I don’t know a lot about animal behavior, but I do know that most animals are really good at telling us what they want. They’ll walk over to the water’s edge in the middle of the pond and show you how they want to be “spotted” or “carted” or “pushed”. They’re also pretty good at telling you how to get away from them.
The Spanish seem to have a pretty consistent set of animal con-u-sos. This one is a little more subtle. If you tell a dog to sit, the dog looks at you and says, “Me esta escribiendo”. If you then tell it to run on its hind legs, it says, “Ese es una bandera”. If you then tell it to jump, it says, “Ese es una bandera”.
So here are some animal con-sos for you. The first one is a dog who wants to be let go. It starts by looking at you, then tilting its head back, and then looking at the ground. If you say, Me esta escribiendo, the dog will stay at your feet. If you tell it to run, it still looks at you, but will not jump.
I used to have a dog who would lie on his back and stare at the ground. I told him to play dead, and he just looked at me.
Also, I have a cat who lives on the roof over my bathroom. I have never seen it jump, but it sits on the ledge every night and eats my cat food.
How many cats do you know that look at you while you’re eating and don’t jump to get them? If we’re being very general, cats aren’t very good at self-awareness. The cat in the picture above doesn’t make a sound when I talk to it, and it won’t give me the finger.
It turns out that this cat is a female, so her cat food can smell her. The cat in the picture above is a male, and he likes me to call him by his name so he has some sense of self-awareness. He likes to see which way I’m going and then jump out of the way to make it go the other way.
It’s true that cats don’t have a very high self-awareness quotient, but that doesn’t mean they’re not trying. Cats are definitely our closest animal friends. That said, there are a few tricks that the cat has that are probably just trying to make me feel better about myself.
Like many cats, the cat has a very low threshold of attention. The fact that he can see and hear me and that he jumps out of the way when Im going in the wrong direction and makes me feel better about myself is probably the best evidence that a cat is trying to make me feel better about myself.
I don’t get that. Cats are very aware of each other and when they play with each other, they do it in a way that is much more interactive than they do when they just walk and purr. A cat does not give a damn about you when he is playing with you and when you are playing with him, he will just jump in the face and try to bite you.
