My Cats Don't Love Me and They Never Will

Image source: Vincent Giordano/Tinacria Photography (via Buzzfeed)

I recently discovered an article at Vox titled, "What research says about cats: they're selfish, unfeeling, environmentally harmful creatures." Now, as a cat owner, this isn't news. I've known this all along, but isn't this part of their appeal - their unwavering indifference to humans? The only catch is, I've also always secretly thought that my cats don't love humans in general, but they definitely love me. Turns out, that's likely not true, which means I will be stuck in an unrequited-love situation with my cats for the next 15-20 years. I'm already predicting the follow-up article: "Research shows that cat owners are masochistics with a penchant for one-sided relationships" (oh, and maybe something about being neurotic too).

Some highlights (lowlights?) from the article:

• "Cat lovers will probably respond here that their pets do show affection, purring and rubbing up against their legs. But there's good reason to believe that, much of the time, these sorts of behaviors that look like affection are conducted with entirely different goals in mind."
• "Finally, there's some evidence, turned up by [Daniel Mills, a veterinary research at Lincoln University in the UK], that many cats don't actually like being petted by humans at all. In a 2013 study, he and other researchers measured levels of stress hormones in cats, with the intention of figuring out whether having multiple cats in the same household is a bad idea. That didn't turn out to be true, but they did find that the cats who allowed themselves to be petted had higher stress levels afterward than the cats who disliked it so much that they simply ran away."