A COMMENTER at Tradition in Action wrote this a while back:

Once I left my cat without any food for some days when I had to leave on an urgent trip. When I came back it was gone. Months later, I saw it at a house many blocks away dozing on a high stone wall out of my reach. I called its name; after I insisted two or three times it lazily opened an eye and raised its head to see who was calling. It fixed me with a ‘poker face’ for a while, then returned to its sun bath without even recognizing me. I had spent alot of money on that cat and fed it well, except for that week. No love in the picture, only the instinct of self-interest. That’s what’s normal. No one should expect more from cats.

Also the way to train a dog is based on the same instinct. The instructor uses the stimulus-response sequence to achieve his goal, rewarding the dog for good behavior or punishing it for bad. Go watch a training session for police dogs as I did, and you will understand what I mean, the dog reacts from its own interest, nothing else. There’s no love or noble sentiments in the picture, just basic instinct.

— Comments —

Diana Blackwell writes:

Is it really necessary to denigrate the bond that some people develop with animals?  Loving a pet doesn’t prevent a person from loving or being kind to human beings.   As a Christian, I think this is a false dichotomy and a needless attack on benevolent impulses.  Is St. Francis the only Christian who is allowed to love brute creation?

More specifically, I strongly disagree with the reader who thinks cats are  incapable of love.  As a cat person, I have lived with pet cats my whole life, and have found them to be deeply loving–but also highly selective about whom they love.

Your reader’s experience of being rejected by a former pet must have been disappointing and painful.  But look at it from the cat’s point of view:  the human caregiver suddenly disappears, leaving no food.  The cat had no way of knowing if its human were coming back; it probably felt abandoned and understandably went away in search of the necessities of life.  And how did the cat even manage to disappear, unless it locked out  to begin with?  Tellingly, the reader complains only about having wasted money on the cat, not about worrying about the cat or missing it.  Possibly the reader and his cat never really cared about each other—“no love in the picture” on either side.  If the cat found a new home with a truly loving human, that might explain the cat’s indifferent response when the reader re-appeared. The whole sad story sounds to me like a case of reaping what you sow.

My husband and I have never, in twenty years, left our cats without food, water, or care.  When we travel, we arrange for friends to look in on the cats every day; if that’s not possible, we pay for help or board the cats.

We give our cats a high level of care and we genuinely love them.  Our cats unmistakably love us back.  When we are sad or sick, they fuss over us and try to console us.  If we get a cut or scrape, they try to investigate and heal it.  They like nothing better than to curl up in our laps and gaze into our eyes.  They make no effort to run away.

When cats bond with a human, they essentially set aside their predatory nature and allow themselves to regress to kittenhood.  Purring, cuddling, licking, “kneading” the human’s body or clothing, and turning around to present a rear-end view are all things kittens do with their mothers.  To become an adult cat’s mommy-surrogate is an honor that must be earned through steadfast caregiving and affection.  But if that’s too much trouble, you can always try a goldfish!

Laura writes:

Just to clarify, it was a reader from Tradition in Action whom I quoted.

You write:

Is it really necessary to denigrate the bond that some people develop with animals? Loving a pet doesn’t prevent a person from loving or being kind to human beings.

No, but it is necessary to denigrate the inordinate love of animals. Dogs and cats are truly wonderful companions oftentimes and it is simplistic to reduce all of their behavior to the desire for food, given their playfulness and responsiveness to human beings. I disagree with the reader at TIA that it is all about self-interest for dogs and cats. But they are idolized and treated like human beings by some. I think he was reacting to this excess. Nevertheless, he simplifies the issue too much.

Sven writes:

Cats have a limited capacity for love. DNA tests show that cats are essentially wild animals who have decided to visit humans for an extended period just because they like warmth and food. We keep them around because they are cute and useful for controlling the rodent population.

