Discussing a little miscommunication, I need to go over some very primary cat body language that you probably said, oh he intends this it is completely in left field.
#1: Halloween Cat
You’ve seen it before. Cat with arched back, tail up in the air, and making them totally puffed up. And we interpret that as aggression. In reality, what it is, is pretty much the opposite. It’s fear. The cat will blow up, sort of tough, in order to make themselves appear bigger because they’re afraid of something that just happened.
#2: The Cat Hug
The second one, the old, cat laying on his or her back, right? Now, when you see your dog lay on his or her back, you go in for the tummy rub. Those of you who have reached in to rub your cat s belly, doing you get bit or scratched. I call this the cat hug because what doing is exposing the most vulnerable part of themselves is, their midline. If you are facing a potential predator or, worked up this is that place that you do not want to be exposed to, right? When a human hugs another human, we are exposing our midline to that other person. It is a mutual show of risk-taking and emotional trust. Cats do the same thing by showing you that. That does not mean, come on in for a belly rub.
#3: The Wagging Tail
Now let s talk about the big one, the wagging tail. Folks are looking at their cat through dog-colored glasses and are saying, this means my cat is happy. As a matter of fact, they are usually saying the opposite. Now, cats will stay worked up, start to get a little agitated to static in the environment by absorbing that energy. It’s almost like it comes in this way, and then it gets stuck in the tail. And then, how am I supposed to get this energy out of my body, you know? And then, it starts getting worse, right? And then by the time they are ready to pounce on you or anybody or explode with their static frustration, it is like this. We talked in the past about the miscommunication that is inherent with cat overstimulation aggression. So that is, you’re sitting there petting the cat– pet, pet, pet, and pet, pet. Suddenly, chomp. You get bit.
#4: Play Aggression
The other one we talked about a little bit played aggression. Your ankles get attacked, but why? Because your cat wants to play and is not getting that play attention.
#5: Peeing Outside the Letter Box
We’ve even talked about how your cat can pee on the couch, for instance. You’re like, why do you hate me? An insecure cat will pee on something to mingle their scent with yours as if to say, you and me, buddy, we’re compadres, right? So whether it is Halloween cat, whether it is the cat hug–the belly rub that we go in for, which we should t– whether it is the play aggression attack, the overstimulation aggression attack, whether it is the wagging tail, these are all ways that we can take off the dog-colored glasses, take off the human-colored glasses. Look at your cat through cat-colored glasses, their motivations, what their reality is, and you spend a lot less time misconstruing, getting angry, projecting, doing all those dangerous things that we tend to do more with cats than dogs for sure, but pretty much anybody else.