How you can make a strong bond with your pet?

A lot has been written about the human-animal relationship, and the advantages it can offer to companion animal owners. Pets are often viewed as more or less interchangeable, as though the relationship makes no difference if the pet happens to be a cat, dog, or rabbit.

The emotional bonds that owners have to their pets can be somewhat independent of the type of animal involved, but it would be markedly different from one breed to another how the animals feel towards their owners. Moreover, these differences have significant effects for the well-being of animals who are in a relationship that is less than optimal.

Of course, it's clear that cats and dogs aren't the same, and what they can contribute to the relationship would represent the differences between them. Few cat owners take their cats for walks, so the advantages of physical exercise and sociable exchanges with other owners will primarily come from dog owners. Dogs are much easier to train than cats are, and are much more forgiving of other members of their own species: all of these distinctions derive from the contrasting origins of the two animals, and both are clues as to how their relationship with us is viewed.

In essence, the domestic cat is a very solitary and aggressive animal and one that, despite appearances to the contrary, is still not fully domesticated. Descended from the wildcat Felis lybica of North Africa / Middle East, it possibly started a loose connexion with humanity around 10,000 years ago. But domestication does not seem to have begun until around 2,000 B.C. in the sense of being a pet, and has not gone completely smoothly since.

Over the years, the status of cats as pets has waxed and waned, and only only recently, on an evolutionary time-scale, have they become as common as dogs. Most are the result of matings arranged by the cats themselves, not by their owners, aside from the minority of kittens that come with a pedigree. This habit brings cats beyond the strict concept of a domesticated animal, which demands that they be at least predominantly regulated by humans.

In addition, many cats tend to enjoy hunting, a practise that shaped much of their raison d'etre until recently, but now disgusts many of their owners and enrages wildlife lovers. It is possibly because of their exacting dietary requirements, shared with all of the cat family, including lions and tigers, that cats were unable to shed this habit.

Most of the food offered by cat owners would have been nutritionally deficient, requiring those cats to search in order to acquire the nutrients they needed for good breeding, before these became fully understood some forty years ago. Now that every supermarket has a fully nutritious diet for cats, no cat should have to go hunting, but not enough time has passed for this tendency to die out.

Dogs have a history of domestication that is much longer and more complete. In addition, they are descended from a breed, the Grey Wolf, which had already formed a highly advanced social brain that was, clearly, ready to adapt to human life. Dogs had already diverged into several forms, adapted for defending, hunting, and even as status items, by eight thousand years ago, when cats were only making their first tentative moves towards eventual domestication.

Domestication has created two important improvements in their behaviour that have been necessary for their adaptation to the domestic climate. They became much more accepting towards other members of their own species when they transformed into dogs, unlike wolves, who are extremely hostile towards all but the members of their own pack.

They also acquired a distinctive sensitivity to the language, gaze and motion of the human body , allowing them to be qualified to perform a multitude of tasks, from herding to guarding to guiding. Cats, unfortunately, may not have made as much progress on any of these fronts, often concerning other cats with extreme scepticism, and having a much more limited knowledge of human behaviour than dogs do.

The relationship with their owner is vital for most cats, but not all-consuming: most cats seem perfectly pleased with keeping their own company for much of the day. Cats certainly show a loyalty to their owners that transcends mere cupboard-love, based on conduct that is often used to cement bonds between one cat and another, such as rubbing, purring, and licking. However, their poor ability to adequately interact with cats outside their immediate family means that they are unintentionally put under considerable stress by many owners.

Cats do not necessarily "get along" with each other, but in the expectation that it would be "business" for their original pet, several owners will get a second cat, only to see their house being acrimoniously split into two different territories. As soon as it emerges through the cat-flap, even a cat that feels secure when in the home of its owner can be terrorised by a neighbour's cat.

The attachment they feel for their owner is central to their well-being for most dogs. Thousands of years of choice for biddable and easy-to-train animals have ensured that while dogs enjoy the company of each other, they crave human attention. Unfortunately, the ability to turn this off at will does not seem to have grown, so the common practise of leaving pet dogs alone for hours at a time will cause them significant distress. Fortunately, once they are on their own, it is possible to teach dogs to relax, if they have not already experienced the cycle of anxiety triggered by what they experience as frequent abandonments.

The well-being of both cats and dogs therefore depends critically on the expectations of their owners as to how they experience the relationship. For most cats, the cautious and sympathetic handling of their encounters with other cats by their owner is maybe more important than the complexities of the relationship with their owner they enjoy. Dogs, on the other hand, experience the bond with such an intensity that many can be fulfilled only if they are taught how to deal with being left alone.

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