Jul 4th, 2025 Friday Sunny
As many parents acknowledge, children can show distinct “styles” in different stages of their life. An outgoing boy could become shy and reserved in his adolescence. A quiet girl could “open up” and become talkative by high school.
Developmental psychologists can list numerous theories that are neither all compatible nor all contradicting each other, that they would use to explain why this happens. However, while it is certainly interesting to understand (or at least make sense of) all these changes after they have occurred, nobody has ventured to make a bold prediction about what this boy/girl will look like in the future. The attempts of peeking through the crystal ball have, at best, been packaged with a probability: XXX raised in YYY kind of homes has ZZZ% (this is usually not close to 100) chance of becoming extroverted. The issue is, in the case of an individual, even if the ZZZ is fairly high (say 90), there are still thousands of factors that could somehow push XXX into the 10%.
In other words, unless you have a time machine, no one REALLY knows.
The same can be said about cats.
Unlike humans, at birth cats’ brains are more developed than human babies’, so the temperament that cats are born with play a larger role in their traits. Nevertheless, as independent creatures, who interact with the surroundings in all sorts of ways unseen by us, kittens often follow their own way of growing up.
Take Sesame for an example. He was a bit timid when we first adopted him, staying close to his siblings when any potential parent stepped into the room. However, as he was not afraid of being picked up, we brought him home.
Soon after, possibly under Yuuki’s influence, he was brave enough to explore the house, seemingly happy to run around with his sister and ready to cause trouble, supervised or not 🙂
Hoping that our cats will be friendly towards our friends, we made an effort to host parties, invite people over, and give everyone involved an opportunity to socialize. Until last fall, both Sesame and Yuuki were welcoming towards visitors, curiously checking out any new interest that came into the space. Naturally, they received plenty of admiration and adoration.
Strangely, from last winter, Sesame has turned a little fearful, to the extent that the moment someone – including people he has met before – rang the doorbell, he would run away and hide till the “threat” leaves. Sometimes, even the rattling sound of dinner kibbles will not lure him out. In the meanwhile, Yuuki plays the perfect host, greeting everyone and charming them with her rubs and smiles.
We cannot figure out the underlying cause of this transformation. Maybe it is not that important. After all, being the more introverted of the two, he may prefer not to have his territory “invaded” by strangers any way – he might have tolerated such “invasions” as a kid, but now he is a teenager (in cat age), he is more dignified to show his desire.
Despite that, he is SUPER sweet and relaxed when he is with us alone. One of his recent gestures has been this “belly up” pose. He does it whenever he is in the mood – with eyes closed or open, body twisted or stretched, with or without us around. While its meaning is yet to be interpreted, one thing is for sure – he must feel absolutely safe and comfortable here, to be exposing his most vulnerable parts like that 😛 This is his home.
Where were we when we experienced the same sense of safety? Somewhere we could completely be ourselves, assured that no one would judge or take advantage of us? Where we could feel valued for who we were, not having to pretend or put on a mask?
If you have a place like that, congratulations – you have found where you belong.