My new roommate is scared of cats. How to train my cat to stay away from her?

Ailurophobia. Image: MikeB

The question in the title was asked on Reddit.com about two months ago. It's a good question because there must be lots of occasions when young people share a home and have their own rooms and in which there might be a domestic cat belonging to one of the roommates. Not all roommates will be relaxed around a domestic cat. In some instances, a person might be genuinely fearful. It may be an irrational fear of cats which is called ailurophobia. This is the beginning of her post:

Hi, I have a 1year old female orange cat. She is quiet and a curious cat. So, my new roommate although she is doesn't like them, but from her behaviour it seems she's afraid. Every time she sees my cat from distance screams, my cat runs towards her to smell her and she keeps jerking or screaming.

Ailurophobia can be cured because it is irrational and it probably arises because of a traumatic incident when the person was young involving a cat. Perhaps they were scratched or bitten when they were impressionable toddlers. They become sensitive, overly sensitive to the presence of cats. You can desensitise people by gradually introducing them to cats at a distance and in a safe way such as putting the cat in a carrier and allowing the fearful person to sit in the same room as the carrier.

That would be a good starting point and then gradually you bring the carrier nearer the person and over time it would be satisfactory to open the carrier and allow the person to sit near the cat. You might start with a kitten rather than an adult cat which might be more acceptable to a person fearful of cats.

The point is that it is far easier to train a person to begin to accept cats and not be fearful of them than it would be to train a cat to avoid a person who is fearful of cats. I don't think it would be practical to train a cat to do that. Especially in a small space such as a shared home.

Of course, the person fearful of cats could frighten the cat away all the time which would probably deter the cat going near her but that I think would be very much second best and in any case a form of cat abuse.

The solution is in the hands of people and the concerns people behaviour. Below is my shortened version of the answer which I left on the Reddit.com website as a comment. It says the same thing.

I have an article on this on another website. The link to that page is below.

How to Cure Ailurophobia?

For the sake of completeness, I will prefer to Dr. Desmond Morris's words on this topic. I mention that ailurophobia might start with a traumatic incident. A second way in which cat phobia can arise stems from an irrational fear on the part of parents that the family cat might try to smother the newly arrived baby by sitting on them or lying on them when they are asleep in their crib. 

This is an old wives' tale and people still believe it. Not that often I have to say. This parental fear may be transmitted to their children because many a child may experience a shrieking mother rushing into the nursery and yelling at the cat to leave the room. The child develops an association between cats and panic which leaves him or her panicked when in the presence of a domestic cat.

It appears that in studies women were more likely to suffer from the affliction than men. It has been suggested that there may be a sexual content to ailurophobia. This is because the cat has often been seen as a symbol of sexuality. It's possible that in some instances an intense fear of the feline may reflect a suppressed sexuality on the part of the woman suffering from ailurophobia.

Many who suffer from the condition believe that there is no cure and they go through life with this irrational fear. In an extreme, sometimes they refuse to go outside in case that they meet up with a cat on the street. That would be extremely sad. There is certainly a cure as mentioned. It just takes patience and a willingness on the part of the sufferer to participate fully to a successful conclusion.

Guardian journalist overcame her fear of cats using 2 methods

Having read Annalisa Barbieri's article in The Guardian online newspaper, I can take from it two methods that she used overcome her irrational fear of cats.

There is no doubt that she suffered from ailurophobia which is the scientific name for a fear of cats. It was a lifelong fear which she readily admits in the first sentence.

Annalisa Barbieri and Sidney. Photo: Dan Burn-Forti/The Observer

This fear ruled her life until she became a mother and her children asked for a cat. She said no. And then gradually, she decided to take the plunge and adopt a kitten.

But she wasn't really prepared for it. She felt that she wanted to do this but I sense, reading between the lines, that she had not got her head in gear. She dived in and initially it did not work out.

She admits that she thought that domestic cats were tricky and that they wanted to harm her. And then a friend of hers, Tasmin, a person that she describes as being "a cat pro" came over and spent the day with her because clearly Tasmin understood that Annalisa was having trouble and she wanted to help.

Her adopted cat is a beautiful gray (blue) male who they named Sidney. He was 13 weeks old when they adopted him. A young cat. But he has a very beautiful personality, very calm and ideal for Annalisa.