Dogs, on the other hand, do seem to genuinely experience love. Most men instinctually gravitate to dogs as pets because they display the virtues that men want to see most in their friends: courage, loyalty and strength. Many dogs, like Rhodesian Ridgebacks, will give their life up to protect their master and his family. Dogs crave affection and attention from their human families, and become depressed if ignored or isolated. I heard somewhere that the chemical reaction in a dog’s brain when its owner walks in the door is the same as the one humans experience when they fall madly in love with someone. Dogs have been known to stick with their masters through times of famine as well, so it seems that there is a bond that goes well beyond food. Remember the passage in the Odyssey when Odysseus returns to Ithaca, and only his dog recognizes him?

It seems that the love dogs have can go quite a bit beyond food.

Jeanette V. writes:

Dogs are the only animals that actually look humans in the eyes; they can read humans expressions. No other animal on the planet does that. Dogs have been underrated and recently have been found to be more intelligent that once thought. I do believe dogs can “love” after a fashion. Everyone has seen dogs’ reactions to their masters who have come home from a long deployment. At one time I had a service dog, it is amazing just how bonded one can become to a certain special dog as I was with my Brittany.

Cats on the other simply have preferences. They prefer one human over another.

That being said about dogs, they are still not human. Someone once told me to get a pet because I so missed having a child of my own. Dogs and cats are marvelous companions. I have two of each but they aren’t human nor are they a substitute for children.

By the way, I used to be a professional dog trainer so I wasn’t surprised when a study found that Dogs are smarter than you think; it was a DUH moment.

Here is Brittany:

Bill R. writes:

I agree with all those comments that have praised the capacity of dogs to love. Cats too, but cats seem to me more a woman’s kind of pet. In the initial post, about the person whose cat was later found and showed no further interest in its former owner, what struck me most was how perfectly the commenter’s description of the cat’s attitude fit their own, particularly that bit about their “instinct for self-interest.” Projection at its finest! It was revealing how the owner noted what they had “done” for the animal — not what they had felt for it, or the companionship they had shared. And what, indeed, was the first of only two of these things they had “done” for this cat? Spent money. Truly, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Perhaps the cat realized only too well where their former owner’s heart lie, and was now simply letting them pursue that heart’s desire unburdened by having to spend anymore of it on them.

The other thing the person mentioned was that they had fed the cat well. But cats don’t live by bread alone either.

The love that animals have given humans have not only saved lives, but, I believe, souls as well — if souls exist at all. Sometimes they have given not only their love, but their very lives for them as well.

If it could somehow be proven to me that animals cannot love, it would simply be a proof that love itself did not exist.

We have buried eight dogs (six siblings and both of their parents), and all from old age and after many years of the kind of loyalty, love, and companionship an adult human can only dream of matching in selflessness, purity, and innocence.

What I believe about the capacity of animals to love, especially, for me, dogs, was immortalized by the poet Robinson Jeffers in his poem The House Dog’s Grave.

It is, among other things, to me, a testament to the truth that love does not exist in grandness or in vastness, in great beauty or magnificence, but in the very littlest and humblest of things; in the most temporary, fleeting, and infinitesimal; not in loudness, but in whispers almost outside of hearing; not in brightness, but in that flicker we almost didn’t see; in the all but forgotten and unnoticed; in that alone which we have done for only one of the very least of these.

Anyone who has buried a dog and can read Jeffers’ poem without weeping has proved to me only one thing: It is hewho cannot love.

Kristor writes:

This fellow seems surprised that when he abandoned his cat, the cat reciprocated. What did he expect? Is the cat an idiot? Would a five-year-old child not likewise seek succor elsewhere than at the house of a parent who had locked him out and disappeared for a few days? Would that five year old return home when his parent did, as if nothing untoward had happened? No, of course not. The child might indeed return home, but the bond between parent and child would thenceforth be forever gravely wounded, and could never quite recover.

The commenter demonstrated to his cat in the clearest way that he did not love him. Indeed, his own complete self-absorption radiates from his comment. So focused is he on himself that he does not even notice his cat’s sex. To him, his cat is an it, a thing; so he calls him. You get what you pay for; garbage in, garbage out. He thinks of his cat as a selfish robot; his cat reciprocates the evaluation, and seems to be correct in so doing.

I infer that the commenter is male; I have a hard time conceiving of a woman so immune to that mutual sympathy and fellow feeling of mammals that leads females of many mammalian species to suckle the abandoned young of other species.

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