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12:02am March 4, 2012

mid-delay:

I may be really stupid but I think Cassie might have some form of Autism.
Now don’t think I am really crazy because I know Cats aren’t diagnosed with mental disorders, it is probably really hard to make a proper diagnoses.
But I was thinking about some of the things she does and how weird they are.
I have never met a Cat who has acted like she does.
So while I was going over all my Childcare stuff today I started reading about the autistic spectrum, and noticed some of the traits were similar especially in children to Cassie.

For instance:

  1. Dislike of being touched / close contact - She hates being touched without her approval. When I pick her up she will try to wiggle her way out of it. If you try and sit her on your lap she will either wiggle some more or sit there and shows signs of being distressed (shedding fur) and repeatedly swishing her tail (this is a sign of anger) When you go to stroke her without her making the initial sign of allowing someone to stroke her she will warn you with a meow, if you persist she will growl at you.
  2. Extreme dislike of certain foods - She will only eat chicken or turkey and they have to be in gravy. She dislikes the texture of jelly.
  3. Repetitive behaviour - This one is going to sound a little random. So her litter tray is in our hallway (it doesn’t smell, It gets cleaned out daily) and when she has done her business we have picked up on a pattern that she has. 1 scrap of stones, 2 scraps on the side of the box and 3 scraps on the door (the litter tray is next to the electrics cupboard) and smell. She will repeat this process until she is satisfied or shouted at to stop.
  4. Behaviour that is aggressive to others - If you walk behind her anywhere she will hiss at you, if you do something she doesn’t like she will hiss at you, if she doesn’t like your tone of voice she will hiss at you. You get where this is going.
  5. Extreme Eye contact - Now I realise that more commonly in autism it is a lack of eye contact. But there are cases where there is extreme eye contact where children have been known to profusely stare with minimal blinking. Cassie does this on EVERY occasion she can. She will sit across the room and just stare at me for no reason. 
  6. Preoccupation with hands - She is always licking her paws, shaking her paws and when she sleeps she will tuck them under her body because she refuses to let anyone touch her paws.
  7. Walking on tiptoes - This one comes closely to her ‘tippy toes dance’ as my mum calls it. She will rest all her weight on her front paws and then tippy toe in the same place while wigging her tail. This is apparently how female Cats mark their territories. They normally spray. But because she is neutered she doesn’t spray. But I have never seen a female Cat do that. Normally they will just brush their faces where their whiskers are on you because that is where they have sent glands on them. My best friend has 2 female Cats and they have never done that dance before.

I am going to leave that at 7 because it seems like a good odd number to leave it on.
I just think it is rather amusing that she has some common traits of autism.
And it does (when I look at it) explain some of the reason that she does what she does. 

I know you meant that as humorous but I wanted to give a serious answer to those things because my cat, Fey, does many of them too.  (Oh and I’m autistic which is why I found your post in that tag.  Fair warning it means I can be blunt and long-winded and miss “obvious” social stuff most people take for granted.)

Cats have a variety of responses to being picked up.  Some unconditionally love it.  Many learn to tolerate it. Many only like it sometimes.  And some hate it. 

I actually think there are a lot of cats who tolerate it but actually hate it.  You can tell when their eyes glaze over, or they get a look as if they’re just resigned to it all.  These are cats who have been systematically taught, often since kittenhood, that they are going to be picked up whether they want it or not because humans just do that and you can’t really fight it.  Not out of any malice on the part of humans. But often definitely out of an unspoken sense that humans have a right to pick a cat up any time we want. And there are some who get even worse and believe that cats are somehow akin to living stuffed animals who can be picked up and cuddled no matter what because the human wants to be comforted.  Others actually believe the cat likes it because they don’t read feline body language well enough to pick up the signs of resignation and because they have always been taught that cats like to be picked up. 

I didn’t raise Fey with the assumption that I should be able to pick her up any time.  And she is not the kind of cat that practically begs to be picked up.  So she reacts much as Cassie reacts. 

I think that if I had tried to pick her up a lot it would have backfired in her case. She has a very intense personality and likes things exactly how she likes them. And can and will fight for that. If I tried to pick her up all the time she would probably have become aggressive, skittish, or a combination of the two. 

Think of it from her perspective. Imagine you’re living near a giant. And that as you are sleeping or trying to use the computer or go to work or whatever, the giant randomly gropes you or picks you up without asking first. You’d probably be pretty unhappy about it unless you had a specific personality. 

But because she’s learned to trust that I only do it on rare occasions, she seems to feel relatively safe around me. And that means we cuddle almost constantly some days and a good deal of the rest of the time too. But if I so much as try to scoot her over or bar her way or something, about 50% of the time I get bit. Usually just a warning.  Just her teeth touching my skin. But if I persist it stops being a warning. 

