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You're are not the same guy you used to be.I don't wanna talk about myself here, when I read about all the implosions of marital lives and torn relationships, scattered families, shattered thoughts, light-headed victims, drunk from the heaviness of what happened.Should I talk about the lies and manipulations and the hidden cruelty behind it or should I talk about the people behind the masks?Should I talk about the brutal discards I've read about and the cold-heartless smiles?Should I talk about the hideous facts behind their creepy behaviors or their disgusting addictions?Should I talk about the life wasted for nothing?Should I talk about the rage?If you think that their rage is their worst then you're wrong, wait until it's over and your name will be smeared, you're gonna be gaslighted, and demonized. It's only the beginning.If you think that it's over you're wrong.You're gonna deal with your longing and going in full length to fix it and you're gonna get rejected or ignored, let's say.You're gonna try to find answers and some closure, you're gonna search for the why and why, and why, and why….Then you're standing in naked in front of yourself, welcome to you inner space.Trauma bonds and CPTSD. The long journey back to your childhood where it all started, and that “ohhhh moment “ my dad is a narcissist” or “my mom is a psychopath “.The most dangerous aspect of engaging with a narcissist is that he/she opened an old wound, you never knew it existed, and you're exhausted already. It's not now, I am not ready to pick up the pieces of life, please not now.The most dangerous part of engaging with a narcissist is that no one will believe you or at least, understand you.The most dangerous part of engaging with a narcissist is you will be afraid of the world, from the people, and maybe paranoid.The most dangerous part of engaging with a narcissist is that the pain sometimes is unbearable.The most dangerous part of engaging with a narcissist is that the torture left everyone in this world and its after me only me…The most dangerous part with engaging with a narcissist is that you will be utterly sad, sadness will go then you're utterly afraid, fear will go then you're mad, madness will go then you're utterly lost( it's like a tag team working on you), you will try to pick up the pieces of your life and the tick-tick-tock time is running out, your wrinkles are showing , your beauty is fading , you're aging and you can't turn back the hands of time, your knees are hurting , your health is falling apart, your teeth are not lined anymore, your hair falling, and the stress is your tormentor.The most dangerous part of engaging with a narcissist is “how I protect my kids” or “how I am gonna keep my house and not being thrown into the streets, or kicked out of my job, or even get up from bed to face another day and trauma is in my head, under my skin, it's killing its hurting its painful, and I can barely breathe”.The most dangerous part of engaging with a narcissist is everything and anything. Maybe it's the first hello. I don't know.……………………………………………………………….Back to the question:What is the most dangerous aspect of engaging with a narcissist?If I am allowed to speak for myself here, I can say the most dangerous aspect of engaging with a narcissist was;“The end of my innocence in some ways.”Bassel Chibani.

Its damaging.I was a fat kid in India. At the age of 10, I weighed 40 kgs.The memories I had as a kid aren't something I like to cherish. I was called names in my school, 'mota', 'hippo', 'elephant'. It was mentally damaging to be judged and being called names by people who have just met you. It was very easy to get hurt. I didn't make friends.The fellow students I had in class would get so much fun calling me names, abusing me and making me cry.I hated visiting family celebrations. Close relatives on the very instant looking me would go 'You have turned so huge!' 'You will not grow tall' 'What do you eat?' 'Give me some of that fat, I also want to become fat'Sad thing is, I remember every thing I heard from people even now. My first cousin had remarked 'Only face saver is that you aren't dark, else you would be hideous'I was remarked on lunch 'Look at your shape, try eating a bit less'. I am sure he meant it as a concern, but to me it seemed like blows, slaps and lashes.To a child, these statements become poison, demeaning his self worth. I got so conscious with my body image at an age when I should have been happy.I would return home crying because someone somewhere had said something to me. Some teacher, some student somewhere would have commented on my obesity.My mother would tell comforting thinks like 'You will shed that weight with age, its normal for kids to be chubby', but that seemed a lie. A lie, because practically everyone else had a clear opinion 'You are disgusting! FAT!!'I would cry, I couldn't handle all that.I stopped eating. I refused to have anything that had any sugar in it. I did exercise too but I had disrupted my food habits. I skipped breakfast, I didn't have the tiffin my mom made for me to school.I would be hungry till 3 pm and have barely anything in lunch, removing half of anything that was served.I would want to vomit out anything I ate. I would literally torture myself to an alarming level.This went for a year. A year of unhealthy food habit, abuse on my body.It worked though the way I wanted it to. I had lost so much weight, nobody would call me fat then. I was not fat, I was weak.People act surprised, 'What did you do?' 