scratched up until taking a close look afterward.
I am male. This is not all that normal play. The cats do indeed rake. I usually do stop them at some point when they are doing it too hard but not very often and with a much higher threshold for pain than others. Typically if someone is very insensitive to damage like this then it’s a very strong sign of them having been severely abused in childhood or having some kind of neurological insensitivity.
The damage for me is insignificant as I am used to it but someone else might end up with a nasty infection and it’s also probably not good to potentially condition the cat to behave like this with other humans where it might be a problem.