Another factor is that many cats find it painful or unpleasant to be touched in certain ways.  Fey has a nerve disorder that means if you touch anything this one nerve goes to then it hurts her and she will flinch or snap.  B

ut she also may have a more general condition called feline hyperesthesia syndrome (link has more info). This makes certain kinds of touch painful, and causes her skin to roll back and forth, especially if touched a little.  Her skin is extremely sensitive to pain.  This can make cats not like unexpected touch or picking up.  They may also overgroom to the point of hair loss, have muscle twitches, get really agitated for no obvious external reasons, and a whole lot of other things. 

Fey also does the same thing that Cassie does after the litter box. She wipes her paws on the floor, the wall, and the bathtub. At first I thought that she was carrying out the “burying” motion to extremes. But then I started wondering if she’s trying to wipe litter out of the creases in her paws.  That’s my current guess. 

Some of the rest of the stuff is common cat stuff.  Even really affectionate cats often won’t let anyone near their paws.  The only time Fey has ever let me touch her paws was when she was so overjoyed at seeing me after ten days absence that she wasn’t paying attention. (I’ve been unemployed for her whole twelve years with me, and housebound or close to it for most of it. So it’s very rare we are apart.) Being really picky about food is not a universal cat thing but I’ve seen so many cat lovers complain about it that it isn’t that uncommon.  I have a friend whose Siamese is so picky that she’s had to worry about her dying before she could find food for her.  (It’s often dangerous for cats to even go a day or two without food.  They can get organ problems fast.  Fey almost died at one point of hepatitis and pancreatitis from not eating. I had to force feed her in the end and she pulled through.)

Fey does something like the tippy toe thing. So did my female cat Brightspot growing up.  It’s again not universal but relatively common. 

The hissing – and possibly the extreme eye contact – make me wonder if she feels insecure or threatened.  I don’t know her history or if there were previous humans in her life. But even if nothing terrible happened to her, she might find you guys unpredictable.  Especially if she’s got the pain sensitivity and the dislike of being held.  But also if you do things she doesn’t understand, that for some reason scare her. She may also be high strung in the first place, which can make her nervous even about fairly minor things.  There’s all sorts of ways that most humans interact with cats, and teach each other to interact with cats, that cats may (depending on temperament) find painful, confusing, unpredictable, upsetting, scary, aggressive, or threatening.  And a cat who is very fearful will often lash out or hiss out of fear.  

Plus humans are big and have power over cats, and they know that perfectly well and can combine that with things we do to get really scared or mad.  Fey does a lot of things I don’t understand and I sometimes wish she could tell me what I’m doing to scare her or piss her off.  Because I know I’m missing a lot of things that are totally obvious to her.  And I’m fairly good at reading cats, but a species barrier is a species barrier and it creates a ton of misunderstanding both ways. 

The staring could just be about wanting to keep an eye on you too.  Whether because humans make her nervous, or just because. Also, cats do this thing where they seem to be staring in one direction. But actually their amazing peripheral vision means they are taking in everything in their surroundings and alert for the smallest wiggle in the entire room.  She could also be angry, but without other body language to that effect I’d doubt it.  Either way, cats don’t need to blink as often as humans. 

Oh and as far as petting goes, sometimes cats prefer face-nuzzling to petting with hands. And cats like Fey, they want to be asked permission. I put my hand out. If she shifts uncomfortably, pulls back, sniffs my hand and pulls back, or fails to sniff at all, I don’t pet. I also pay really close attention to signs of discomfort while petting. I try to stop at the first sign. I don’t always get it right but this all builds the trust that lets her feel fairly safe I won’t do anything to her she doesn’t want. And this makes her calmer and less scared and angry. 

At any rate a lot of this sounds like she is a cat who doesn’t like other people to initiate touch or picking up.  Or possibly just not without asking.  She may have the same skin sensitivities Fey does, or it could be something else. And I obviously don’t know her, so take all my ideas with a grain of salt. But it really sounds to me like she doesn’t feel secure and lashes out from all the fear and unpredictability. That seems to happen a lot to cats with a certain personality, living with humans that the cat doesn’t fully understand or can’t predict.  Or where they’re doing things the cat doesn’t like without even knowing it, which puts the cat constantly on the defensive.  It could also be that she’s a cat who feels she has a lot of authority and gets pissed when people don’t do what she wants.  Fey, and my friend’s Siamese, are both like that too. 

And then most of the rest sounds a lot like… a lot of cats, really. They all have tendencies in these directions to begin with, and some of them take it to an extreme. 

I hope some of this was helpful.  It just stood out to me because it’s so much like Fey.