'Is there a medicine you took?' 'You look better'I noticed that I had more friends now, my 'social standard' apparently went up. Relatives would not make fun of me and see me as a human and not a pile of fat.But it stuck with me, I vomited out intentionally whatever I ate and I stayed hungry till 3.I had become anorexic.Today, 10 years later, I remember these events as if they happened yesterday.I eat well, yes. But it has damaged me in many ways.Physically, I have to take an antacid tablet each day, other wise I get excess acidity.Socially, having being bullied makes you become over protective of yourself. Its harder to bind with people and welcome them into your life.I will never be able to have good relations with my relatives who I remember had made those comments.Been bullied, it offers you strength you never wanted. There are times when I get drawn to be a bully myself, but I hold that back.I never criticize anyone on their physical appearance, for I know, its something beyond your control and what it does to their mental health. Yes, being over weight is not healthy and as an adult, and one must have a healthy body; But, as a kid, I was simply being me.Bullying is always damaging. It hurts and scars the victim for life. It affects them socially, physically and emotionally.Even after healing, the victim carries a shell that makes him less welcoming to new people and friends.Now, I have understood importance of a healthy lifestyle. I eat appropriately and not skip meals. But, I don't think I can undo the mental effects completely. It has pushed me to an inner introversion mode. I use Extroversion as Chandler Bing did, 'as a defense mechanism' to safeguard my vulnerabilities.

Thank you very much, Kris Craig, for your A2A: What are pros and cons of owning a cat? This answer has taken a lot more time to research and write than I had expected and I apologize for the delay in writing it but I wanted to be as comprehensive as possible.I’ll start off by saying I’m biased in favour of cats. I’ve had cats for over 65 years. We call ours our “cat children.” Thus, while I am trying to give both sides to the issue I wanted to avoid a charge of conflict of interest by openly declaring a bias. Also, since Peach contributed a small portion of this answer he wants readers to know that he is biased in favour of his species.CONSI’m going to start off with the cons. Cats poop and pee and they expect you to clean their litter boxes when they are indoors. That can involve work (cleaning litter box, changing litter likely once a month, cleaning the litter box then with soap and putting it outside in the sunlight to air out) and expense (buying fresh bags of litter, around here about $18 per bag or $216 for the year). Sometimes, when things don’t go a cat’s way, it may pee or poop outside the litter box, which could muss up your carpet, bed, or wherever the cat happened to eliminate its waste.Cats have claws. You may get scratched if you annoy a cat or if the cat happens to catch you instead of its toy if you are playing. Scratches hurt. You may need Polysporin, but hopefully not stitches. Oh, and they also bite, especially when ticked off. Say “OUCH” again and grab the Polysporin. Claws also get used on furniture. You just got a new leather upholstered chair and the cat decided to mark it as its own by clawing it and shredding the surface? New carpet getting scratched and fibres torn up? Welcome to the world of cats. In all fairness, though, cats can be taught to use a scratching post so you shouldn’t really have to worry about the carpet or the leather furniture - but if you don’t educate your cat about scratching posts, watch out.Cats are predators and still have that instinct. Yes, they live in houses now, but they were the ones who chose to be domesticated, and on their terms. That means that there is still a lot of the wild animal in a cat. Cats often let loose and tear through your house, galloping as if being chased by a demon or as if they are in pursuit of a phantom menace. You can usually wear a cat out with interactive play which taps into the hunting instinct, but cats will never lose that predator drive and, if you allow your cat to go outside, expect a few