It never fails to amaze me at the potential for friendship between cats and dogs.
This comes from The Dodo website. It’s one of a number of sites that I follow. I should really say more but am lost for words so here it is!
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Cat Makes Sure His Dog Friend Is OK During Thunderstorm
When things get scary, we all need a friend to let us know that everything’s going to be OK.
For a pittie mix named Moose, that friend is a cat named Marvin.
Mary Barnes rescued Marvin six months ago, hoping that the fearless kitty would become a playmate for her 7-year-old dog.
“I didn’t know how Moose and Marvin would get along because Moose had never really interacted with cats, but she’s the absolute sweetest and most gentle girl so I had faith,” Barnes told The Dodo.
“They very quickly became best friends,” she added. “Marvin has the personality of a dog so they nap and play together all day.”
When Barnes moved into an apartment in downtown Detroit, she began to notice that Moose was becoming more and more sensitive to loud noises. Every time the pup heard fireworks or thunderstorms, she would immediately tremble and hide.
“I try to give her treats and keep her busy when it’s storming but she usually ends up going into the bathroom and hiding in the shower,” Barnes said. “She’s always hidden in the shower — it’s her safe place.”
Marvin doesn’t have the same fear of thunder shaking the windows. But Barnes never could have guessed the loving cat would step up and comfort Moose in her time of need.
“Last night was the first really big, long storm we’ve gotten in Detroit since Marvin has been with us,” Barnes said. “He was very curious and concerned about his big sister.”
Marvin knew Moose was suffering and he wasn’t going to let her sit alone.
“He went back and forth to her in the shower to check in,” Barnes said. “It distracted [Moose] from the storm for a little bit because she leaned down to give him kisses!”
The storm eventually passed, and Moose and Marvin quickly got back to playing and relaxing together.
If there’s one thing they both know, it’s that having a best friend can make getting through hard times a whole lot easier.
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The thing about this story is that our pet dogs and cats have a number of emotions and they recognise the need to comfort other animals in the same house.
I suspect that a wide range of animals also have a number of emotions.
I allowed myself to do a quick web search on the subject – there’s loads!
Try this WikiPedia extract:
Emotion is defined as any mental experience with high intensity and high hedonic content.[1] The existence and nature of emotions in animals are believed to be correlated with those of humans and to have evolved from the same mechanisms. Charles Darwin was one of the first scientists to write about the subject, and his observational (and sometimes anecdotal) approach has since developed into a more robust, hypothesis-driven, scientific approach.[2][3][4][5] Cognitive bias tests and learned helplessness models have shown feelings of optimism and pessimism in a wide range of species, including rats, dogs, cats, rhesus macaques, sheep, chicks, starlings, pigs, and honeybees.[6][7][8] Jaak Panksepp played a large role in the study of animal emotion, basing his research on the neurological aspect. Mentioning seven core emotional feelings reflected through a variety of neuro-dynamic limbic emotional action systems, including seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play.[9] Through brain stimulation and pharmacological challenges, such emotional responses can be effectively monitored.[9]
Emotion has been observed and further researched through multiple different approaches including that of behaviourism, comparative, anecdotal, specifically Darwin’s approach and what is most widely used today the scientific approach which has a number of subfields including functional, mechanistic, cognitive bias tests, self-medicating, spindle neurons, vocalizations and neurology.
While emotions in animals is still quite a controversial topic it has been studied in an extensive array of species both large and small including primates, rodents, elephants, horses, birds, dogs, cats, honeybees and crayfish.
There’s much more and it is a comprehensive article.
Learning from Dogs 