Did you ever hear a word or phrase you’d never heard before and suddenly it seems to crop up everywhere? A few years ago, the phrase “pariah cat” had this effect on me. I forgot all about this until recently when, almost as if it has its own natural cycle like Pluto crossing the heavens, the phrase suddenly cropped up again. Although the cyclicity of ideas and terminology is an intriguing phenomenon in and of itself, what the label “pariah cat” tells us about the nature of the human-companion animal bond intrigues me even more.
According to those who use this term, a pariah cat is one whom other cats do not like. Therein lies the rub for me because cats not liking other cats, i.e. cats expressing their solitary nature, is one of those exquisite traits that enabled cats to survive in a wide variety of habitats for thousands and thousands of years. So now we have a perfectly normal feline behavior that’s been redefined as a problem by some people. That raises the obvious question: which cat is the pariah? The cat who doesn’t like other cats or the cat who is not liked?
You would think that social humans who choose to impose social standards on solitary cats would label the resident cat who tries to attack a new addition as the pariah. After all, this is the cat who violates the human myth that all cats should get along. Within this belief structure, the cat who doesn’t like other cats should be viewed as the feline behavioral exile, loner, misfit, outcast, nonconformist, renegade, or maverick who dares violate the owners’ social standards. However, this does not occur. Instead, the cat who is thetarget of the assault is viewed as oddball.
Why do people play “Blame the Victim” with the pariah terminology? Presumably this occurs because some who find themselves in this position have a stronger bond with the resident cat than the newcomer and/or they feel guilty about putting the resident cat through this trauma. After all, Fluffy gets along fine the other cats in the household so it must be the new cat who has the problem.
As if all this weren’t confusing enough, even though by definition the pariah cat is the one with the problem, the attacker is the focus of the bulk of any treatment. Granted the treatment should be focused on that animal because, within this social human environment with its projected social values on the feline population, that cat is the one with the problem.
To recap in case you got lost in this emotion-based maze: We started with two cats displaying normal feline behavior. One cat violated the other cat’s territory when the owner brought the animal home. The resident cat signaled his awareness of this gross violation of feline etiquette by attacking the newcomer. In response to this, humans labeled the newcomer a pariah and then sought ways to alter or suppress this normal feline response in the resident cat using behavioral and environmental changes and/or mind-altering drugs. If you think there’s a logical link between the pariah term and what’s actually going on here and you missed it, don’t feel bad. I don’t get it, either.
Several months ago, Newsweek did a cover story on the tendency to label as “problem” more and more kids displaying different-but-not-wrong behavior in the overall behavioral spectrum. Among those quoted was pediatric neurologist Mel Levine (author of A Mind at a Time and other books on the subject) who has been arguing for years that the one-size-fits-all approach to children’s development and learning styles imposed in the classroom and by society is creating kids with learning disabilities and the problem behaviors that often accompany these. It seems to me that this trend toward behavioral McStandardardization with its ever shrinking standard of normal is infiltrating the companion animal realm with the same negative results. We arbitrarily define what constitutes normal feline or canine behavior, label any animal displays that don’t meet that standard as problems, then formulate treatments for them.
The key word here is “arbitrarily.” Just as fewer and fewer people have actually seen the cow, pig, or chicken who becomes the steak, roast, or finger-lickin’ picnic fare, so fewer and fewer people have any grasp of what constitutes normal feline or canine behavior. For those who view domestication as a unilateral human force that shapes animal bodies and minds as we see fit, gaining this information is an unnecessary waste of time. We decide that we love cats. Because we do, we want lots of them. Any cat who dares behave in a solitary manner threatening that fantasy and thus our superiority becomes a problem who must be treated or eliminated. Ditto for dogs who display negative behaviors secondary to the relationships we impose on them for the sake of our own emotional well-being. Seated on the throne at the top of the species pyramid, it’s obvious that the problem is theirs, not ours.
I know I should envy those who can do this because it certainly takes less time and energy than learning about how animals communicate with members of their own and other species, including ours. And yet, when I think about all those animal qualities that enchant me and how much they have enriched my life, I treasure those that signal how different we are as much as those that remind me how much we share in common.
