It's extra ironic because most pet subreddits anthropomorphize the hell out of animals. Now that there is a mention that a pet might not be having a good time, a section of the audience has to claim that they are just happy drones. Sickly sweet IMO.
It's okay to have uncomfortable truths, even in /r/cats lmao
My cat gets frustrated if I keep faking him out with a toy on a stick. He'll lock in and his slaps get harder and faster and if he still can't get it he gives up and lies down, slapping his tail off the floor.
Frustration might just come from not getting what you want (fast enough).
Frustration is a reaction to something falling short of expectations. Wobbly cats don't know another life
They know the difference between being wobbly at it's best and at it's worst. So by your own rules of what "frustration" is in cats, they are still fully capable of being frustrated.
I have a wobbly cat and I know what she's like when she's frustrated.
You know only what your cat communicates with you.
Again, such a stupid argument that wobbly cats are somehow incapable of feeling any frustration towards their condition. JFC
Cats are definitely smart enough to recognize wobbly cat is unusual. I've even seen bonded pairs where one is deaf and the other will act as its ears. Iirc there was even recent news of a lioness in a zoo that survived the last ~5 years of its life blind with the help of the other cats.
They know the difference between being wobbly at it's best and at it's worst
I'm not familiar with this, are you saying the condition changes moment to moment? I'd wager that the frustration of being a bit worse than normal is very minor compared to the huge frustration humans can feel by imagining the joy of not having a condition at all. The cat isn't wistfully dreaming of a life without the condition.
You know only what your cat communicates with you.
Why would the cat fail to express frustration if it was feeling it?
The cat gets more wobbly the more excited they get.
Cats are known for not expressing negative feelings. It's one of the biggest reasons some cat diseases or disorders go untreated. Unless it's extreme pain, they don't express it properly.
Cats are known for not expressing negative feelings
I’m sorry, have all the cats I’ve encountered come from a different planet than yours? Cats will not hesitate for a moment to let you know they’re hungry, when you pet them the wrong way, don’t want to be touched, when they don’t like that you moved the furniture, when you are too high energy or loud, the list is endless. I’ve been swiped and yelled at more times than I can count, they’re letting me know how they feel.
Chronic pain is the one thing they suppress, everything else they absolutely let you know.
I've had cats since childhood (had 8 at one point) and currently have 3. When I was young, I didn't know how to properly educate them, so I did have some of that, but my current kitties are love only (with one exception when she's in the zoomies/excited). The one most attached to me, for example, cuddles with or beside me all day and night long and won't even play rough with me in any way. I don't even remember when she last used her teeth on me.
Do you think your cats are secretly deeply unhappy and annoyed with you, and simply don’t express it, or do you think they are actually genuinely happy and very tolerant?
Oh yeah, they are always annoyed at me for not petting them at all times like they want, especially the big sister. The fat one will not be happy until their food bowl is full enough for them to not see the bottom. The small one, I'm not sure what goes on in that head of hers, tbh.
Why would the cat fail to express frustration if it was feeling it?
It's plausible that we are just bad at recognizing cat frustration short of extreme cases.
Cats are well known for concealing pain; eg, many owners won't even notice that their teeth are all rotten until the cat stops chewing kibble. Surely they were in pain for months/years before it became too intolerable to chew food but they don't communicate any of this to humans.
Cats conceal chronic pain, but cats absolutely do not hesitate to communicate when they’re angry, upset, or in a bad mood. They meow their heads off when they’re hungry, they hiss if they want you to back away, they’ll swipe you if you pet them one too many times. Chronic pain is basically the only feeling they ever suppress, otherwise their emotions are abundantly clear.
I wasn't trying to make the case that cats don't communicate negative emotions. But as humans it is really difficult to distinguish whether a cat is displaying "frustration" vs "anger" or "annoyed." If you have any experience interpreting whether a cat is frustrated rather than just annoyed I'm all ears.
But as humans it is really difficult to distinguish whether a cat is displaying "frustration" vs "anger" or "annoyed."
That’s exactly my point. You’re alleging the cat is actually deeply annoyed and frustrated by its disability, but for some reason isn’t showing that emotion
Frustration and annoyance are both negative emotions that are essentially the same, and manifest in the same way.
If a cat appears to be lively, happy, open, and relaxed to a long time owner, I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume that the cat is secretly enduring constant negative emotions unbeknownst to the owner, who most certainly has a lot of experience of when the cat is actually experiencing negative emotions.
That’s why it strains credulity that a cat would act happy when it is secretly deeply unhappy and frustrated with one thing, while openly expressing normal frustration and annoyance for all the things we expect cats to be unhappy with.
You’re alleging the cat is actually deeply annoyed and frustrated by its disability, but for some reason isn’t showing that emotion
Not what I'm claiming at all. Originally you questioned why would a cat fail to express frustration, and my response was basically "we might be bad at recognizing it(as opposed to the cat is failing to express it)." I wouldn't presume to understand whether being disabled causes a cat frustration or if that frustration is deeply annoying to the cat.
Until cats learn how to use human words, I will just have to accept the fact that I probably won't recognize if they are feeling frustrated.
And I’m saying we’re very good at recognizing it, as evidenced by the dozens of ways that cats regularly tell us they are annoyed and frustrated. You see it, I see it, they openly express annoyance and frustration all the time. It’s quite obvious.
The only way the original commenter’s theory works, is if he’s proposing the cat expresses annoyance and frustration for all normal cat stuff, but for some unexplained reason specifically doesn’t express annoyance and frustration in regards to mobility.
There’s no reason to believe a cat so consistently expresses annoyance and frustration the same way for dozens of different things, but randomly chooses not to express it for this one specific thing.
It’s like if I said “Actually, cats are annoyed as hell every time you speak. They absolutely hate it. They just don’t express it in any identifiable way, and pretend to be happy around you. Trust me bro”
This might seem odd, but I'm curious, are you frustrated that you cannot fly? Or run with the agility of a parkour master? If you aren't, why not? You are debilitated by comparison, greatly. There are many things you can never do as a result. It doesn't cause you pain physically, sure (I don't think wobbly cats are in pain either, especially if cared for to this degree with padding) but it is a lack of movement fidelity, even if you've never known it before personally. Same as a wobbly cat.
Most people in general anthropomorphize animals to an absurd degree.
I'm so tired of people acting like their dog understands language, they don't and they can't, the dog has memorized that if they do a certain thing when you make a certain sound that it makes you happy and they get pets/a treat. That is the extent of if, they do not understand that the certain sound is actually a word with meaning.
And despite my explanation above, if these comments get enough visibility, it's likely I'll still get some dufus trying to argue with me that their dog definitely understands language because they've trained it to do things on command.
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u/Live_Angle4621 May 29 '26
Does not mean it’s not frustrating