Deborah Lipp

Having pets is a gateway to contemplating the nature of love, self, and connectedness.

I love Callisto. I adore her. And I believe she loves me. She sleeps wrapped around my neck or tucked between my arms, often with her face up next to mine. She seeks my lap all the time (and seeks Arthur’s lap less often).

But does she love me? Some people cannot be convinced that an animal can love. All of her behavior can be explained by instinct, by marking her territory, by leaving her scent on me and seeking warmth and so on. I could argue that making sure she can kiss my face through the night (moving around with me as I toss and turn) has no real feral or instinctual value, but some people would be convinced and some wouldn’t.

So, does she love me?

Why would we say that animals can’t love? Is love a part of intellect? Clearly a cat is sentient; it experiences sensation, it is curious, it focuses. Clearly, too, a cat is not highly cognitive; cats lack language, tool-making, mathematics, and comedy. If we say that a cat doesn’t love, does that mean that love is a part of cognition? That doesn’t make sense, does it?

So we can say that humans have “higher consciousness,” and love is a part of that. But that’s another poorly defined term. What’s “higher”? I can say my love is “higher” than Callisto’s because mine has selflessness in it; I do for her. Her love for me, arguably, is expressed selfishly; she loves by cuddling in exactly the way that she likes to cuddle. Yet a cat will tolerate a significant amount of manhandling from its favorite people. Tolerance isn’t selflessness, but it’s not selfish either.

If we say that only humans (or humans, whales, and dolphins) have “higher consciousness,” are we saying that only we have souls? I’m not comfortable with that. I am not 100% sure I know what a soul is, or where it can be found. I think, in fact, that it’s pure hubris to say I know such a thing. I mean, who the fuck am I? What then, is this higher consciousness that corresponds loosely to, but is not, intelligence?

Truth: We don’t know. We act like we know, we feel like we know, but we don’t. Because we sense it isn’t intellect, we associate it with the deepest and most spiritual of feelings, including love. And then we say that creatures who aren’t “high” on such a scale therefore don’t love. But we don’t know that.

All of this (more or less) ran through my head this morning while being rather aggressively cuddled by Callisto.