Despite his personality she was fearful because of a deep, ingrained irrational fear. She watched Tasmin play with Sidney and noticed that Sidney genuinely wanted to play. However, when Sidney played with her, she felt that he was trying to be tricky and wanted to harm her.

Having seen Sidney behave under these two scenarios she was able to make the rational decision that she was perceiving Sidney's behaviour in the wrong way. The problem was hers she admitted.

So that objective appraisal of her mentality unlocked the door to enable her to follow the normal route of acclimatising herself to a domestic cat in baby steps. That is the way you overcome a fear of cats or any fear. You do what you are frightened of but in very small steps which makes each step manageable. In doing so you chip away at that irrational fear.

And that's what happened. There came a moment when she realised that she loved cats. She could kiss Sidney. She can 'read' him and understanding him and no doubt this skill is reciprocated.

The key, in conclusion, is to realise that the problem is yours and not the cat's and then to chip away at that fear in tiny steps because if you take big steps you reinforce your fear. That's because the interaction can go wrong.

There is no doubt that if a person is fearful of a domestic cat, they are not really going to interact well with them which might encourage their cat to take a swipe, perhaps in play. That would be enough to set back the whole process to square one and even worse potentially.

The cure for a fear of cats is slow desensitisation (familiarization)

A fear of cats, as you might know is called 'ailurophobia' (eye-lure-o-PHO-bia). A fear of cats is not uncommon. I'm told that nearly 22.2% of individuals living in the USA are frightened of animals of different kinds. I don't know the percentage for cats but it won't be insignificant. It might be to do with the fact that they are very competent predators with sharp claws and long canine teeth!

The cure for a fear of cats is slow desensitisation (familiarization). Image: MikeB

The cure for ailurophobia is straightforward enough and it concerns desensitising the individual. This is distressing for the patient. It requires a step-by-step process in which the first step is presenting to the individual things that are only remotely feline. They just need the merest impression that something associated with cats is near them such as a photograph of cats or kittens or toy animals.

After a while a kitten can be placed in a small secure cage and left about 10 or 12 paces away from the patient on the far side of a room. The phobic person is gently reassured to tell them that the cat cannot get near them.

Then gradually the kitten or cat in the cage is moved towards the patient over a period of days. The phobia can be reduced in intensity in this way until eventually the victim can actually hold a kitten.

At this point the sufferer can spend a lot more time with a kitten or cat and the longer they do so the better. It's important that there are no sudden unexpected moves. This would suggest that the cat playing the role in this process should be very placid and guaranteed not to undo the process by, for example, scratching the patient. That would probably terminate the whole process and call it off.

After a few months of therapy, it is usual for even the most intense forms of cat phobia to disappear.

The whole process, as mentioned, is about desensitising the individual or familiarising them to the fact that they need not be frightened of cats.

Ailurophobia might start with an unfortunate childhood trauma, a sudden unpleasant shock involving a cat or kitten. For a very small child, a kitten might look like a fluffy toy. They might squeeze the kitten too tightly whereupon the fluffy toy produces needle sharp claws and inflicts pain and injury on that vulnerable child.

Such an action is so unexpected that in some cases the child might suffer a mental scar and this traumatic memory can then develop into a full-blown phobia in adult life.

There is an old wife's tale about cats smothering newly arrived babies by sitting on top of them. Perhaps a cat sits next to a child while they are in bed in their crib and the mother comes charging in believing that the child's life is in danger. She shrieks and yells at the cat to leave the room. The child believes that the cat is genuinely dangerous. That memory carries forward into adulthood.

It is that kind of way in which children can develop ailurophobia but as mentioned it can be removed with a great deal of patience.

Declawing

I feel compelled to briefly mention declawing. Clearly, cat owners who declaw their cats are frightened of claws and teeth. In fact, some people even de-tooth cats. Can you believe it? But this fear of claws is irrational in my view. It is possible, using intelligence and learning about cat behaviour to totally eliminate the possibility of being scratched by claws. And also, it is possible to protect furniture from damage through scratching.

Knowing this, it is clearly immoral to mutilate a cat. Cat owners who want to declaw their cat need to be educated on how to live with a domestic cat and if they are phobic about claws, they can be desensitised as mentioned in this article.

