Why does my cat scream and meow at me when anyone is in the shower? She seems genuinely distressed.

why-animals-do-the-thing:

You know, I don’t have an answer for you! It’s something we see a ton in internet videos and I hear anecdotal stories about it all the time, but I’ve actually never heard a good explanation. 

If I had to take a wild guess, I would assume it’s just sort of a really weird situation for a cat to observe: not so much because of the ‘human is getting wet’ part, but because it also involves a lot of noise from the water and the fan and has uncomfortable things like shower curtains and lots of smells. That’s a lot of sensory stimulus, and I could see either the novelty of it stressing the cat out, or maybe just them being concerned because of it. 

Since we are social members of our cat’s group – all “cat things we’re weird bipedal cats” memes aside – it might make sense that either the cat is concerned that we’re doing something as strange as showering, or that the cat is wanting to be near us and be social but does not like the proximity to all the stimulus of the shower. 

But that’s also literally a wild guess, so take it with as much salt as you think appropriate. Something about showers definitely distresses a lot of cats, but since they can’t tell us what it is and running studies on the variables to try to narrow down what it is they’re reacting to would be really time-intensive, we may never know!

Are cats intelligent enough to project their own dislike of a specific situation onto another, i.e. “thinking” that because they would find a situation uncomfortable, another being would as well?