The Love Languages of Cats: Sassy
This month, the month of love, we have focused on sharing about how each cat has their own specific love language, or way that they express their love. Just like humans, cats have different personalities, and each one may express their love in different ways. You can’t fit cats into a mold of how you think they should be loving or affectionate. Unfortunately, there are many people out there who do this. They have expectations of how a cat should express love and when the cat doesn’t meet those expectations, these people make generalized claims about cats being aloof and uncaring. In the many years I have shared my life with cats, I can testify that statements like those are just not true. Cats are actually very loving and very caring – you just have to take the time to figure out how they are. You have to learn to speak their individual love language.
If you’ve been following our series on the Love Languages of Cats, then you have seen in my home of 6 cats, I have 6 very different love languages being spoken. No two cats are alike, and I have had to learn each of their individual love languages in order to bond with them and have a happy and healthy relationship with each one. Some of their love languages were easier to understand than others, but learning how to communicate love with each of them has been one of the most rewarding and wonderful things I’ve done.
As we wrap up this series, I hope that you have learned something new about cats and how they express love, and that maybe you’ve even been inspired to make more of an effort to learn your cat’s love language if you haven’t already. Trust me, it’s worth it.
Sassy is our “street cat.” We rescued her from a stray-cat lifestyle a few years ago, unsure of where she came from or what her story was. All we knew was that she was an adult cat and had been living on the streets for who knows how long. My guess is that she had some negative encounters with other cats because she can’t stand to be around the other 5 cats in our house. She also has an extremely temperamental personality and can turn from sweet to aggressive on a dime.
Learning to understand Sassy’s love language was definitely the most difficult and frustrating one for me. The process took time, and I had to endure many rounds of hissing and biting (and I’m not talking love bites – I mean straight-for-the-jugular, blood-drawing bites). I won’t lie – there were times that I would get so angry at her and think that it was all a waste of time. However, after having those moments, taking a breather would always help and I would realize that I was wrong for thinking that way. I’ve still got some learning to do when it comes to Sassy, but I think I’ve become just about fluent in Sassy’s love language. So what have I learned?
- Sassy loves to snuggle. Like can’t-get-close-enough-burrow-in-your-neck kind of snuggling. You just can’t move when she’s snuggling. You can’t adjust your positioning, move an arm, a leg, turn your head… nothing. Even heavy breathing is risky. If you move at all, she may give you a warning growl, or she may just go from purring to hissing and biting in a split second. I don’t know why, but that’s just the way it is. I’ve come to accept that, and I will let Sassy snuggle and burry all she wants. I just have to play dead 🙂
- She loves to be petted. Especially on the head and face. She gets so into it that she purrs, poofs her tail, and drools.
- She loves to be close. Because of Sassy’s temperamental personality*, she has her own living quarters so she doesn’t interact with our other cats. Her room doubles as my husband’s office as well, so she spends her days in my husband’s lap as he works on his computer, or beside him in his chair as he practices guitar.
- She gives ear kisses. If she has an opportunity to lick your ears, she will take it. These ear kisses are usually accompanied by a poofy tail and purrs as well. It always makes me nervous when she’s giving me ear kisses because I’m afraid she will bite if I move wrongly, but I’ve learned to relax more with it.
- As I mentioned above, she poofs her tail and drools when she’s happy. Usually when a cat’s tail poofs, it means they are scared, unhappy, or feeling threatened. With Sassy, it means that she’s SUPER happy.
*Sassy is also FIV+, so the combination of her sometimes aggressive and temperamental personality make it necessary for her to be separated from our other cats. If she were more laid back and non-aggressive, she would definitely coexist with our other cats. FIV+ cats CAN live with non-FIV cats with no issues if everyone gets along.
As you can see, Sassy’s love language isn’t an easy one to understand. Because slight things can set her off, it would be easy to dismiss her as just being a mean and aggressive cat. While she has her moments, she has actually relaxed quite a bit over the last few years, and I can proudly say that I haven’t been bitten in quite some time. This in large part due to the work that I’ve put into understanding her and learning to speak “love” with her. She is actually a very sweet cat, and she has bonded strongly with both myself and my husband. She lives up to her name though, that’s for sure! 😉
Learning a cat’s love language isn’t always easy. Sure, there are some cats who are overwhelmingly sweet and win over everyone they meet, but for every cat like that, there is a cat like Sassy who is easily misunderstood and gets turned over to a shelter or tossed to the streets because her humans didn’t take the time to learn her love language. Just because a language is difficult to learn, doesn’t mean it’s not worth learning. In fact, it is often said that if you have to work harder for something, you will appreciate it more.
