People fear cats. This is ridiculous.

I was made thoughtful by this comment:

? according to CDC data, dogs killed 167 Americans over the age of 14 between 2001 and 2010! That?s 19 people a year. I?ll stick with cats, thank you very much!

Exactly. I hadn?t really thought about this small, but real, danger.

I?m not saying dogs are dangerous, because those are tiny numbers compared to the 78.2 million pet dogs in America. And these incidents are, almost invariably, dogs who have been abused and not properly trained or socialized. When 80 percent of recorded attacks are by intact males it?s really a problem with stupid humans, not dangerous dogs.

It?s not a breed issue, either. A few decades ago it was Dobermans and German Shepherd Dogs who were demonized. Such ?breed panic? is a function of what breed is trendy to abuse for paranoid reasons of the owner.

Still, it would make much more sense to fear dogs? but then, phobias are not about sense. Ailurophobia, (the persistent, irrational, fear of cats,) is completely based on ignorance and prejudice. Because cats are not dangerous.

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Therapists agree that such phobias often take root in our very early years, when we misinterpret a lot of the world. At such ages our reasoning and communication skills are not up to the task of unraveling our motives and deciding if they make any sense. In addition, parents have an over-protective tendency to encourage our fears, either because they share them and that?s how we got it in the first place, or they don?t know how to defuse it and ?protect? us by default.

This is only reinforced if the greater society seems to agree. Fearing rubber duckies is the stuff of ridicule; it?s hard to find sympathetic support. While fearing cats is downright celebrated.

From the superstitious fear of black cats to the constant casting of cats as villains, it?s not surprising that many people react irrationally to the thought of cats as pets. Such fears persist because the person will deny, vehemently and angrily, that their phobia makes no sense.

Because cats are sneaky and arrogant and up to no good! Everybody knows that!

This is not rational thought. This is actually its polar opposite: rationalization. Our brains have an amazing ability to come up with a raft of excuses to do what we are being urged, by our emotions, to do. But since our society downgrades emotional reasons, we grasp at straws of ?sense? even if our excuses don?t make any.

While one of the most persistent myths about cats is that they will ?smother babies in their sleep,? my research about expectant mothers and their cats indicated that this had never happened. At least, not since the CDC had been keeping records.

Phobias drag other irrational thought processes along for the ride. The excuses widen their net and distort many other aspects of the sufferer?s life.

This has larger implications because irrational fears lead to pointless responses which is damaging to society. The Pit Bull Legislation Craze has claimed many victims while not making anyone?s lives safer. But the public enjoys an illusory sense of ?doing something? while real causes of danger, such as dog fighting and animal cruelty, are not focused on enough.

Cat phobia leads to the way cats are denigrated in rescue. When cats have a 2-3% retrieval rate from shelters, when communities think they are solving their feral cat problem by euthanizing them wholesale, and when cats are regarded as disposable and unworthy of vet care, we have a harvest of suffering that is completely avoidable. We have yet another generation of cats carelessly allowed to breed, and then killed for doing so.

The problem is two-fold. Humans miss out on the enjoyment of cats. Cats miss out on the joy of having a home.

That?s a whole lot of potential love going to waste.

Explore these treatment options for phobias.

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Source: http://www.wayofcats.com/blog/cats-are-not-dangerous/22652

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