Raised voices happen sometimes. The other day, Mrs. WeHaveCookies were working some stuff out that now seems trivial and childish, but needless to say there was some yelling, contributed to by the fact that I was upstairs and she was downstairs for some of the time.
A few moments into the exchange, I realized that my oldest cat, Tallulah, had followed me upstairs from the living room where the argument started and was meowing and trying to get my attention way more energetically than she does when the food bowls are empty or she wants to go outside. As I paced around upstairs, she was right under my feet, meowing. As our volume ebbed and flowed, so did her’s. The more upset I got, the louder and more frantic Tallulah became, until I picked her up and she immediately started purring up a storm.
All 4 of my cats are very reactive to my voice, and we “talk” to each other a lot, but I find this particular behavior fascinating. Tallulah seems particularly prone to such things too. Back when I was single and living alone and things had been particularly quiet for a few hours with her napping on the couch, if I made a phone call and suddenly started talking, she would wake up and stretch and start talking back to me.
The phone behavior is easily explained as just a general reaction to my voice that I have trained her to do with affection as positive reinforcement, but the persistence and determination to get my attention and hold her while we were fighting was distinctly different than her usual chatty kitty behavior.
I’ve seen related behavior much more commonly with dogs who cower and hide during an argument, but raised voices are much more common when training dogs than with cats, and I’ve never seen a dog determined to enter into the area of an argument in any way other than aggressively in defense of their owner from an perceived threat.
Hrm. I don’t think my sweetie and I have raised our voices to each other <it’s only been 2 years though; give it time!> We do the damage with sarcasm and silence until whoever’s pissy gets over it, and then it’s all good again.
I doubt our cats would react to sarcasm, as they’d be fleeing/mreowing/whatever pretty much any time the television was on in that case.
My cat does the same thing, and if you continue to ignore her… She bites your toes. Shes not a big cat, but she responds to louder vocalization with her own hollering. It does get progressivley louder, too.
Once upon a time we had a Weimaraner who was gentleness itself and a Siamese cat who hated him. If anyone used a loud voice, the cat would assume we were scolding the dog and she would chase him until he hid, cowering, under the desk. Poor puppy!
Whenever my girlfriend and I get into a heated argument (or any that could be conceived as one), our corgi will attempt to crawl into one of our laps and lick your face. It’s impossible to stay mad with something this cute occurring, and we stop fighting. A corgi should be part of any couples therapy group.
Our German Shepherd is still a puppy (a big puppy at 15 months old) and when SWMBO and I raise our voices in an argument, he will often chime in with a ululating howl that pretty much stops the argument (or at least the volume).
If I were to anthropomorphize the mutt, I’d say he was crying 'Mommy, Daddy, stop fighting!"
Our fluffy cat would start clowning through whatever room we were fighting in, with the seeming message, “Hey, we’re alive, we should be playing!” She’d get sillier the longer we went on, until humor won out over aggravation.
Not SO fighting, but the last dog my parents had while I was living at home would bite my sister any time people started hugging. Every time I came home, she’d get all excited, maybe pee on the carpet a bit, and then bite my sister. No idea why, really; the dog bonded more with my sister than she ever did with me.
My cat starts meowing and comes over and has to check me out any time I make fake crying noises (real crying, however, is completely uninteresting). Pets is weird.
Our pets do that with any raised voice. This morning we were watching last night’s Daily Show and both burst into sudden hysterical laughter at something Palin said - the dog hurled himself into his crate and the cats immediately came running to us to distract us from what they thought was a real brawl. They do that whenever we tell each other stories and use “voices”, too.
We don’t yell or get visibly angry, so the animals don’t know when we’re arguing. They don’t seem to notice on the rare occasions I cry, either. I’m not a very dramatic weeper, though, just tears, no noise.
My dogs and cats can tell who I am mad at if I raise my voice when they are being bad, and the non-guilty parties don’t get flustered.
Growing up, my dog (who I still have, she is 13 now) would get visibly upset (tail between legs, ears flat, cringing) and run upstairs to hide in my room whenever there was yelling. Which there was a lot of, usually at me.
I remember once when I was a kid; my Dad was whipping my ass with a belt. (Relax, it was the 70’s and I deserved it.)
Apparently, our pet German Sheppard didn’t like this and took a big huge bite out of MY Dad’s hind section. It was bad enough that we had to go to the hospital to get him stitched up.
