Scientist: Cats think you are just a big, stupid cat

Interesting topic and book although I highly recommended skipping this article in favor of the [NYT article cited](<a href="http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/science/cat-sense-explains-what-theyre-really-thinking.html?_r=2&amp;referrer=" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.nytimes.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;01&#x2F;07&#x2F;science&#x2F;cat-sense-expla...</a>).<p>This title and article are misleading, no where in the NYT piece does it say cats think we&#x27;re &quot;big stupid cats&quot;, just that they use their social norms towards us, as that&#x27;s all they know. The cnet article is juvenile speculation.

Franz Kafka wrote a short story, &quot;Investigations of a Dog,&quot; in which a dog tries to figure out where his food comes from, and why he goes through a barking and jumping ritual before receiving his food, and ends up creating a myth of a giant invisible soaring dog.

That cats aren&#x27;t really domesticated . . . I wholeheartedly agree. They have simply learned to cohabit with us.<p>That cats don&#x27;t know we are different . . . I wholeheartedly disagree. In some respects, they treat us like cats, probably because that is the language they know. To be fair, however, many people treat their pets like little dumb humans while realizing that they aren&#x27;t actually people.<p>What the hell is an anthrozoologist, anyway? That sounds like something he made up to call himself.

I&#x27;ve always said that I think dogs think that one day they too will become like us, which is why they insist on sitting in the drivers seat when you leave the car. However, I don&#x27;t believe cats and dogs are so unaware as to think we are actually no different to them. I may agree if animals weren&#x27;t able to recognize other species of animal, but clearly they can. Dogs and cats inherently know they don&#x27;t like each other, cats like to chase birds and mice, so they can recognize other animals. Why would anybody make a statement assuming that a cat can&#x27;t recognize that we are different from them.

This isn&#x27;t my interpretation of <i>Cat Sense</i>. The author clearly compares how cats treat each other and how they treat humans and points out the parallels. But the author really seems to be of the opinion that cats are more affectionate towards us than they are towards each other. Cats have depended on us for centuries to provide them mice to eat, but they haven&#x27;t quite developed the same social skills with their own kind (as compared to dogs).

Ugh. Anyone who thinks cats having a &quot;wild&quot; streak is a good thing is an idiot, considering the sheer damage done to ecosystems by escaped and feral cats.

This is inane. Why is a cat friendly towards human visitors, yet hostile towards feline ones? We show human signs affection towards cats, why wouldn&#x27;t they use their own body language towards us?

Dogs have owners; cats have staff. I guess they think of us as big stupid minimum wage cat staff.

I&#x27;m always fascinated by the implications of the very common approach of people to anthropomorphize cats when discussing them and to put down human intelligence in relation to the cat in the process. I don&#x27;t see it done nearly as commonly when dogs are discussed. It seems nearly universal in the discussion of cats anywhere online.<p>&quot;Given that he believes cats are semi-feral and that they think we are cats too, we must surely consider that cats aren&#x27;t all that stupid -- because they must realize that we are, in fact, quite that stupid.&quot;

Cats think of us as big, dumb, non-threatening cats? I assumed they thought less highly of us.

Well, a cat would have at least properly escaped the entity encoding (caption on the photo)

The last time I published a professional paper you had to give your affiliation with your university, government agency or at least what gives your opinion credibility. Who is this guy and where does he get his data to make this claim?

I doubt animals has the slightest knowledge of the fact that there is multiple spices of animals.<p>More like that animal is interesting that lager ugly one over there is not.

There may be arrogance in saying that we can think in any other way that is not human.