You know how cats are, don’t you? They’re not submissive. They do not need you to be happy. They can curl into your lap and purr softly, like they have known you forever, but the next minute, if something feels off, they leap away, flick their tail, and go sit somewhere else. For a narcissist, that rejection is a direct ego injury. If the cat does not sit in their lap when summoned or does not return the affection when offered, it is seen not as an innocent choice but as an insult.
My father, for example, hated my cat, no exaggeration. He hated her with a kind of irrational rage that only a narcissist can justify in their crazy head. He hated the cat I had as a child, and the one I got later; both faced the same wrath. He would throw whatever he could grab just to chase her away, yelling, swearing, full of venom over an animal simply existing in the same room. And what did the cat do? She would sit near me, she would brush up against my leg. She was mine, not his, and she would not obey him.
Narcissists do not want companions; they want servants. And when a cat does not comply, when it walks away without a care, the narcissist sees it as defiance. The truth is, they can’t stand anything with a strong personality of its own, whether it is a cat, a dog with boundaries, or even a partner who says “no” with confidence. The narcissist begins to burn with resentment.
Some narcissists will keep pets, sure, but you need to look closer. They only love the ones that act like props: the lap dogs, the overly obedient ones, the ones that give them control on command or validate their power. And even then, the affection is conditional. When no one is watching, they ignore them. When the pet misbehaves, they punish them.
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