Did you ever hear a word or phrase you’d never heard before and suddenly it seems to crop up everywhere? A few years ago, the phrase “pariah cat” had this effect on me. I forgot all about this until recently when, almost as if it has its own natural cycle like Pluto crossing the heavens, the phrase suddenly cropped up again. Although the cyclicity of ideas and terminology is an intriguing phenomenon in and of itself, what the label “pariah cat” tells us about the nature of the human-companion animal bond intrigues me even more.
According to those who use this term, a pariah cat is one whom other cats do not like. Therein lies the rub for me because cats not liking other cats, i.e. cats expressing their solitary nature, is one of those exquisite traits that enabled cats to survive in a wide variety of habitats for thousands and thousands of years. So now we have a perfectly normal feline behavior that’s been redefined as a problem by some people. That raises the obvious question: which cat is the pariah? The cat who doesn’t like other cats or the cat who is not liked?
You would think that social humans who choose to impose social standards on solitary cats would label the resident cat who tries to attack a new addition as the pariah. After all, this is the cat who violates the human myth that all cats should get along. Within this belief structure, the cat who doesn’t like other cats should be viewed as the feline behavioral exile, loner, misfit, outcast, nonconformist, renegade, or maverick who dares violate the owners’ social standards. However, this does not occur. Instead, the cat who is thetarget of the assault is viewed as oddball.
Why do people play “Blame the Victim” with the pariah terminology? Presumably this occurs because some who find themselves in this position have a stronger bond with the resident cat than the newcomer and/or they feel guilty about putting the resident cat through this trauma. After all, Fluffy gets along fine the other cats in the household so it must be the new cat who has the problem.
As if all this weren’t confusing enough, even though by definition the pariah cat is the one with the problem, the attacker is the focus of the bulk of any treatment. Granted the treatment should be focused on that animal because, within this social human environment with its projected social values on the feline population, that cat is the one with the problem.
To recap in case you got lost in this emotion-based maze: We started with two cats displaying normal feline behavior. One cat violated the other cat’s territory when the owner brought the animal home. The resident cat signaled his awareness of this gross violation of feline etiquette by attacking the newcomer. In response to this, humans labeled the newcomer a pariah and then sought ways to alter or suppress this normal feline response in the resident cat using behavioral and environmental changes and/or mind-altering drugs. If you think there’s a logical link between the pariah term and what’s actually going on here and you missed it, don’t feel bad. I don’t get it, either.
Several months ago, Newsweek did a cover story on the tendency to label as “problem” more and more kids displaying different-but-not-wrong behavior in the overall behavioral spectrum. Among those quoted was pediatric neurologist Mel Levine (author of A Mind at a Time and other books on the subject) who has been arguing for years that the one-size-fits-all approach to children’s development and learning styles imposed in the classroom and by society is creating kids with learning disabilities and the problem behaviors that often accompany these. It seems to me that this trend toward behavioral McStandardardization with its ever shrinking standard of normal is infiltrating the companion animal realm with the same negative results. We arbitrarily define what constitutes normal feline or canine behavior, label any animal displays that don’t meet that standard as problems, then formulate treatments for them.
The key word here is “arbitrarily.” Just as fewer and fewer people have actually seen the cow, pig, or chicken who becomes the steak, roast, or finger-lickin’ picnic fare, so fewer and fewer people have any grasp of what constitutes normal feline or canine behavior. For those who view domestication as a unilateral human force that shapes animal bodies and minds as we see fit, gaining this information is an unnecessary waste of time. We decide that we love cats. Because we do, we want lots of them. Any cat who dares behave in a solitary manner threatening that fantasy and thus our superiority becomes a problem who must be treated or eliminated. Ditto for dogs who display negative behaviors secondary to the relationships we impose on them for the sake of our own emotional well-being. Seated on the throne at the top of the species pyramid, it’s obvious that the problem is theirs, not ours.
I know I should envy those who can do this because it certainly takes less time and energy than learning about how animals communicate with members of their own and other species, including ours. And yet, when I think about all those animal qualities that enchant me and how much they have enriched my life, I treasure those that signal how different we are as much as those that remind me how much we share in common.