Crazy Animal Behavior

By Valerie Olmsted

Dog people are often puzzled by cat people and cat people have a hard time understanding why anyone would want a jumping, slobbering, stinky creature sharing such wonderfulness with them. General animal lovers wonder why anyone would question having either as a pet-they realize all pets are wonderful.

First of all, let's consider the reasons many people give for hating cats. The terms sneaky, ferocious, scary, evil, and untrustworthy are often used next to the word 'cat'. Usually the use of such terms comes from a childhood trauma or learned avoidance by association with one who has suffered a trauma. For those who have suffered trauma from dogs, the terms run to rabid, dangerous, fleabag, attack and killer, so cats are not the only animals hated and feared by some people.

In truth, animals are just like people in some regards. When they are frightened or abused, they become ferocious and attack anything that comes near them. If they are trained to be attack animals, all they know is to attack-either on command, or on anyone entering the premises. Animals learn behaviors from their human companions the same way the humans learn from their associations with other humans. The phrase "hanging out with a bad crowd" comes to mind.

Like humans, if animals hang out with people who teach them bad behaviors, they can become just as deranged and awful as humans. Whenever news of a terrible attack on humans surfaces, most of us who practice responsible animal care have a tendency to mutter: "Too bad the animal will be killed because of that-it's not the animal's fault, it's the owner's fault".

Hanging out with humans has created so much trauma to the psyche of animals that it birthed a whole new arena in animal services. Now we have pet psychics, pet detectives, pet psychologists, and pet spas-just to name a few. Volumes have been written about animal psychology and how it has changed due to human involvement (and not usually for the better).

One of the most fascinating angles on animal behavior comes from the Buddhist arena. Buddhists state that everything just wants to live life. As an example, they will point out the effect the intent to kill has on an insect. You can try this out yourself. The next time you see a spider, ant, or whatever kind of insect innocently going by, focus your intention on that particular insect and build up a murderous rage. Decide you are going to kill it, then watch what happens: the insect will get frantic as it is overcome by the fear of being murdered.

For people who think that no creature but man can think, therefore there is no reason to consider the feelings of other creatures, this little experiment can actually open the mind. The truth is, everything that is alive wants to live. Period. Everything that lives is programmed to seek life and avoid death, even viruses and bacteria.

So the next time you think about why animals are going crazy suddenly and doing inexplicable things, realize the answer as to 'why' may be as close as the humans the animal lives with. Kinda makes you go 'hmmmm', doesn't it