In case you missed the other posts in our series, The Love Languages of Cats:
Delilah
Sampson
Sophie
Caster
Kylo Ren
Do you have experience with a cat whose love language was difficult to learn? We’d love to hear about it! Share in the comments below.
Lone Star Cats says
It’s interesting how different we all are.
Summer says
Sassy is most like my human’s soul cat, Harlot, who was rescued as a semi-feral street kitten in 1986. She was fierce and temperamental and utterly devoted to my human (who herself was pretty much semi-feral at the time and still kind of is!). Perhaps because of this, my human understood her right from the start.
Sam says
I’m sure it’s true that a lot of cats that are “dumped” simply were not with humans who TRIED to get to know them and understand them. Makes it that much more sad…….but Sassy sure found the right spot and that makes me happy! My Mom and Dad totally understood everything about me for the 17 years I was with them and they are learning something NEW every day with my baby brother Teddy. We just need someone to TRY to understand us and once we know they do, we can be ourselves and relax.
Hugs, Angel Sammy
Lola The Rescued Cat says
Yay for you and Sassy! She is so lucky that she found understanding and patient parents. We loved reading about all of your kitties tjis month. Lexy took a while to come around to Mommy. She just didn’t trust people. Now Mommy can pick her up (and only Mommy, no one else) and she shows people her belly.
da tabbies o trout towne says
sassy..nothin wrong with a bit oh cat a tood huh 😉 !!! we iz buzzed glad yur mom N dad take time N haz taken time ta werk with ewe N understand ewe….now, how bout a song……due ewe noe: doe a deer !!! ♥♥♥
Three Chatty Cats says
That’s great that you point out that FIV+ and – cats can live together if they get along. It sounds like you’ve done great with Sassy!
Tamago says
It’s so cute Sassy poofs her tail when she is happy! Sometimes you need to make effort to understand but it’s really worth it 🙂
Caren Gittleman says
i missed one in the series and will have to go back and read it, I have enjoyed the differences in “love language” immensely!
Random Felines says
poofy tail when she is happy? that’s a new one 🙂 it is interesting though that sometimes the ones that are hardest to understand and take longer are the ones that can end up being the most rewarding
mommakatandherbearcat says
What a precious baby! Bear’s always been clingy and very snuggly. But Kitty was one of those cats that would always be in the same room as you … but wouldn’t want to cuddle or be petted. It took me a long time to realize that her always being in the same room as me was her way of loving me. At that time, I was actually more comfortable with that as well. When I brought Bear inside, his desire to always be ON me stressed me out (I wasn’t used to that constant closeness). Within a few months of tension and being outside my comfort zone … I came to NEED that from him. Cats are amazing. They sometimes know what we need better than we do!
Fur Everywhere says
Sassy’s love language does sound difficult to understand, but I’m so glad you hung in there with her!
Annie says
I love how you and your husband invested time and patience into understanding Sassy. She is so lucky to have a home with you! It’s very disturbing that people would toss out a cat like Sassy. Those kind of people are not loving at all in my opinion.
This was a great and very creative series!
Kitties Blue says
Emily, had you and Bobby not found and taken Sassy in, she probably would have been euthanized, which would have been such a shame. You have given her a good life and been patient, and it seems as if that has paid off for both her and you. Love to all, especially Sampy from Astrid. XOCK, Lily Olivia, Mauricio, Misty May, Giulietta, Angel Fiona, Astrid, Lisbeth, Calista Jo and Cooper Murphy
Ellen Pilch says
Sassy’s love style sounds like my KaTwo’s. She has her own room because the other cats make her tense and she chases her tail and bites it when stressed. She is very loving to me though- most of the time.
The Island Cats says
Sassy sure has come around and shows her love in special ways. 🙂
Pipo/Minko/MrJackFreckles says
Thanks for sharing all your kitties with us.
Our hardest was also our first…he was about 7 when he got to our den, and he was traumatized by having to leave the den and peeps he knew from kittenhood…it took ages, months maybe before he trusted us enough to give and take love from us. But he too was quick with a smacky paw…and growls and hisses, esp to those who persisted in trying to touch him when he didn’t want that. He eventfully became a lap kitty extraordinaire!