While it’s always nice to give our loved ones ego strokes, the purpose for cats is simply to convey our affection and regard.
So it’s not possible to do it too much.
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We don’t have to worry about our cat getting a “swelled head” from our compliments, because we are not doing anything but supporting their proper view of themselves. All well-adjusted cats have high self-regard; it is what fuels their daily activities. The rules of their wild existence would mean they had to project confidence, whether they felt it or not.
We give our cats support by saying nice things about them, but this has far more to do with their relationship with us. We do love having a sweet, attractive, cat. We should say so.
Most of all, saying nice things to the cat means we say these things in a nice way.
The cat’s extraordinary hearing means they can pick up subtle notes and modulations even better than the world’s finest musicians. Even if they have not progressed to picking up some of our vocabulary, our meaning is expressed in our tone. When we say nice things to our cat, our tone expresses our true feelings.
Cats love hearing our hearts in our voices.
This is how I discipline my three cats, from across the room, in a normal tone. A soft Brooklyn “hey!” is enough for them to reconsider playing with the wrong things, or continuing to ask for treats when it’s not the right time. But that’s because we have already established three things:
When we use our voices to connect with our cats, we have a mode of expression that comes naturally to us humans, while conveying our meaning in a way that will resonate with our cats; provided we remember its best use.
Our voices work best on cats when we express the softer emotions; when we are happy we should be intimate and sweet; when we are disappointed we should be sad and regretful.
Loudly expressed sentiments, no matter what they are, are coming at the cat at too high a volume. This will flip the cat’s internal switches into panic mode, and it won’t matter what we are saying.
They won’t be in any state to be able to figure it out.
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There’s more ways to get our cat to be affectionate in The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See all of my CAT AFFECTION posts.
Interesting, I felt the same way about my two daughters, and they turned out to be very well-adjusted young women.