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Grief
Cats are aware that a familiar person/cat is
absent and may search for that person/cat. It may
change an established hierarchy as well as being
the absence of a familiar companion. It is not
grief in the human term, but the sudden absence of
something familiar is distressing to many cats.
The absence of a familiar part of the environment
causes sadness. The continued absence of that
person or thing can lead to stress. In the context
of a bereavement, this stress is termed grief.
As with affection, humans must analyze exactly
what causes and sustains human grief before
arguing that animals do not feel a comparable
emotion. Grief is a reaction to the sudden absence
of something or someone which caused
happiness/satisfaction.
The major difference is that cats show grief
for someone who has been a close companion while
humans show grief for a distant relative or at the
death of a public figure. Cats simply lack the
abstraction (and the memory capacity) which allows
humans to grieve for someone we have never met or
who has been absent from our life for a prolonged
period of time.
Comprehension
of Death (Bereavement)
Cat appear to comprehend a state of someone not
being alive - body temperature changes, smell
changes etc. Whether they make the link between a
corpse and someone previously alive is not
certain, but many cats stop looking for an absent
companion after being shown the body of a deceased
companion. Therefore cats probably have some
comprehension that something dead cannot become
alive again. The display of grief in cats is due
to the absence of someone familiar. In humans it
is, in part, due to the realization that we will
never see that person alive again i.e. to our
understanding of the permanence of death.
Pleasure
Pleasure appears to be an abstracted form of
happiness/satisfaction which persists after the
original stimulus has gone or which is felt in
anticipation of an event. In many contexts,
pleasure is a synonym for happiness/satisfaction.
Pleasure can also occur through memory and through
anticipation.
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