Do Cats Love?

DreamerRose

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If you want a concrete/scientific answer regarding whether or not cats "love" their humans, it gets complicated......

To test if an animals emotional cognition includes love, or any other emotion, you first have to explicitly define the emotion. An "intense feeling of attraction or affection" falls very short of the needed criteria. Something like fear can be easily defined: fear is a defense reaction to some stimuli that triggers: hormonal signals, muscle tremors, eye dilatation, heart rate increase, etc.

Love is much more difficult to define. You could just as easily ask do people love each other? Or are they in it just for sex, warmth, safety and companionship? Maybe the whole love thing is a trick of evolution to get us to mate and procreate.

People even have different categories of love. The love between a parent and a child is a very different emotion than the love between a married couple.

For these reasons, the literature offers many studies about fear in cats in but you won't find much regarding cats and love. You can't test what you can't define. There are some interesting studies about cats "bonding" with each other and people, but they stop short of using the imprecise term "love."

Do humans actually love? If you were an alien visiting this planet to study human emotion, your findings on human relations would read just like the studies on cat bonding.... "Humans choose a mate and spend time bonding with them prior to mating. Subsequently the pair pool their resources to raise the offspring. They often mate for life and benefit from the safety of a partner who looks out for their needs. The mates express their appreciation of their bond by offering gifts to one another such as flowers or food."

You won't find a definitive concrete/scientific answer.

But just because you can't precisely define it, quantify it and develop a test for it doesn't mean it does not exist. If you take one of the studies on feline bonding and replace the word "bond" with "love," the study reads about the same and makes perfect sense....

So I have to ask, does our Makena love my wife?

Because if he doesn't - why is he rubbing her face?


And why does he make direct eye contact and listen carefully to her?


And why does he want to be close to her when she is doing a puzzle?


And why does he let her squeeze him like a stuffed animal for an afternoon nap?


And why does June Bug follow me all around the house?


And why did she reach over and pull my arm to her tightly as I sat reading this afternoon?


I believe that cats, in their own way, can love us very deeply.
You just said it all, @bengalcatman , and beautifully.
 

Katie M

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I believe they do.

The day I brought Selene home from the shelter, I settled her in the bathroom and sat with her for a while. Despite the fact that I was still a relative stranger to her, she immediately crawled into my lap and fell asleep. If that wasn't love, that was at least a major display of trust.

Charlie, having been born feral, has been slowly coming around. He'll occasionally cuddle with me, and has lately been begging for head scratches. He starts purring before I touch him.

If Selene's love has been boiling, Charlie's has been simmering.
 
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