Why do a lot of people hate cats? 8 reasons listed.

A lot of people love cats too. The domestic cat is slightly more popular than the dog as a companion. This is probably because the cat fits better into a modern busy society. However, it does seem that people have stronger feelings about cats. This results in more people hating cats. Why is this?

Cat Hater. This is part of a poster by Ruth aka Kattaddorra.

I'll list what I think are the reasons in order of importance. If you have any ideas, please leave a comment:

1. Lack of knowledge of cats handed down generation to generation. Children learn from their parents. If their parents have distorted ideas about cats for whatever reason (usually because their parents had the same ideas) then the kids inherit these thoughts. It is self-perpetuating. As the domestic cat is the most popular companion animal, I feel confident in saying that if a person hates a cat, it more or less has to be due to incorrect ideas about the cat. Why do the parents of kids have these 'distorted' ideas? These are reasons:

2. Fear. The cat is probably the world's most effective predator. The cat has sharp claws and a strong bite. The cat is quick and athletic. Some people are scared of that. It is as simple as that. If you fear something you won't like it. In fact, it can lead to preemptive killing or abuse. Fear of cats can be acute when it is called: Ailurophobia. But often it is just in the background.

3. Independence. Cats give the impression of being very independent. They can be but the domestic cat is actually totally dependent on us. Cats do their own thing. You can't force a cat to do something. This irritates some people who like to get their own way with other people. Alpha types are like that and they prefer dogs. The cat can seem aloof and often people who hate cats say they are 'mean'. Perhaps needy people require the cat to be more giving. The problem ultimately is a human problem and not related to the cat's independent air.

4. Feral and stray cats. There are too many. This is bad publicity for the domestic cat. The feral cat is forced to lead a dirty, cruel and short life in a human world. They are often ill with infectious diseases. Some are zoonotic. Is this why people see the cat as 'dirty'? The problem is the feral cat per se. The problem is the people who created the feral cat. Once again, this a human misconception but it is a reason why some people hate the cat.

5. Superstition. This goes back to the Middle Ages (14th century etc.). There is a long history here and the human race has still not released itself from the shackles of superstition.  There is still a lot of superstition. Black cats are bad luck etc.

6. Gay. Some people, I must say they are ignorant people, think that if a boy or man likes cats, he has to be gay. Rubbish; but this may have a negative impact on the male of the species liking cats. In any event being gay is irrelevant but there is still a lot of baggage in society attached to the word "gay". It was illegal in Britain at the time of Oscar Wilde and still is in some countries today.

7. Grooming habits. I have read some websites where religious types say they don't like the fact that cats lick their bottoms. They see this as dirty and devil-like. In fact the cat is very clean. Almost certainly cleaner than the average human!

8. Predation. This is the last item on my list but it is perhaps the most important. A lot of people don't like the fact that domestic cats prey on much loved wild animals such as birds. Obviously, bird lovers in particular dislike cats for this. Ironically, most cat owners are more concerned about their cat's safety as a reason for keeping them inside and not to protect wildlife. 

But there is increased pressure on keeping cats inside because there is a heightened awareness about the environment nowadays due to global warming and the gradual destruction of the natural world by people due to consistent human population growth and a lack of sufficient concern for nature.

When people see the destruction of wild species, they tend to pass the buck onto cats rather than look to themselves as the cause. And this can attract hatred for the domestic cat and perhaps more so the feral and stray cat. Once again people tend to forget that the feral and stray cat is a product of their own carelessness. This is a blind spot for humankind.

Associated: i hate cats.

Prophet Muhammad's love of cats transformed a Muslim cat hater to a cat lover

Qais Hussain's mother had an irrational fear of cats. She suffered from ailurophobia. Her son, Qais Hussain, in complete contrast, is a confirmed ailurophile; a cat lover. He has written a very interesting article for The Guardian. During the coronavirus lockdowns he wanted to adopt a kitten like many other people in the UK. As he lives with his mother it was impossible to introduce a kitten into the household.

Muslims with cat at mosque. Photo in public domain. Not all Muslims are this kind towards cats however.

