At least according to your cat. An interesting writeup of feline psychology and how to get along with cats:

Why Your Cat Thinks You’re a Huge, Unpredictable Ape

The article makes the point that *both* negative and positive feedback are important in behavior-training a cat. But it makes the *important* point that *you* should be the source of positive feedback, while negative feedback should come from the environment itself.

“How the hell is your cat supposed to know that you’re yelling at him because you want him to stop scratching the couch?” Buffington says. Without the cognitive ability to connect your outburst to their scratching, cats see only chaotic aggression. “To the cat, you’re this crazy primate who is attacking him for no reason,” he says.

Instead of discouraging the act, you become an object of fear.

Basically, cats have Aspergers. Because felines are naturally loners, they did not evolve the need or ability to read very many social cues (unlike dogs which have been pack animals for millions of years, and have been integrated into Team Humanity for probably longer than 15,000 years). And if they don’t have much use for *feline* social cues, what are the chances hey are going to be able to figure *you* out?

As with humans with Aspergers, cats are often thought of by the ignorant as having no empathy, or that they don’t care about their humans. This, as anyone who has put in the effort can attest, is untrue. The fact that they don’t understand your social cues doesn’t mean that they don’t care about you; they simply don’t *understand* you. Their thought process is alien from yours, but it can be understood in broad strokes.