Look What We’re Doing

I don’t know how much of what we do on a day-to-day basis is understood by our cats, but I’m guessing it’s limited. I think they understand sleeping and eating. I think they understand cooking a little bit. They’ve certainly come to associate it with food and eating. They understand play: batting a toy around or chasing each other.

Animals understand movement and intent, especially as it relates to them. They know when they’re being stalked, for example, like when I’m trying to give one of our cats his medication. The only way I can successfully do it these days is when I pretend to walk past him to go into another room or act like I’m looking for my phone.

So it probably shouldn’t surprise me that they behave as if I am available for play or head scratches or incessant petting when I’m working at my computer. It certainly doesn’t look like I’m busy from the perspective of the descendants of an apex predator. It doesn’t look like napping or even self-grooming. I think even other primates would wonder what it is that has captured my attention so completely.

To be fair, we also wonder at times what, exactly, animals are doing. It’s not like we have everything figured out—and we have a lot of advantages in that department. But even if animals had language, how exactly would we begin to explain why we focus so intensely without hunting prey? Why we remain nearly motionless for hours on end without sleeping? Why the things we appear to have caught and are playing with are so inert and lifeless (unlike a mouse or a bird), and why the game seems so dull?