4 Harmful Myths That Hurt Cats

Debunking common misunderstandings with actual scientific explanations for feline behavior

Zulie Rane
Published in
5 min readFeb 3, 2021

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A gray striped cat with green eyes looks up from a round cardboard cat nest
Photo: Ethan Brooke via Pexels

Cats are mystical animals. Pop culture would have you believe they’re capricious, confusing, clever, and conniving. Cat people (or the people who belong to cats, in more accurate terms) have struggled for millennia to understand cats and their mysterious appeal to humans.

The problem with mysticism, of course, is that it gives rise to conspiracy theories that somehow end up being treated as fact — or even policy, in certain cases. People operate under the misguided belief that cats are evil, that cats can’t love, that cats need to be declawed, and that cats destroy stuff just for the hell of it.

Let’s debunk four common cat misconceptions that are actively harming cats:

1. The ‘empty’ food bowl myth

One of the funniest cat memes on the internet is that cats think they’re “starving” when their bowl has plenty of food in it, just pushed to the sides.

An orange cat looking down at a bowl filled up with kibble
Photo: Kabo via Unsplash

Nobody talks about the true reason. Cats aren’t being capricious, lazy, or stupid…

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Zulie Rane
Tenderly

Writer and cat mom. Opinions are my own. This is my just-for-fun profile! My official Medium profile is @Zulie_at_Medium.