gifts of headless birds and rodents to be brought to your door. If you love birds, keep your cat indoors so you don’t get carcasses at your door.Did I mention that cats domesticated themselves on their terms? That’s right. The cat is a pretty willful creature. A cat does what it wants, when it wants, and how it wants. A cat listens to no one. It comes when it feels like coming, not necessarily when you call it. A cat is driven by survival and territory. It does what it sees is best for it. Cats love routine and hate to step outside of it and they hate change. A cat is also highly intuitive. It knows even before you say anything that you are planning to take it to the vet or take it with you on vacation. If it doesn’t agree, it hides. In Ancient Egypt cats were treated as gods. They have never forgotten that. A cat knows that when it domesticated itself it agreed to do minimal work in the mousing department in return for food, water, a safe place to sleep, and service from humans to change litter or otherwise meet it’s needs. Think of it from the cat’s point of view. You are in the cat’s house, it is not in your house. You are there to serve the cat. It is not there to do anything special for you. Cats will remind you umpteen times of these things. They are the bosses, humans are the servants.Cats have fur. They shed in spring and fall. Cat fur is soft. It gets into and onto just about everything. Their fur will get on your clothes, your bedding, your carpets, and even in your mouth as you eat. They will tell you it is an extra source of fibre. They will also want you to clean the place up. If you are getting a cat, also get a good brush and a strong vacuum cleaner. You’ll need them.Cats vomit. They do it in public areas. You are there to clean the rug or floor. Use cat friendly products. Grooming can control furballs, which are most common during shedding and do not indicate illness, Cats seem to throw up more than most animals. Oh, and, yes, sometimes when they throw up they are sick. They ask that you not step in it but clean it up immediately. Being sick means a trip to a veterinarian and those visits are not cheap. That was also part of the cat’s domestication contract. You are to be there in sickness and in health, with an open wallet or a credit card. Oh, yes, the cat also expects you to pay for regular vaccinations and other necessities.There are other expenses as well that should be considered so a prospective cat person needs to consider the costs of things like food and water bowls, a good litter box, a cat bed per cat and maybe one extra (ours sleep in several places in the house), the cost of food (around here averaging perhaps $25 per bag for premium food) and the cost of cat toys. These expenses can add up.Then there are health questions that I wrote about on December 14th 2018 on Quora. The most common problem humans have with cats is breathing: asthma or allergies. You likely know already from your own life experiences whether or not you are prone to allergies with the effects of wheezing, coughing, sneezing, runny nose, itchy eyes and other irritating symptoms. If so, a cat can make them worse. Not all people will have allergies to cats, but some will. What a person is allergic to in a cat would be proteins found in the urine, saliva, and dander shed by a cat. You should likely beware of claims for hypoallergenic pets as no pets are fully hypoallergenic and a 2011 study done on homes with regular dog breeds compared to ones with hypoallergenic breeds revealed no difference in allergen levels. Animals and pets as asthma triggers | Asthma UK and Information on Cat AllergiesThere’s also the question of various sicknesses. One good thing to know is that you cannot catch a cold or the ‘flu’ from a cat. “The common cold virus that affects humans is specific to humans,” explains Dr. Shelley Rankin at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, and “different animal species have different strains of influenza virus that affect them.” Can Your Dog or Cat Make You Sick? You may, however, get diarrhoea from your cat if your cat has salomonella or campobacter and you touch the poop but don’t follow good hygenic practices like washing your hands thoroughly after touching it and then handling food or touching your mouth. Animal saliva is something else you should be careful of when with your pet. While many bacteria in a cat’s mouth are not harmful, some may be so it is wise not to let your cat lick your mouth or lick an open wound. These could be especially dangerous if you are already immune-compromised. Another concern might come from the bacteria associated with cat scratch disease, an illness that can be caught from a cat which appears to be healthy looking. If you get scratched, wash the wound and put Polysporin or some other anti-bacterial agent on the wound almost immediately. Cats rarely scratch without