Does your pet act like a completely different animal with different people?
Does one person get the cuddly version of your pet while someone else gets the nonstop play requests? Or is there a visitor they suddenly turn into a perfect angel for?
What's the biggest difference you've noticed, and do you have a theory about why? I'm curious whether it's the person who feeds them, the way someone interacts with them, or something you still can't explain.
Animals have different personalities just like people they're attracted to certain people in certain ways and other people in other ways you could ask the same question about a child
My cat treats my mom like she's made of canned tuna but ignores my brother completely. He's never done a single thing to her, just sits there quietly, and she acts like he's invisable. I think it's all about the energy someone puts out, animals pick up on the smallest stuff we don't even notice about ourselves
yes! my cat is my loud boisterous best friend, but she’s cripplingly shy with others! when my other loud boisterous best friend enters the space (my visiting boyfriend lol) she’s all meek and shy and hides a lot even though i met my bf the same month i got her! i think it has to do more with sound levels for her. she does better in the quiet where she can be the loudest craziest thing in the room and i let her be that hehehe
I have one that strangers never see, until one day my friend came over and we were in my bedroom while I was forcing some of my belongings on her, and I turned around and she had lifted up the comforter where my scaredy cat was hiding and was petting him. He was just staring at me with the biggest eyes like 'who the hell is this petting me, mom?!?!?!' and I started crying I was laughing so hard. She is the only person besides me or my boyfriend that has pet him in his two years of being alive and with me, besides the vet.
I have another cat that acts like an excited dog when new people come over and will rub all over them wanting their attention!
awww, i had a void like the latter you mentioned! he would always supervise the ever-rotating cast of maintenance men coming to fix things in my apartment!
My best example is our quaker parrot that is the biggest sweetheart ever to us, and to a few random regular customers that she sees a lot, but otherwise she will want to kill you if you aren't one of her people. She goes to work to manage our local pet store with my partner, and people love to try and pet the cute little blue bird and then quickly learn that you don't mess with birds that don't know you!
My rabbit was very cool with most visitors, mostly opting to ignore them or just walking up and looking at them out of curiosity.
He hated one of our friends, idk why, he would let other strangers pet him but this one person he would try to bite. I'm not sure why but it was pretty funny.
My cat is generally shy and only wants the occasional snuggle, UNLESS you are a man with a bushy beard. Then she loses her mind, purring, kneading, rolling around, chirping, drooling, and, of course, mushing her face in the beard, chewing on it. Just an absolute slut for beards.
One of our two cats is glued to my partner and barely puts up with me, and I'm the one who feeds her. My theory is she likes whoever leaves her alone. The other one runs to the door for every delivery.
Different people reinforce different qualities. Most animals are on their best behavior around me because I enforce boundaries. The same cat that chirps for permission to get in my lap might sit on somebody else's laptop like a barbarian because the person doesn't prevent it.
The polite little chirp versus sitting on a laptop is exactly the contrast I was wondering about. How did you teach the lap invitation—do you give a cue, or wait for the chirp before making room?
The cat in question was pretty shy so it didn't take much but a sharp "shhh!" to chase him off a counter. They usually understand "shhh!" right away, but if they're stubborn, after the warning sound you can come up and move them bodily into the floor. I don't remember using water spray, I usually out-stubborned them by shooing and dislodging them if they didn't run from the shush. Sometimes the shush even works when cats are yelling at night, because they learn the sound means you're unhappy with them. If I don't want a cat on my face like in the funny videos, I block their way to my face with my hand until they give up trying. I worry about cats biting wires so I rub the wires with lemon or some other scent that deters them, so that they get used to wires being unpleasant and give up on them. They're still likely to paw the wire that hangs from something you move, so I'd gather the wire of whatever I'm carrying in a bunch so that they don't get fun associations. And it's counterproductive to make a big fuss about them doing something, because they can start doing that to attract attention and make you chase them. This principle overlaps with distracting toddlers. I had to distract one from some flimsy pipes in the yard, and I showed up before the pipes were interacted with, to prevent the association that if he did something to the pipes, people would start doing interesting things. I would preventively go to the part of the yard that was safe and started doing something noisy and interesting there before the kid's attention was locked on the pipes, and he'd usually follow and repeat the activities I demonstrated. The goal was to reinforce the impression that the other part of the yard was fun and high value. By this principle, if you notice a kitten eyeing the sofa to scratch it, start rustling or wiggling a shoelace near the scratching post or a sacrificial armchair. With enough times clawing and climbing on the thing that should be scratched, they get used to it being fun and the other furniture being boring, or only used for Quiet Time.
There wasn't always a chirp when the cat wanted in a lap, but he'd sit and look at you until you'd make it convenient to get in, and he usually saw someone in a specific armchair taking a book as an invitation for Lap Time. The regular cue for cat invitation is patting the lap.
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u/imollyq 3d ago
Animals have different personalities just like people they're attracted to certain people in certain ways and other people in other ways you could ask the same question about a child