Sharing your life with animals brings delights you never could have seen coming, even if you’ve lived with pets your entire life, because animals are really, really good at surprising us just when we think we have them all figured out.
For example: Though this little calico has lived with me for years now, she still surprised me one recent evening when she decided to sit on the stairs with her paws neatly placed on the step above her in a way that reminded me of countless school portraits we all sat for as kids.
She even turned her head just so, like the photographers used to instruct us to do, to give us that same awkward posture.
It brought me unbounded delight to snap this photo and caption it as her second-grade portrait. And this gets at the thing that really zaps our hearts and minds: We love it when animals do something we think is oh-so-human.
There are psychological, sociological reasons for why we anthropomorphize animals, and scientists are studying the heck out of it, ascribing theories, examining our well-being in relation to pet ownership … but really, all I need to know about this is how I feel when I scroll through the sub-Reddit of cats sitting like people.
It’s just photos and videos of cats sitting around like humans. Dogs delight in their own ways, but these cats warm my heart because they show that even our most dignified feline friends gotta slouch on the couch sometimes.
It’s full of images that you’ll definitely want to write your own captions for, such as:
Louie appears to be ready to binge his favorite show. Hand that kitty the Roku remote and a drink! Oh, and can someone bring him the popcorn? He’s already comfortable and you’re up anyway, so …
It’s no wonder that this few-years-old video of a cat named Red sitting on a picnic bench in a very human-like pose has resurfaced and is floating around the ether of the internet right now, because our love for cats sitting like humans has no end:
Red even crosses his sweet little paws once he gets settled in. Like we’d cross our feet at the ankles. He looks like he’s ready to catch up with a friend. He looks like he’s casually waiting for his bus to arrive. He looks like he’s bored with the whole situation.
Wait — that last one would very much make him a cat.
Red’s human, Amy Audia Risi, took in the stray kitty and discovered his penchant for sitting this way one day when she caught him perched on her toilet seat like this, she told Fox 8.
Red, keep doing your thing, and remember, when you get bored, there are always more cat videos to watch.
This story originally appeared on Simplemost. Checkout Simplemost for additional stories.