reason, so know your cat and don’t provoke it nor play roughly with it. Ringworm, a fungal disease, is transmissible from an infected cat to a human. Chances are you would notice if your cat had it. Be careful in dealing with stray or feral cats as they are more likely sources. Again, thoroughly washing your hands is highly recommended. You don’t want ringworm, nor do you want your own cat to get it. The odds are, however, that you are more likely to get sick from contact with another person than from your cat. Can Your Dog or Cat Make You Sick? As long as you was your hands with soap and running water after contact with cats, their poop, their litter box, and their food you should be well protected. However, people who are elderly, who have compromised immune systems, pregnant women and young children may want to be especially careful “just in case.”One potentially very serious parasite may be spread by cats: toxoplasma gondii. Pet cats are less likely to be carriers than are outdoor, wild, or feral cats and tend to get a bad reputation that is not fully deserved as an individual cat will shed harmful oocysts only once in its lifetime. However, the oocysts packets of parasites can persist in soil and water for years, making the parasite a threat in gardens, on farms, and in water reservoirs and get to people through unwashed fruits and vegetables or dirty water. Indeed, toxoplasma gondii may inhabit the brains of as many as three billion people worldwide and molecular and cellular evidence suggests that it has a widespread and lasting effect on the minds of rodent hosts, modifying the brain and behaviour to reduce fear, but it is still unclear what the extent and impact may be on humans who contract it. It is possible that it is subtly changing human health and human personalities. Infected men tend to be introverted, suspicious, and rebellious, while infected women may be extroverted, trusting, and obedient. The reason why genders react differently is presently unknown. Toxoplasma gondii has been linked to brain cancer. Cat parasite linked to brain cancer A blood test can reveal whether or not you carry toxoplasma gondii. The best advice to avoid an infection is again through basic good hygenic practices: cleaning fruits and vegetables, thoroughly cooking meat, and regular thorough hand washing. Only time and further large research studies on multiple groups will identify how serious this parasite is. Arrizabalaga, Gustavo and Sullivan, Bill, “Played by a Parasite” in Scientific American: The Science of Dogs and Cats, Vol. 27, no. 4All that having been said, you will still love your cat. That is perhaps the biggest con. Cats live finite lives, much shorter than humans. When you love a cat and it dies, a small part of you will also die with it and it will break your heart to lose the cat, despite it fitting all the above cons. If it doesn’t break your heart, if you are the sort of emotionless, insensitive type who doesn’t care, then you should never get a cat as it just won’t be fair to the cat. Unfortunately there are a lot of owners out there who just don’t try to understand cats and who don’t treat them well. That is a con for the cat. It deserves better. It deserves love, affection, kindness, attention, and an open heart as big as the sky.PROSThere are many pros to cat ownership, or perhaps it is wiser to say cat servanthood.Cats are good for the human soul in many ways. On 20 December 2018 my cat Peach posted this on Quora about how cats can spirtitually help humans in his post Are cats good for the soul?:Adaptability - We throw a lot of curves at them. They think they own us. That’s stupid. We are the ones who run the show. They tell us not to wash our backsides in front of company. We do it anyway. They tell us not to jump up on the dresser. They don’t say why not. Heck, cats like heights, so naturally we’ll jump up. They think we should obey by getting off the couch, not batting decorations off the Christmas tree, not chewing on things, and so on, PFFFFTTTT! It’s always the “nots” that they emphasize. We cats just tell it like it is - give us food, give us fresh water, clean our litter boxes. They tell us. We tell them. Which one is obedient? Exactly. The humans! We teach them that life is a long and winding road with nothing sure and that they will have to adapt when things don’t go their way. They don’t always see the value in what we teach and how we act, so their adaptability is something they don’t always realize we are teaching them, but we know it’s good for them when we don’t always do what they tell us. We can take credit for improving how humans cope with life.Unconditional love - That’s one of our specialties. Humans need love and other humans often mean mouth them or stab them in the back so to meow. Well, we cats welcome humans into our lives and hearts with a kind of innocence and reverence that makes