Do they know we love them?

Dear George, 

Last week was Valentine’s Day and my humans gave a cozy candle-light dinner for me. We shared the food less the chocolate cake but that’s all right as I love better my healthy cat treats made with wheatgrass and catnip!

It is true thou that no matter how dummies our human pets are we still love them.

We know, for example, how much you love Celia. And that’s all right too. You let her get away with lots of things out of pure love. I’m sure we all try to tell our humans every single day how much we love them but I’m not sure they all understand. 

Since you are the human behaviour expert what’s your opinion? Do they understand why we head butt them? Or why we purr loudly? Or kneading? Or giving them those little “love bites”? Or cuddle with them with our tummy up? What do you think?
I’ve turned upside down (as you can see in the photo) to understand them and understand their signs of love. How do they tell us “I love you”? What signs should we look for?
Cheerily,
CAT Victoria

Dear Victoria,

How far do our humans understand that we love them? They are pretty dumb when it comes to understanding our behaviour, partly because they are so blind to our body language. They sort of understand purring, head butting and kneading. But how many humans do you know, that can distinguish between the slow blink "I love you" and the fast blink "I am frightened so I am cutting off eye contact?" Not many, I fear.

So what are the signs that they love us? Well, they are very vocal and most of them pitch their voices a bit higher and sort of croon a little when they are "talking" to us. Rather like the way they "talk" to babies. Then there is stroking. The best humans know where we like to be stroked and do not stroke in places some of us dislike - the tummy or the backside under the tail. Then there is food, of course. Humans that love us feed us. 

However even loving humans take us to that horrible smelling frightening vet surgery where we are stabbed by needles....  We have to realise that our human pets are sometimes difficult to understand and accept them with all their failings.

Yours 

George.