Are kittens psychopaths?
They show up in your house—from the street, under the porch, a shelter, a feline improvement society—and proceed to make themselves at home.
Locate the litter box? Check. Stick face in water bowl? Check. Bounce around the apartment as if she built the joint herself? Check.
Oh, and purr purr purr as you sweep him into your lap. Purr purr purr as you nuzzle your face into his electrified fur. Purr purr purr as he stretches his skinny body across the chair.
Purr purr purr just before he pounces and tries to eat your face.
psycho kitty?
No, this is not another plaint about Jasper. He still likes to chew on my ankles, but he’s now disciplined enough that he can—sometimes—lounge in bed near my feet without treating them as prey.
Still, I do wonder about a creature about whom I know nothing, and who knows nothing of me, insinuating himself into my household.
What about the whole ‘getting to know you’ dance? If a person immediately confides something intimate about herself to me—sober—I wonder about boundaries. If what she tells me raises the hair on the back of my neck, I wonder why she’s telling me rather than, say, a therapist.
An example: When in Albuquerque, I lived for a time with an apparently sweet woman, K., who, it turned out, was nuts. First few clues? Within a week of my settling in, I learned about her abortion, her time as a lesbian, her suicide attempts, her alcoholism, her conversion to evangelical Christianity, and her tortured relationship to her family (also nuts).
I’m thinkin’, jeez, I’m just tryin’ to eat my breakfast, here.
She told me that she wasn’t sure if she’d be returning to her previous job, working with troubled kids at one of the nearby pueblos. Turns out she’d been accused of hitting a kid, an accusation she relayed with a kind of resigned bewilderment. He didn’t like her, she’d concluded in her soft, sing-song voice, and wanted to get her into trouble.
That sounded plausible to me. A few friends of mine had worked in group homes and juvenile mental health units, and the kids could get rough. And that a kid was mentally ill didn’t mean he wasn’t also clever enough to accuse them of battery—or worse.
So, bummer for K.
Then there was the story about the cop at the airport. He’d pulled her over for, I don’t know, idling in a no-parking zone, and asked her to roll down her window. K. didn’t see why that was necessary. He pushed the window down, she told me, I mean, he just pushed it down.
So she took off, speeding in her white minivan toward the airport’s exit, trailed by a cop, until some other car blocked her escape. I would have made it, she said in her soft, sing-song voice.
I’m not one generally to side with the police, and have my own underage-drinking-tales of dodging cops. Still, when you’re pulled over by a cop and you haven’t done much of anything wrong, doesn’t it make sense to, oh, stayed pulled over?
No, she was right and he was wrong so she took off, and ended up with a huge fine—which she proceeded to protest in court. And lost. And was given community service on top of the fine.
Huh, I thought, K. might just have some issues.
Huh, I thought again, it’s just possible that K. did, in fact, hit that kid.
And, of course, after I moved out she accused me (in a not-soft, sing-song voice) of breaking into her house. Nothing was missing, but a door was left unlocked. Her conclusion: It had to be me.
I made sure never to walk, run, bike, or drive anywhere near her place.
Okay, so it’s a long stretch from psycho kitties to K., but isn’t one of the things about psychopaths that they can attach themselves to you in a very short period of time, and that they are generally untroubled by any aspects of their own behavior?
No, I don’t think K. was a psychopath. I think she needed serious, serious help, but to state that she was without conscience is, I think, unsupported by the evidence. (Tho’ there was plenty of evidence of severe passive-aggression, ADHD, and general disordered thinking. But I’m not a shrink, so I’ll just stick to the layperson’s diagnosis of ‘nuts’.) Still, in wondering about the psychopathology of kitties, I couldn’t help but think of K., as well.
But back to the question: what is it about the kitties? Puppies, as everyone knows, are dumb. Their motives are also transparent as hell: Feed me! Rub my tummy! I’ll love you forever! How could a creature without any apparent psyche have a pathology?
This is not an anti-dog slam. I love dogs, and take great joy in puppies. And I don’t think dogs are dumb: I simply think a dog has to grow into his personality—which is why training is so important with pups.
But kitties, kitties are sly. They have agendas and will deal with you only insofar as you help them advance that agenda. And, unlike the ids of puppies, which are oriented around pleasure—Feed me! Rub my tummy!—kitty ids are all about control: Entertain me—or else.
That they are canny critters makes them uncanny to us.
Thus, feline training is also important, albeit in a different way: Whereas the puppy owner wants to encourage her dog’s personality to emerge, the kitten owner is more interested in curbing certain expressions of his psychology, such that by the time the cute wears off (and the cute is, of course, why would put with all this in the first place), we actually enjoy who these animals have become.
Is it a matter that poorly-trained (and likely poorly treated) dogs become psychopaths, while poorly-trained & -treated cats simply remain so? That the menace must be inculcated into the canine, and drawn out of the feline?
Perhaps. Perhaps it’s simply that puppies trust too much and kittens too little, and each has to be taught the hows and whos of trusting well. And as we human companions of these critters teach, so too are we taught.
Jasper and me? We’re learning. Slowly, slowly, we’re learning.
*Update*
I forgot, of course, that the folks at I Can Has Cheezburger have already asked—and answered—this question.
In the affirmative, of course.
AbsurdBeats 