I guess you can read in to their behaviour what you
will, but to us it feels like empathy
After 20 years of cat ownership spanning three cats, I felt sure that cats had a very specialized sort of intelligence: they're good at doing predator stuff, and they have also evolved to be good at manipulating humans in a generally benign/symbiotic sort of way.
I felt quite certain "empathy" wasn't part of this set of skills.
But something recently made me question it.
A few weeks ago I saw a video from the Russia/Ukraine war that made me visibly upset. I became distressed and said "no no no NO" and hastily pounded the keyboard to close the window and went into an adjacent room to sit down, actually crying a bit.
My cat became very alarmed and followed me into the other room, looking at my face, and urgently rubbing himself against me.
I'm very close to my animals and I try very hard not to anthropomorphize them. I think it's actually a big disservice to do this. I try very very hard to think about how they experience the world in their own unique ways with their unique, non-human minds.
But this felt utterly unmistakable. He saw that I was upset and comforted me.
And he did this with no real prior data to work with. At least from me. I had never been visibly upset like that around him before.
I felt quite certain "empathy" wasn't part of this set of skills.
But something recently made me question it.
A few weeks ago I saw a video from the Russia/Ukraine war that made me visibly upset. I became distressed and said "no no no NO" and hastily pounded the keyboard to close the window and went into an adjacent room to sit down, actually crying a bit.
My cat became very alarmed and followed me into the other room, looking at my face, and urgently rubbing himself against me.
I'm very close to my animals and I try very hard not to anthropomorphize them. I think it's actually a big disservice to do this. I try very very hard to think about how they experience the world in their own unique ways with their unique, non-human minds.
But this felt utterly unmistakable. He saw that I was upset and comforted me.
And he did this with no real prior data to work with. At least from me. I had never been visibly upset like that around him before.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