Many people have a common misconception about cats being cold towards their owners or being aggressive in general. Believe it or not, these misconceptions only arise from people who treat, or approach cats incorrectly. These myths would never have surfaced if only they had listened to or observed the signs cats were giving them. In fact, cats are always giving signs to their human friends about how they are feeling and whether it is a good idea to approach them or not.
Cats give these emotional cues in 3 different ways-
-Eyes
-Posture
-Vocal cues
Now let’s look at them one by one.
A cat’s pair of eyes are a big giveaway of how it feels, especially the pupils on the eye. They contract or expand according to how the cat feels.
If a cat feels happy or playful, its eyes would be in the shape of slits and wide pupils respectively. But looking at the eyes isn’t enough because even if the pupils are wide or narrowed, we can’t directly conclude that the cat is in a good mood, in fact, this is also a sign that a cat is feeling fearful and will attack anybody who tries to interact with it.
Therefore, to differentiate between happy and fearful/aggressive cats, we need to also look at posture.
So, let’s move on to posture, it is if not one of the most recognizable parts of the cat. But when we say posture, we don’t just mean the cat’s back arch or spine, it also means the cat’s tail, ears and head. Now that we’ve looked at what posture means in this scenario, let’s move on to the signs.
A happy cat would have upward pointy ears, and a pointy tail. In a nutshell you could call a happy cat a “pointy” cat. But a fearful cat’s body language is completely reversed of the pointy cat, they sort of go in a shrinking position with the tail tucked tightly towards the body, their ears become flattened and they shape their bodies into a low or almost stooped body position trying to curl up into a ball.
Aggressive cats on the other hand will make themselves look bigger by arching their back high to make themselves look bigger to threats, they sometimes flick or thrash their tail around. The cat also lets its fur stand up, which is a natural response to threat called piloerection.
Let’s move on to the final factor in reading your furry friends’ emotions, their vocal cues. Now the most common and well-known vocal cues in cats is the classic “meow”. But if you look at it scientifically, adult cats never meow to each other, they just do it to us humans because it’s a way of communicating with us. For example, cats may meow at you for wanting something.
Now if a cat expresses a sense of calm, relaxation or just happiness it may purr or chirp around you.
Generally, you only get these noises of happiness from a cat if it feels safe around you and trusts you.
And finally, we’ve arrived at hisses. Keep it simple, if you approach a cat and it starts hissing, it simply means that it wants to be left alone and that you should respect its space.
And just like that, now you know all the signs you need to look at when you approach a cat- in a nutshell!
Bibliography-
PetMD. “Cat Body Language: Common Postures & What They Mean.” PetMD, 2024. https://www.petmd.com/cat/behavior/cat-body-language