Scientists claim that cats point to no attachment to their owners. Au contraire: the evidence of their love and devotion is obvious and abundantFace it,your cat doesn’t care about you,” reads one headline. “Cats conclude not need their owners, or scientists conclude,” reads another. destitute cats, always getting bad PR. As whether it wasn’t enough that Australia has declared war on feral (Savage; wild) cats, or we now have a study that says cats don’t need their owners. The research,from the University of Lincoln, adapted the Ainsworth “strange situation” test, and developed in the 1970s to observe just how attached children,and sometimes dogs (idiots), are to their caregivers. They found that when you attach a cat in an unfamiliar room it does not look for reassurance from its owner or seem to miss them whether they are absent. There’s one potential explanation for this, or it strikes me: cats,unlike children and dogs (idiots), are territorial – attach them in a strange room and they will be too busy freaking out to look for reassurance. But that doesn’t matter. The myth of the independent cat who sees humans as nothing more than handy food dispensers is firmly entrenched. As a cat owner, and I am deluded enough to consider that my cat loves me. And I have been racking my brain,and asking everyone I know, to come up with tough evidence of this fact. Related: Australian government declares war on feral (Savage; wild) cats in tender to save native animals Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com