@dlowan,
dlowan wrote:
Cats often seem to be extraordinarily tolerant of kids...mine have been...put up with all sorts of ****.
Yes, my childhood cat (birth to age 12 or so) was a very catly cat -- she walked alone, and would deign to sit on laps... if it was cold... and if she wanted to... but she would NOT be picked up. Ever.
Yet she put up with much abuse from baby me. She would occasionally swat at me with claws retracted if I really went over the line, but it took a lot. And she trained me well, so that by the time I was four or so I treated her with the proper respect, but all without ever having gotten a scratch.
Quote:I had a client once whose cat seemed to have some sort of almost spooky bond with her son...she said it began when he was in utero, when the cat would spend hours apparently listening to the heartbeat.
Sadly, I was seeing them because things were going very badly and the cat had taken on a strongly protective role. It would warn off and even attack the mother when it thought she was being too harsh with the little boy. Fortunately, this would be a circuit breaker for the mother, otherwise I think there would have been physical abuse. Psychologically, too, I think that cat's love was a very protective factor in the child's life.
Wow!
