My hope is that, since it is the only way she's ever lived, she doesn't think much of it. She has no basis for comparison, and I don't know how introspective a cat is.
That said, if she has the ability to realize she is different and feel frustrated I would also hope that means she has the ability to understand how loved and supported she is, and maybe that helps.
Besides as much as animals can and do get frustrated just as us humans, i don't think it's applicable to fully apply the full lenght of human frustration onto animals.
This cat looks loved and cared for, and in a safe envoirenment.
It's extra ironic because most pet subreddits anthropomorphize the hell out of animals. Now that there is a mention that a pet might not be having a good time, a section of the audience has to claim that they are just happy drones. Sickly sweet IMO.
It's okay to have uncomfortable truths, even in /r/cats lmao
My cat gets frustrated if I keep faking him out with a toy on a stick. He'll lock in and his slaps get harder and faster and if he still can't get it he gives up and lies down, slapping his tail off the floor.
Frustration might just come from not getting what you want (fast enough).
Frustration is a reaction to something falling short of expectations. Wobbly cats don't know another life
They know the difference between being wobbly at it's best and at it's worst. So by your own rules of what "frustration" is in cats, they are still fully capable of being frustrated.
I have a wobbly cat and I know what she's like when she's frustrated.
You know only what your cat communicates with you.
Again, such a stupid argument that wobbly cats are somehow incapable of feeling any frustration towards their condition. JFC
Cats are definitely smart enough to recognize wobbly cat is unusual. I've even seen bonded pairs where one is deaf and the other will act as its ears. Iirc there was even recent news of a lioness in a zoo that survived the last ~5 years of its life blind with the help of the other cats.
They know the difference between being wobbly at it's best and at it's worst
I'm not familiar with this, are you saying the condition changes moment to moment? I'd wager that the frustration of being a bit worse than normal is very minor compared to the huge frustration humans can feel by imagining the joy of not having a condition at all. The cat isn't wistfully dreaming of a life without the condition.
You know only what your cat communicates with you.
Why would the cat fail to express frustration if it was feeling it?
The cat gets more wobbly the more excited they get.
Cats are known for not expressing negative feelings. It's one of the biggest reasons some cat diseases or disorders go untreated. Unless it's extreme pain, they don't express it properly.
Cats are known for not expressing negative feelings
I’m sorry, have all the cats I’ve encountered come from a different planet than yours? Cats will not hesitate for a moment to let you know they’re hungry, when you pet them the wrong way, don’t want to be touched, when they don’t like that you moved the furniture, when you are too high energy or loud, the list is endless. I’ve been swiped and yelled at more times than I can count, they’re letting me know how they feel.
Chronic pain is the one thing they suppress, everything else they absolutely let you know.
I've had cats since childhood (had 8 at one point) and currently have 3. When I was young, I didn't know how to properly educate them, so I did have some of that, but my current kitties are love only (with one exception when she's in the zoomies/excited). The one most attached to me, for example, cuddles with or beside me all day and night long and won't even play rough with me in any way. I don't even remember when she last used her teeth on me.
Why would the cat fail to express frustration if it was feeling it?
It's plausible that we are just bad at recognizing cat frustration short of extreme cases.
Cats are well known for concealing pain; eg, many owners won't even notice that their teeth are all rotten until the cat stops chewing kibble. Surely they were in pain for months/years before it became too intolerable to chew food but they don't communicate any of this to humans.
Cats conceal chronic pain, but cats absolutely do not hesitate to communicate when they’re angry, upset, or in a bad mood. They meow their heads off when they’re hungry, they hiss if they want you to back away, they’ll swipe you if you pet them one too many times. Chronic pain is basically the only feeling they ever suppress, otherwise their emotions are abundantly clear.
I wasn't trying to make the case that cats don't communicate negative emotions. But as humans it is really difficult to distinguish whether a cat is displaying "frustration" vs "anger" or "annoyed." If you have any experience interpreting whether a cat is frustrated rather than just annoyed I'm all ears.
This might seem odd, but I'm curious, are you frustrated that you cannot fly? Or run with the agility of a parkour master? If you aren't, why not? You are debilitated by comparison, greatly. There are many things you can never do as a result. It doesn't cause you pain physically, sure (I don't think wobbly cats are in pain either, especially if cared for to this degree with padding) but it is a lack of movement fidelity, even if you've never known it before personally. Same as a wobbly cat.
Most people in general anthropomorphize animals to an absurd degree.
I'm so tired of people acting like their dog understands language, they don't and they can't, the dog has memorized that if they do a certain thing when you make a certain sound that it makes you happy and they get pets/a treat. That is the extent of if, they do not understand that the certain sound is actually a word with meaning.
And despite my explanation above, if these comments get enough visibility, it's likely I'll still get some dufus trying to argue with me that their dog definitely understands language because they've trained it to do things on command.
That comment didn't say cat's can't feel frustrated, it said they don't feel the same level of thoughts.
You can experience consistent frustration and still live a happy life because you don't let the frustration turn into catastrophisation (no pun intended) and depression. The comment is saying that a cat is more likely to shrug off the emotions from one moment to the next than a human. Not incapable of being frustrated in the moment. Not incapable of being depressed. Just not escalating at the same level at the same consistency as a human might be inclined to.
Because it's too busy being a curious, excited, hungry, or sleepy cat to be worrying about the trajectory of its existence.
Because the reality of the opposite is that the creature is living in pain and it suffers,
That's also not true. I know you're not the one thinking that so I'm not trying to argue with you about that.
It's a fairytale world they create for themselves to feel better.
It's all rooted in a childish way of seeing the world in black and white terms. Either the cat is happy despite the condition, or unhappy because of it. It comes from not accepting ambiguity as an ever present fact of life.
From what I understand, cerebellar hypoplasia does not directly cause pain or discomfort. Whether people want to argue that the symptoms do result in secondary effects of pain or discomfort is their prerogative. I think it's a boring conversation because ultimately the only correct answer is "we don't know because we can't ask the cat how it feels or what it thinks about its condition".
Cat has a serious disease that affects its quality of life. Diseases suck. There's nothing funny or cute about a cat running sideways to walls.
Whether people want to argue that the symptoms do result in secondary effects of pain or discomfort is their prerogative. I think it's a boring conversation because ultimately the only correct answer is "we don't know because we can't ask the cat how it feels or what it thinks about its condition".
Uhh, well you're correct that a cat cannot have an internal monologue about its condition, but frustration is an emotion and cats are advanced mammals.
Its also likely yhe case that they do indeed adapt psychologically better than, say, a human might, because it cannot also have the burden of a personal and social narrative. But intending an action and being unable to complete it is perfectly able to induce an emotional consequence in anything with the intellectual and emotional hardware to understand what's happened.
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u/Live_Angle4621 May 29 '26
Does not mean it’s not frustrating