Harbouring the Kitten

Parallels between mammal species

I can feel this post going off the rails already, so fair warning: it's Monty Python's fault, if whatever follows seems a little disparate. My ADHD brain and “ooh, that's like this”... I promise, I have a point and I will get to it.

We have a terrified little black kitty, Jett, in foster right now.

One of the “cures” for kitties like this is to provide what her instincts will recognize as safety: mom-cat behaviour. Calm, slow, quiet physical touch. Bathing her with the soft coconut-oil-based cat wipes. Handling her feet. Head bumps. Mewing. Slow blinking. And, because she was anorexic, gently pushing her face into soft kitten food.

The need for safety in order to thrive is universal among mammals

When we mammals find ourselves in unsafe places, filled with unpredictability and threats, real danger– whether physical or psychological– we react according to our instincts: fight, flee, freeze, fawn, collapse. For the duration of the time we are in that state, we lose the ability to explore, connect, and thrive.

For Jett, born into a hoard of cats and then spending months in a shelter, that has been her whole life. What she has become, in order to survive, is a starving shadow, cowering in the darkness. The fact that she is now in a warm, safe home, with a variety of foods, gentle people, and no predators is something her nervous system cannot simply absorb.

We cannot tell her, “You're safe.” Not only because she doesn't understand the language, but because her body, her experience, and her instincts can't understand the concept. We have to repeatedly, gently, patiently demonstrate “safe” in a way her nervous system can perceive.

Now, a week in, her ears have stopped being permanently back as though she's in a supersonic wind tunnel. They come forward as she looks around tentatively. Her tail unwraps from her body. Her body has found a few very quiet moments of purring. She has returned to trusting the food, so she's eating.

Her body is still tensed, ready to scurry back into hiding. We still have to go pick her up out of her hiding place, but things are changing. Her nervous system has come back to ground enough for her instinctive curiosity to notice new evidence: The bad thing isn't happening now.

This is where I return to Adaptive Architecture.

This isn't about frightened kittens, but perception.

What if perception relies almost entirely on the current state of the person's (mammal's) nervous system?

Consider someone desperate for a cigarette. What fills their perceptual field is: 'Where can I get a cigarette?' 'Where are my smokes?' 'How long until I can have one?' 'I'm dying for a cigarette.'

The roses may be beautiful. The children screaming and running around nearby may be hilarious. The colour of the stormy sky may be extraordinary. None of it will register in the perception of this person in this state, and if it does, it will be only as a distraction or an irritation.

The same thing happens with any sufficiently powerful state: Desperation. Hunger. Exhaustion. Chronic pain. Fear. Loneliness. Delight. Curiosity. Contentment.

The state of an adaptive system changes what that system can perceive.

Jett isn't choosing not to explore the room, her perceptual system is organized around vigilance. She is looking out for the next terrible thing, and the absence of the terrible thing is initially almost invisible. There is no perceptual space available for: Nothing bad is happening. That sound isn't a threat. Those people keep coming back and nothing bad happens. That food is still here. I am not being chased.

Jett is responding entirely to what her nervous system has learned to expect: danger, chaos, threats, tainted food, inexplicably interchangeable people and places.

I think the parallel between mammal species becomes much more interesting than “oh, look, humans are like cats.”

As adaptive systems, just like cats, we can only adapt to information we can perceive. When our current state knows that survival information is the only information worth noticing, then all the evidence that might allow it to discover a different way of being ('look on the bright side!') will remain effectively invisible.

Jett is not 'resistant' to perceiving the safety she is genuinely in, her nervous system is in a state that is actively seeking signs of danger, for her survival. It is our task to create an environment that her body can recognize as sufficiently safe:

Safety enough to perceive.
Perception enough to explore.
Exploration enough to encounter reality.
Reality enough to update the map.

An important word: enough.

Enough safety to perceive something more. Enough perception to explore something further. Enough exploration to encounter something real. Enough reality to change what you thought you knew.

Which means the kitten doesn't need to become fearless, she needs enough indicators of safety that her body understands, so she discovers the safety she is genuinely living in, and she can go back to normal kitten batting at the blinds, hunting dust bunnies and bathing in front of the fireplace.