Coronavirus facemasks have taken away our smile

This is not directly about cats or any other animal except the human-animal! But Giles Coren made a nice point in his amusing column in The Times newspaper today. Actually it was his cat Mo Tenzing who had the idea. With the coronavirus pandemic going on and on and on and with the prospect of wearing masks more and more and more we are going to lose our smile. And the smile is a very important aspect of human body language. It signals friendliness. We use it instinctively all the time to instigate friendly interactions with other people. I wonder whether this might be contributing to the additional stress encountered by many citizens of many countries? Is Britain going to become less friendly and more hostile because of face coverings? Another negative spin off from this damnable virus. Another is face mask pollution.

Giles Coren. Photo in public domain. Is that a smile Giles?

Giles Coren could not get the human-to-cat slow-blink, friendly greeting to work. His cat, Mo Tenzing, simply wouldn't respond to it by reciprocating his love blink. I get that because it doesn't always work.

The key really is to develop a routine, friendly interaction with your cat and that can be done with sounds and body language. It does not have to be a slow-blink as recommended by many cat behaviourists and which has been proved to work by scientists in a study. You can elicit the same reaction from your cat by making a friendly sound which he recognises as being friendly and when accompanied by friendly body language. 

Your cat will get into a rhythm when you make this sound (whatever it is as long as it sounds warm and friendly) he will slow-blink towards you. I can pretty well guarantee that. But don't expect it to happen every time because domestic cats are not robots and you can't just push a button and expect them to do something.