Scientists have recently agreed that identifying the emotions of an animal can help to understand their behaviour.
Understanding the emotions of your pet
As
a pet owner, you will have come to recognise your cat’s various moods
from her body language, facial expressions, noises and the way she
moves. We instinctively know whether our cats are excited, happy, sad,
frustrated or anxious.
However, emotions have been a
topic of hot debate among behavioural experts because it’s very hard to
quantify or measure emotions.
What are emotions?
Emotions give cats the impulse to act in response to an event or
situation. For example, the negative emotion of fear may cause cats to
run and hide, or the positive emotion of happiness may cause cats to
jump up on your lap for an affectionate cuddle.
Emotions are divided into positive or negative feelings and these have
rising or decreasing scales. For example, pleasure can increase to
feelings of elation and ecstasy, while frustration can increase to anger
and rage.
Cats with behaviour problems usually demonstrate the extremes of an emotional scale when they exhibit their problem behaviour.
Recent research has demonstrated that all mammals including cats have
seven fundamental, basic, emotional systems that provide the ability to
react to information about what enters the brain via the senses.
These seven include a seeking system to look for food, a fear system to
respond to unfamiliar events that may be dangerous, a play system and a
care system to raise offspring and form vital social attachments.
More recently evolved areas of the advanced human brain can process this
emotional capability into the more elaborate emotions of love, shame,
contempt, worry and so on. Whilst we don’t associate such ‘higher
feelings’ with cats, this does not in any way detract from the fact they
feel more basic emotions like happiness, sadness, anger and fear in the
same way that we do.
Modern pet behaviourists realise that emotions are, in fact, essential
to how animals learn anything at all, even if precise measurement of
these feelings remains elusive. They use emotional assessment as the
basis of treating pet behaviour problems.
Emotional problems
Recognising that cats have emotions has allowed animal behaviourists to
better understand behavioural problems such as aggression, excessive
grooming and nervousness.
It is important that you also
consider your emotional responses towards your cat too. Owners can feel
love, happiness, and at times even frustration towards their pets. It is
important to seek help from an animal behaviourist if your pet’s
negative emotions outweigh the positives.
Want to make your cat feel happier? Dr Jo Righetti has advice to help.
Animal behaviourist Dr Jo Righetti says “owners often tell me that it is
easy to see when their cat is angry but they are unsure if they are
happy and wonder how they can make them feel happier.
I tell them that the way to elicit a happy feline emotive state is
firstly to address basic feline needs of food, comfort, hunting (through
play) and companionship. Secondly they need to work out what motivates
their particular cat.
If their feline friend loves food, try encouraging them to work for
food, for example by training them to come when called. If their cat
loves to play, reward them with regular play sessions. If they love a
cuddle, provide plenty of lap time.
Rewarding a behaviour will reinforce it and also the feelings that go
with it. Giving your cat more of what she enjoys will ensure you have a
happy cat.”