Cats

Caveat: This article is mine and mine alone. I the author of this article assure you, the reader, that any of the opinions expressed here are my own and are a result of the way in which my meandering mind interprets a particular situation and/or concept. The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of other martial arts and/or conflict/violence professionals or authors of source materials. It should be quite obvious that the sources I used herein have not approved, endorsed, embraced, friended, liked, tweeted or authorized this article. (Everything I think and write is true, within the limits of my knowledge and understanding.)

Cats are sometime referenced when trying to make a point about positive relaxation in movement. There is something else about cats that may help us understand our animal side. 

We are animals, we may be a higher order type animal but we are still animals. As such, we come from survival and hunter oriented stock. That part of us that is animal, that deals with conflict and violence in every facet of life still find ourselves in need of “soothing” that part of us that has not been removed by evolution. Cats, the domisticated cat is the same.

I am a cat owner and I have learned over the last forty plus years that one must do certain things to keep the cats happy and stable, especially cats that don’t go outdoors. If a cat goes outdoors then it hunts. No matter how domesticated they are they still have to hunt even if it is a toy formed to look like prey. It becomes more so when you keep your cat(s) indoors. 

It is just not any toy but one’s that can be chased and batted around. We humans have the same type of instincts going on even those of us who don’t go in for sports or martial arts, etc. We all find that we have to do “things” that when analyzed will bear out that we are just taking care of those instincts that still have not been removed through evolution. This is becoming more true, in my view, in these modern times of instant gratification and electronic social connections.

If we humans understand that we have to provide our cat friends some means to get out their aggressions through hunting toys or actual prey like mice and rats why can’t we accept the fact that there are some instinctual needs we humans have that are based on the hunter-gatherer-protector instincts? 

Isn’t they why we gravitate heavily toward such sports that meet those instinctual demands of the human animal? Isn’t that why marital/gladiator type disciplines hold so much importance to our lives? When I observe things like football, UFC, wrestling, etc., I see a connection to the times when we had those gladiatorial contests of the older Roman times. When I see events such as those played out at events like the “Medieval Gatherings” where they play the games of jousting, etc. I tend to think of these human survival instincts toward conflict and violence. 

Cats, we accept the fact that they have predatorily needs so why don’t we accept them in humans, especially outside the sport disciplines? If we accepted our nature and then made conflict and violence a part of our educational system toward handling those needs in the way many sports do then maybe we could help circumvent and redirect our aggressions toward a more productive outlet. 

I also see this as a possibility toward helping all levels of human existence in knowing, understanding and handling conflict and violence in a more positive way rather than burying our heads in the sand making false assumptions as to how bad it is and how we have to stamp it out when we all know, deep down, that it is a part of us and to ignore it and try to suppress it just adds fuel to the fire, so to speak, promoting violence that just baffles most of us when we resort to it. 

Cats accept their nature naturally and completely even if they are forced to rely on humans to find outlets. We can truly learn a lot about ourselves through our association with animals. Right?