eye blinking to communicate. I read from an animal behaviorist that, In cat language, eye blinking is a signal of friendship, agreement, no hostility, and even of affection.
Ember is very sweet, caring, and affectionate. But she is also very self assertive, partly due to her genetic background and partly to the home that I got her from, where she was left to fend for herself and became very self-defensive, to the point of aggression sometimes.
So Ember and I sometimes got locked into power struggles over house rules. I tried the eye blinking to show her that I was a friend, not an adversary. After a while, she started blinking back at me. She still has her feline, self-assertive independence, but is more cooperative and we have fewer power struggles now. In fact, sometimes she cracks me up with her own use of the eye blinking signal. When she does something that she knows I don't like and senses that I am unhappy over it, she blinks at me. "Sorry I messed up, mom, but we're friends, right?"
It works because I can't help laughing when she does that.
Animals are so much smarter than we usually give them credit for.
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