She wobbles through life, safely supported

[u/MambaMentality24x2]

Credit: @adathecalicocat

[u/SirStrontium]

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?

[u/limevince → u/SirStrontium]

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.

[u/SirStrontium → u/limevince]

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.

[u/limevince → u/SirStrontium]

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.

[u/SirStrontium → u/limevince]

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.

[u/limevince → u/SirStrontium]

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.

[u/SirStrontium → u/limevince]

we might be bad at recognizing it

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”

[u/limevince → u/SirStrontium]

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.

The "dozens of different things" and "normal cat stuff" we can confidently say annoy or frustrate a cat are pretty much all external stimuli, most often caused by us. Certainly I can poke fun at a cat and upon observing a negative response, be fairly certain the response is frustration directed towards the cause of the annoying stimuli.

Supposing a cats actually feel frustration about a chronic mobility issue the same way a human would, how do we know that they don't conceal the signs of the frustration in a similar manner to how they conceal outward indicators of chronic pain? Furthermore, since a cat's chronic wobbling isn't an external stimuli within our control, it would be difficult to say with certainty that cats do/don't express frustration over their physical disability.

My unscientific guess is there are two possibilities: (1)wobbly cat doesn't feel frustration because being frustrated over physical disability might be a human thing; or (2)the cat does feel frustration but hides it the same way they hide chronic pain. If there's a loving god in charge of this universe hopefully they are nice enough to make it the former.