them think twice about how the world works. We just give them the sort of thing that they should be giving each other and build up their self-esteem.Devotion and Loyalty - Us cats are humans #1 cheerleaders. We accept them for who and what they are (though we do have a few misgivings if the food is a bit stale or the litter box doesn’t get cleaned after we use it). We love them anyway. We are devoted and loyal and, quite frankly, humans are lucky to have us in their corner. How many others would tolerate what they are like? Heck we sit on their chests, meow to them for help, and generally just get underfoot all the time. They benefit from knowing we are there for them.Non-judgmental - We don’t sit in judgement on humans. It’s a sort of simple focus in life that we have. Our lives are filled with more joy and less fretting. Watch us as we gallop through the house and jump up on counters. Life is fun. Cats live for fun. Look at me in the picture at the start of my post. I’m playing in my tunnel. It’s just a ball! Life isn’t meant to bring you down. We help humans to see fun and experience it rather than being weighed down by cares. If humans try to look at life through the simple lens we use they can then focus on what is really important for their happiness and experience more joy and less fear.Contentment - We teach humans to be content with what they have. We don’t care if we win ribbons at cat shows, though humans do. We just sort of go with things and make the best of what we’re given. The state of happiness and total satisfaction is hard to describe but pretty fulfilling once you have it. We have learned we can’t have everything, but that you can feel pretty good getting a tickle behind the ears or a few pets down the back or across the cheeks. We purr! Life can be good. When we purr or cuddle we show love and can calm humans and when they pet us they lower their blood pressure. We actively help them when we ate contented. We teach humans that it’s all in how you see the world.The Value of Intuition - Cats make decisions in a natural and instinctual manner. We know what we want and what we need. Humans often mention having a “gut feeling” about something. That’s how we live our lives. We know ourselves and our needs. We go for it. Our inner-wisdom guides our way. We try to teach humans that they need to know their inner selves. Unfortunately humans often out-think themselves, but we do our best to try to show them how life should work.Awareness - Cats live in the moment. We are constantly aware of our surroundings, possible threats to our safety, sounds near us, smells in the air, all kinds of things that touch our senses and change in the blink of an eye. Humans, even ones who are present and try to be attentive, seem to focus on what the call the “quality” and “variety” of their focus over, say, a minute. We are aware of much, much more and are multi-sensory. Humans stay locked in one thought but we can have dozens of things that we focus on in such a period. Unfortunately this is one of the hardest things we face with humans. We try and try to let them sense multiple experiences but they just call us flaky and think we are inattentive when we process more information instinctively than they can. They just have to learn to embrace the moment and everything in it and that it can improve what they call their spiritual health. And, by the way, when you see my picture in my bed at the end of the post, remember I may look like I’ll be sleeping but if anything connects with any of my senses, you know I’ll be up and at’em in seconds. We cats don’t just preach awareness, we live it.My post on Quora on December 14th, 2018, added specific positive benefits to human health and well-being:POSITIVE HEALTH EFFECTS FROM CATSYour cat can offer some very positive health benefits. Cats help people to cope with losses. Many cat owners talk to their cats, and they talk to their cats about anything and everything - how the day at work went, loss of a family member, a relationship break-up, and so on. Cats make for good social support. They listen and never offer contradictory ideas. Indeed, they often look at you and look like they understand, something people who are venting or who are in mourning really appreciate. Sasha, shown here in 2015, was my best friend and listener.Need romance and love? A British poll found that “a whopping 90 percent of single women said that men who own a cat are “nicer” than other guys.” Cats, apparently, are a great help in finding what is seen as a great significant other.Cats are also good at lowering stress levels in people. It has been reported that petting a cat can lower your blood pressure by 10 basis points and “one study found that over a 10-year period cat owners were 30 percent less likely to die of a heart attack or stroke than non-cat owners (although this might just be because cat owners are more