4 ms·

My dad suffered a head injury and afterwards, he could just sit, still, spaced out, in one place all day. At night he used to struggle. Our two cats decided to

by 2wrist 5y ago

My dad suffered a head injury and afterwards, he could just sit, still, spaced out, in one place all day. At night he used to struggle. Our two cats decided to look after him, they used to snuggle him through the day, or harass him to go get food, or to open this door and that door, he used to be kept pretty active by them! At night they used to sleep close to/on him and if he woke they would stick their faces in his and just purr at him. They gave him so much comfort. After he passed, they now do this with my mum. In the mornings they will wake her up by licking her forehead, ever so gently. I guess you can read in to their behaviour what you will, but to us it feels like empathy. Not sure what we would do without them.

rbanffy 5y ago
Non-human emotions are an interesting topic and I’d expect the same perceived behaviour could come up from all sorts of different origins, but, as I have seen my friends (and myself) with mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, and spiders that live with humans and their behaviours, I’m not surprised to conclude they have their own emotions. When I was in high-school, I had a fish, a Banded knifefish, who welcomed me home every afternoon by standing upright on its tail by whatever side of the aquarium I was. I gave it food at the end of a stick and played games where it would hunt the food. If sometimes, if I stopped moving the stick it’d come to my side of the aquarium and stare at me until the stick started moving again.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  That’s an amazing story about the fish. I had no idea. Thanks for sharing.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    I strongly suspect predators need to be smarter so they can be more effective. Either that, or I just had an extremely weird fish.
dralley 5y ago
There was a widespread video of a cat trying to save it's owner from "drowning" in the bathtub https://youtu.be/Y1GMlXuvdic https://youtu.be/Y1GMlXuvdic
JohnBooty 5y ago
I guess you can read in to their behaviour what you will, but to us it feels like empathy After 20 years of cat ownership spanning three cats, I felt sure that cats had a very specialized sort of intelligence: they're good at doing predator stuff, and they have also evolved to be good at manipulating humans in a generally benign/symbiotic sort of way. I felt quite certain "empathy" wasn't part of this set of skills. But something recently made me question it. A few weeks ago I saw a video from the Russia/Ukraine war that made me visibly upset. I became distressed and said "no no no NO" and hastily pounded the keyboard to close the window and went into an adjacent room to sit down, actually crying a bit. My cat became very alarmed and followed me into the other room, looking at my face, and urgently rubbing himself against me. I'm very close to my animals and I try very hard not to anthropomorphize them. I think it's actually a big disservice to do this. I try very very hard to think about how they experience the world in their own unique ways with their unique, non-human minds. But this felt utterly unmistakable. He saw that I was upset and comforted me. And he did this with no real prior data to work with. At least from me. I had never been visibly upset like that around him before. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

by 2wrist 5y ago

rbanffy 5y ago

Non-human emotions are an interesting topic and I’d expect the same perceived behaviour could come up from all sorts of different origins, but, as I have seen my friends (and myself) with mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, and spiders that live with humans and their behaviours, I’m not surprised to conclude they have their own emotions. When I was in high-school, I had a fish, a Banded knifefish, who welcomed me home every afternoon by standing upright on its tail by whatever side of the aquarium I was. I gave it food at the end of a stick and played games where it would hunt the food. If sometimes, if I stopped moving the stick it’d come to my side of the aquarium and stare at me until the stick started moving again.

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
That’s an amazing story about the fish. I had no idea. Thanks for sharing.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  I strongly suspect predators need to be smarter so they can be more effective. Either that, or I just had an extremely weird fish.

dralley 5y ago

There was a widespread video of a cat trying to save it's owner from "drowning" in the bathtub https://youtu.be/Y1GMlXuvdic https://youtu.be/Y1GMlXuvdic

JohnBooty 5y ago

I guess you can read in to their behaviour what you will, but to us it feels like empathy After 20 years of cat ownership spanning three cats, I felt sure that cats had a very specialized sort of intelligence: they're good at doing predator stuff, and they have also evolved to be good at manipulating humans in a generally benign/symbiotic sort of way. I felt quite certain "empathy" wasn't part of this set of skills. But something recently made me question it. A few weeks ago I saw a video from the Russia/Ukraine war that made me visibly upset. I became distressed and said "no no no NO" and hastily pounded the keyboard to close the window and went into an adjacent room to sit down, actually crying a bit. My cat became very alarmed and followed me into the other room, looking at my face, and urgently rubbing himself against me. I'm very close to my animals and I try very hard not to anthropomorphize them. I think it's actually a big disservice to do this. I try very very hard to think about how they experience the world in their own unique ways with their unique, non-human minds. But this felt utterly unmistakable. He saw that I was upset and comforted me. And he did this with no real prior data to work with. At least from me. I had never been visibly upset like that around him before. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