How to Read Behavioural Cues
There are multiple reasons why cats purr. The most common reason is to show they are content and happy, but they also use purring as a way to self-soothe when they are stressed or hurt.
Two months ago, two highly strung and mischievous kittens came to live at our house. We named the male kitten Nelson and the female Willow.
Nelson purrs a lot. Even before he arrived in Wellington, his breeder had told me that he was a beautiful kitten and a real purrer. He wasn’t wrong. From the moment we opened the travel cage and the kittens emerged, we noticed Nelson responded to us with a loud purr while Willow would cower, run and hide or attack with claws at the ready if we got too close.
Over time, Willow has come to trust us and readily purrs in response to our attention and lets us pick her up and play sans claws. Nelson has continued to purr whenever we interact with him. He has also developed the most annoying habit of peeing in both dirtboxes and other less desirable places! Having tried everything Google told us about mitigating his unwanted behaviour, we reached out to a specialist for help, only to be told that cats only display this behaviour if they are stressed.
But how could Nelson be stressed when everytime we stroke him, pick him up or cuddle him he purrs? And then it dawned on me. What if Nelson purrs not because he is loving the attention we are giving him, but because he is self-soothing in a situation he is finding very stressful? And, if he is indeed really stressed, might the way we are responding to his undesirable behaviour be actually perpetuating it? The answer to all of these questions was a resounding yes.
So how did we get this wrong for so long? In the past, I had observed cats start to purr at the vet and once, a vet had even told me that cats purr when they are frightened, so it wasn’t that I didn’t know that cats purr for different reasons. What was it that caused this purr-blindness?
Even before we met Nelson, our thinking had been biased by the breeder telling us he was a beautiful kitten and a real purrer, so when Nelson first arrived and started purring, we were already conditioned to think that this was the response of a beautiful kitten (think, ideal pet) rather than stressed animal. As his new owners, we desperately wanted to believe that he loved us and his new home. This belief closed our minds to considering other possibilities.
As teachers, we are constantly responding to people. We respond based on our interpretation of situations. These interpretations come out of our personal worldview, which is a combination of our experiences, values and beliefs. It is only when we deliberately set aside our own biases (and we all have them – it is what makes us human) that we can truly begin to understand a situation from the worldview of others. It is called gaining empathy.
Brene Brown, in her book Dare to Lead describes empathy as feeling with someone. This is different to sympathy, which is when we feel sorry for someone. Feeling sorry for someone, magnifies the feeling of being alone. When feeling with someone, it magnifies the feeling of connection. Empathy is at the heart of connection.
We gain empathy when we are able to deeply understand the worldview of another. We do this through conversations, observation and immersing ourselves in the world of others. Gaining empathy allows us to interpret a situation through the eyes of another.
I don’t believe that people are naturally empathetic. Our deeply ingrained survival instinct causes us to interpret and tell stories from our point of view and more often than not seeing ourselves as the hero at the centre. In the classroom, we are more likely to interpret a child’s acting out as attention seeking or defiance, rather than to see the unwanted behaviour as a response to the environment. Being empathetic towards others requires us to make a deliberate choice.
Having empathy for another person causes us to respond in a way that works for them, rather than the way our worldview thinks is right. Make no mistake, this can be really challenging, especially when we are in high pressure situations. But the rewards of responding empathetically are great and result in the deep connection, which is at the heart of the teacher-student relationship.
So what about Nelson? We made a deliberate choice to stop reacting to his stress-induced urinating. We started quietly cleaning up messes, all the time talking to him in a soothing voice. The first couple of times this happened he looked highly confused at our response! We stopped telling him, “No,” or, “Get down!” whenever he climbed on benches. Instead, we calmly redirected him, lifting him off benches and gently pushing his nose away from the fluffy milk on our coffee. We also spent more time stroking him and playing with him to build his trust.
In time, we know his stress-induced behaviour will be a thing of the past. In the meantime, we continue to respond in the way that builds our connection with him.