Zagneth said:
Well, I have to disagree a little bit here. Dogs are pack animals, every single dog species, even wolves, are pack animals. Thats why they recognize an alpha individual, be it another dog or a human, as their leader. They obey their alpha pack leader, which is why dogs are so trainable. Cats on the other hand, are solitary mainly, lions are the only cat breed that respond to pack behavior. Cats are highly individualistic, they cant be trained in the normal sense, and have very distinct personalities. Most cat owners can say that their cats have an air of arrogance in them. They tend to do things their own way and in their own time. Granted, cats can be great lovable pets, loving attention and such, knowing when their owners need affection and whatnot, but its nowhere near the on command thing that it is in dogs. It has nothing to do with breeding out natural instincts, its all about the way their species is wired.
Well, yes, that's true. What I mean is that dogs are all descended from wolves. A wild wolf has all the characteristics of all the dog breeds, whereas each domestic dog breed has had a large portion of their instincts bred out over the years, leaving just the ones that are more useful to a domesticated pet or hunting animal. I mean, that's why they were bred to be so many different types. Cats, on the other hand, have not been bred to nearly the same degree, and they retain many of their original wildcat instincts from the speciaies they descended from. Maine coons are the only type I can think of that has been specially bred to serve a certain function and look a certain way.
In any case, of course dogs and cats are vastly different animals. It just seems to me that a cat is closer to its genetic roots than a dog is, simply because dogs, although of course they're heavily influenced by their wolf history, have been genetically altered purposely through selective breeding over thousands of years to a much greater degree than cats have. I'm not trying to say that cats are better than dogs or anything, just much different, and I personally find cats to be much more like humans than dogs are. it took a lot of observation and companionship of both types of animals for me to see this. A dog is very compassionate and connected to its family (you, other dogs, etc), but I don't think it's any more so than a cat, and in some ways I think they're less understanding of the complexities of emotion than cats are. Cats, like a lot of humans, put up a wall, put on a face for things they don't absolutely trust, whereas dogs are more blindly accepting, and reactionary to the emotions they are feeling. But if you ever get a cat to the point of absolute trust, by raising them from a newborn kitten with their mothers and never, ever being inconsistent with your treatment of them and always showing them as much love as possible, they will drop that wall with you, and you can see how amazingly responsive and intuitive they are. My cats seem to be able to read my mind a lot of the time. They just always know what's going on!
another thing - in the aftermath of the terrible earthquake/tsunami catastrophe hardly any animals were found dead - they'd almost all fled from the coast as if they had known what was coming, or, that something was coming. Surely the human being has once had this same ability to 'sense' what might be happening in the near future. Surely we used to be more in sync with nature than we are now. Whether it is just civilisation or whether evolution has taken its toll there too I do not know.
I think we do indeed still have that ability, although perhaps it is beginning to fade. I think the reason for the fading is entirely our society, however, western culture. This culture scoffs at the idea that we could have anything beyond our 5 obvious senses, generally dismissing the idea of working on instinct and feeling. The more I realize this, and the more I practice, and the more I rely on strong intuition, the more I realize that I can definitely sense a whole lot more than our society would let on.
Animals, of course, don't have this degree of higher thought (that I'm aware of), and they certainly don't have a culture they're immersed in that's constantly telling them they just have an overactive imagination. So their sensing of these things is just as real to them as their sight, their smells, and so forth.
Anyway, my cats, especially the one we raised from a kitten who considers me his dad, generally get very friendly and responsive and cuddly when I'm tripping. However, on strong tryptamines, most notably x-xx-DMT or n,n-DMT itself, he becomes very, very concerned and begins acting very weirdly. I went downstairs where he was, after I had taken and was fully up on 4-AcO-DMT, and because of his bizarre behavior I thought he was poisoned! He was making strange yowling noises, mournful sounds, and running into things with his head (not hard, but repeatedly). He would roll his head on the ground, look like he was flopping down, and then he'd pop back up, bristling, and he would randomly jump up, all puffed up, at absolutely nothing and stare at it.
Very weird. I almost called the vet because I wondered if he had gotten into something poisonous. It seriously seemed like he was dying. But after I calmed him somewhat, I left and he returned to normal.
EDITED for removal of a sentence that made it sound like I gave my cat 4-AcO-DMT! I definitely would not do that! 