He believes that her irrational fear of cats may have started when she watched a scary video about a cat in her childhood. She remembers seeing a black cat with green eyes jumping into a man's mouth and suffocating him. He also says that his mother actually hates all animals believing that "Cats are Satan incarnate, who use their cuteness and their adorability to bewitch and do the devil's work."

It seems to me that his mother had also been indoctrinated by many stories of mediaeval Europe when black cats were the familiars of witches and persecuted for hundreds of years. During that black era of humankind's relationship with animals, the black cat was seen as the devil incarnate, which is exactly what his mother believed.

He was desperate to adopt a cat and had the idea of reminding his mother of the stories of the Prophet Muhammad's love of domestic cats. There are many hadiths about how domestic cats and indeed stray cats should be treated by Muslims. Hadiths are believed to be a record of the words, actions of the Prophet Muhammad. They are reports of what Muhammad said and did. And therefore, they carry great weight.

IS DESEXING A CAT HARAM?

Once Qais Hussain's mother had been reminded of hadiths it flicked a switch in her brain it seems to me. She fully accepted cats and embraced their company. Her change in attitude allowed him to adopt a kitten who she adores. They named him Milo and she treats Milo as her fifth child.

IS IT HARAM TO SELL CATS?

Initially she was fearful and unsure around him but gradually got to know him. One day Qais returned from college to see Milo sitting on her lap while she watched TV. She now looks after him and in his words "she runs down the stairs to kiss him in the morning."

It's a good story. I'm not sure why his mother didn't already know the stories of the Prophet Muhammad and his love of cats but that's neither here nor there. She now loves them which is the right attitude!

I just hope that now she can learn to love other animals as well. As a postscript, Qais admits that Muslims treat dogs unfairly. Dogs are treated incredibly unfairly as they are regarded as unclean. Cats are regarded as clean. This is speciesism and I would hope that the senior clerics in the Muslim faith clear up this false anomaly.

Ailurophobia means a fear of cats

Ailurophobia has different degrees of severity. Some people simply can't be in the same room as a cat while others can tolerate them but can't touch them. Others might have a specific cat fear such as jumping up onto their lap. These are phobic reactions. Superstitions about cats particularly black cats still exist even though we are hundreds of years beyond that era in humankind's history, the Middle Ages, when cats were persecuted and they were believed to be the familiars of witches. Go to Africa and you will see a lot of cat superstitions.

Love Island lads are terrified of a cat! Screenshot from the TV program.

Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) suffered from extreme ailurophobia. Julius Caesar also feared cats as did Henry III and Napoleon Bonaparte. He became frantic in the presence of a cat. One night he was heard screaming with a sword in his hand. He was in a state of acute panic as a cat was hiding behind a tapestry.

This sort of acute, intense ailurophobia is rare. It may start as a childhood trauma. One simple reason might be that a young child grabbed a cat roughly and inappropriately and the cat struck back biting and scratching leaving the child traumatised for life suffering from an intense fear of domestic cats. A traumatic memory can evolve into full-blown ailurophobia.

There is an old wives tales about domestic cats suffocating babies. They have of course been entirely disproved but they are persistent and no doubt some people believe them. The mother who believes this may have a form of ailurophobia as a consequence.

Apparently, studies have revealed that women are more likely to suffer from ailurophobia than men. Dr Desmond Morris the renowned zoology and author says that some experts believe that there may be a sexual element to women having a fear of cats. Cats are sometimes seen as a symbol of sexuality. Perhaps these women have suppressed their sexuality.

The way to cure ailurophobia is to gradually desensitise the person concerned. You introduce the person to the domestic cat step-by-step. At first something remotely connected to a cat is presented to the person. This may be a picture of a kitten or a plush cat toy. From there you can build up to putting a kitten in a cage or carrier and the carrier is placed in the same room as the person. You then gradually move the kitten in the carrier closer to the person and in this way step-by-step you desensitise the person until she can hold a cat without fear. It may take several months. The most intense forms of ailurophobia can be cured this way.

We don't know how many people suffering from ailurophobia seek treatment like this. Many will suffer all their lives believing that there is no cure. There is a cure and there is a reason for it. The reason is irrational because there is no rational reason to fear domestic cats except that you might be scratched or bitten :)  !

An ailurophile is someone who loves cats.