Talking about a little miscommunication,
I want to go over some real basic cat body language
that you probably said, oh he means this.
And it is completely in left field.
The first one, Halloween cat, right?
You've seen it before.
Cat with arched back, tail up in the air, and making themselves
totally puffed up.
And we interpret that as aggression.
In reality what it is, is pretty much the opposite.
It's fear.
The cat will blow up, sort of tough,
in order to make themselves appear bigger, because they're
afraid of something that just happened.
The second one, the old, cat laying on his or her back,
right?
Now, when you see your dog lay on his or her back,
you go in for the tummy rub.
Those of you who have reached in to rub your cat's belly,
you get bit or scratched.
I call this the cat hug, because what they're doing
is exposing the most vulnerable part of themselves,
their midline.
If you are facing a potential predator,
this is that place that you do not want exposed, right?
When a human hugs another human, we
are exposing our midline to that other person.
It is a mutual show of risk-taking and emotional
trust.
Cats do the same thing by showing you that.
That does not mean, come on in for a belly rub.
Now let's talk about the big one, the wagging tail.
Folks are looking at their cat through dog-colored glasses
and are saying, this means my cat is happy.
As a matter of fact, they are usually saying the opposite.
Now, cats will start to get worked up,
start to get a little agitated to static in the environment
by absorbing that energy.
It's almost like it comes in this way,
and then it gets stuck in the tail.
And then, how am I suppose to get this energy out of my body,
you know?
And then, it starts getting worse, right?
And then by the time they are ready to pounce
on you or anybody, or explode with their staticky
frustration, it is like this.
We talked in the past about the miscommunication
that is inherent with cat overstimulation aggression.
So that is, you're sitting there petting the cat-- pet,
pet, pet, pet, pet.
Suddenly, chomp.
You get bit.
The other one we talked about a little bit was play aggression.
Your ankles get attacked, but why?
Because your cat wants to play and is not getting that
play attention.
We've even talked about how your cat can pee on the couch,
for instance.
You're like, why do you hate me?
An insecure cat will pee on something
to mingle their scent with yours, as if to say,
you and me, buddy, we're compadres, right?
So whether it is Halloween cat, whether it is the cat hug
--the belly rub that we go in for, which we
shouldn't-- whether it is the play aggression attack,
the overstimulation aggression attack,
whether it is the wagging tail, these are all ways that we can
take off the dog-colored glasses,
take off the human-colored glasses.
Look at your cat through cat-colored glasses,
their motivations, what their reality is, and you'll
spend a lot less time misconstruing, getting
angry, projecting, doing all those dangerous things
that we tend to do more with cats than dogs
for sure, but pretty much anybody else.
So that's it for today, folks.
You can find me where you find anybody these days,
whether it's on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube.
The Animalist Network has me in spades
these days, so watch Animalist.
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You'll find out what's going on, like for instance, the Google
Hangout that is coming up very soon now.
We're going to be talking, more specifically than not,
about litter box issues.
But you know me, we're going to go all over the map.
All right folks, until the next time
we speak, all light, all love, all mojo to you.
Love you.
THEME SONG: You're a bad cat.
I'm not a bad cat.
You're a bad cat.
I'm not a bad cat.
You're a bad cat.
I'm just misunderstood.
Meow.