cats don’t understand what it means when you give them kisses ):
good news tho!! they understand it 2 a point (i was distraught about this post so i looked it up)
cats don’t kiss like humans but they do appreciate human touch and feel loved when u kiss and pet them
they don’t understand kisses but they accept them as forms of affection n love
ur cat knows u love them
You can also help them understand by mixing kisses with rubbing your cheek/nose/forehead over the top of their head, their cheek, or down their shoulders, just like cats rub against each other and humans to show affection. Also gently bonking foreheads to imitate the ‘I love you please pet me’ headbutt. Brushing & scratching at itchy spots for them imitates the grooming that cats who live together in colonies do for each other. Basically just try to find hygienic ways of imitating cat social behaviors, short of actual licking, lol.
My cat will touch her nose to mine & rub her cheek across my face, which allows me to plant a kiss on her cheek. When she’s sitting in my lap, she’ll tip her head back until I lean down and kiss or nuzzle the top of her head. I’ve even found her occasionally trying to imitate the “mwah!” sound of my kisses, where she’ll nuzzle my face and make little chirping “mah! mah!” sounds. Cats are pretty smart little social creatures; they’ll figure out how to speak your language, especially if you put in the effort to speak theirs.
Cats absolutely can learn what kissing is and one of ours stubbornly solicits it by jamming herself under our chins and tipping her little head to the side with her ears flat to make a landing zone. Only little kisses with little kissy sounds satisfy her.
If given the chance to learn, and not forced into accepting it, they understand what kisses mean perfectly well. I promise they do.
My one cat used to do a thing where his greeting to me was to raise his head at me so I could kiss the top of it, he absolutely knew what my kisses meant. We had a kiss/headbutt combo to mix both of our affectionate greeting styles.
And my other cats start purring when I kiss their faces, they know it’s a form of affection. (And two of mine even shove their mouths on me when they headbutt as a way to “kiss” me back. The third just tries to break my nose headbutting me so hard.)
