09-08-2011
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Sister to Floor
Join Date: Aug 2011
Posts: 87
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Cats are solitary animals in nature, so they don't have a sense of hierarchy. This is why training them is so hard. The difference is that dogs think "master doesn't like when I do x, so I won't do x," and cats think "human acts annoying when I do x, so I won't do x in front of human." They rarely, if ever, do things to make human happy--not because they are bad or mean, it's just how they understand life. "Family" is not in their mental vocabulary, so to speak, because they are solitary animals on an instinctual level. You can easily train a cat to not go on the counter or not scratch furniture while you are around, but the moment you are gone, the incentive for them to stop doing those things is gone as well because they see life through solitary-minded eyes. Cats do not possess the empathy that dogs need to live in a pack. This is what I mean when I say 90% of bad cats cannot be fixed--your desires are literally beyond their understanding most of the time. Cats are clever and interesting in their own ways for sure, and they are great low maintenance pets because their solitary nature gives them a very low need for socialization. (As a side note, this is a big issue with dogs that some people sadly don't understand. Dogs NEED socialization, and when they don't get enough of it, they are likely to become mentally unhealthy.) Personally, I'm just way too much of a control freak to want to bend my life around my pet. When I get pet, pet listens to ME. >:I |