An exciting new report has revealed that your cat doesn’t see you as its mother, or even as a human at all! It actually sees you as another cat – the weird one who likes to pick up its shit every day.
“It’s actually so funny that people are operating under the assumption that their cat thinks of them as its mom,” said Dr. Marie Bowman, a researcher at the University of Southern California. “That couldn’t be further from the truth. Think: weird-looking cousin who has a proclivity to touch their shit and kind of just lumbers around all day.”
This finding comes as largely unwelcome news to the cat community and has thus garnered a significant amount of criticism since its publication.
“Uh, no, that report is wrong, I’m absolutely the mother of my two cats,” said Los Angeles-based cat owner Tessa Yates. “If I’m not, then tell me why I have a vivid memory of giving birth to them after a very hard, very long labor? Run the numbers again!”
While it’s clear from “run the numbers again” that Yates doesn’t really understand how science works, Dr. Bowman says she and her team did take personal anecdotes from the public into consideration after releasing their findings.
“We added an addendum to the report after we received an alarming number of write-ins from the public detailing how, when, and where they gave birth to their cats,” Dr. Bowman said. “The vibe of the addendum is more like, ‘Haha, look at these weirdos who think they’re some sort of cross-species Virgin Marys” but their stories were included, nonetheless.”
Dr. Bowman also wanted to make it clear that while some individuals may feel strongly that they have a mother-child relationship with their feline, her team found, super conclusively, that cats don’t feel that way, like, at all.
“No, like, they definitely know that, in some form or another, they were ripped away from their birth mother, and they absolutely hold that against their owners,” Dr. Bowman reported. “That was like the first thing we found. And, after years spent analyzing the behaviors of house cats, there’s no doubt in my mind that they see their owners as nothing more than the weirdest cat in their cat colony. The ‘loser cat,’ if you will.”
She added, “Also, they do think it’s fucking gross that you pick up their shit every day and it does impact any respect they may have had for you. Though, I don’t think the cat community will be surprised to find that, mother or not, their cat has absolutely zero respect for them. We’ve all known that for years.”