relaxed and have lower stress in general).” Not only do cats lower your risk for cardiovascular disease but their purring can help to heal bones, tendons, and muscles.Cats provide good companionship. “An Austrian study conducted in 2003 found that having a cat in the house is the emotional equivalent of having a romantic partner. As well as initiating contact much of the time, studies have shown cats will remember kindness shown to them and return the favor later.” I have earlier noted that cats listen well and offer social support. They also remind people of family and evoke parental qualities: “After thousands of years of domestication, cats have learned how to make a half purr/half howl noise that sounds remarkably like a human baby’s cry. And since our brains are programmed to respond to our children’s distress, it is almost impossible to ignore what a cat wants when it demands it like that.” Cats are also very affectionate and are often happy to cuddle with people, purr to them, and sometimes sit on their laps. I know my Velvet is a lap cat and likes to be by my side and my wife’s side on the bed. Sasha frequently lay on my chest and licked my face.Watching a cat can be fun. Ours gallop through the house, roll on the floor, knock toys back and fort with me, hide in boxes, crawl into tunnels, rest in my lap and make me laugh as they play or just reveal their unique personalities. I just can’t imagine not breaking up in laughter with all the sorts of crazy things they do. Cats are born entertainers, and some of them, like our Velvet, can be real clowns. One of her favourite tricks used to be to climb the scratching post backwards. It was something I never caught on camera, though I once got a shot of her just as she was about to start.Here Peach plays with a toy ball. He really enjoys games, especially ball toss, and he gives me 10 solid minutes of exercise most nights.Cats also seem to have an effect on human personalities. Maybe it is because a certain type of person tends to like cats, or maybe your cat just has an strong effect on your personality, but “cat owners are quieter and more introverted than dog owners. However, they score very highly when it comes to how trustworthy they are and how much they trust other people. Cat owners are also less manipulative and more modest.” Those are generally considered to be good qualities and it is nice as a cat person to read such things.Sleeping with a cat can produce sounder sleep. Velvet often cuddles with my wife. My late Sasha used to sleep beside me, her head on my tissue box while my head was on the pillow, her long Maine Coon body parallel to mine and her paw in my hand. The problems of the whole world were as nothing. I slept like a rock. On cold nights now Peach sleeps at the foot of the bed beside and above the heating vent. “Several studies in the UK have found that people (especially women) prefer to sleep with their cats over their partners, and they even report sleeping better with a cat than with a human bed companion. A recent study from the Mayo Clinic Center for Sleep Medicine was able to confirm those findings: 41 percent of the people in that study indicated that they slept better because of their pet, while only 20 percent said that it led to disturbances.”Under the heading of Cons I noted allergies. An interesting fact, though, is “according to Marshall Plaut, M.D., chief of the allergic mechanisms section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, ‘high pet exposure early in life appears to protect against not only pet allergy but also other types of common allergies, such as allergy to dust mites, ragweed, and grass.’” Also, “experts say that by changing your cat’s litter box every day and keeping the animal indoors, you should be safe and allergy free!” So, if you already have allergies, getting a cat may make them worse, but a getting a cat, especially when young, may help you to avoid allergies later in life.Cats have also proven to be very helpful to their human owners in potentially dangerous situations. I have written before how my late Sasha spotted water coming into our basement, got my attention, and led me to the problem so that we could move things and save them. Cats who bond with their owners have displayed helpfulness on many occasions. Cats have an undeserved reputation for being uncaring and aloof. Yet “one cat in the United Kingdom warns her human when he’s about to have an epileptic seizure, while a cat in Montana woke up its two humans when a gas pipe started leaking. Firefighters told the couple that the house could easily have exploded if not for cat’s intervention.” Maybe you have also heard of or known someone who has benefitted from a cat’s intervention in a challenging situation. Many have.Cats are also important to people other than their owners. I have written previously on Quora about the role our cats play in pet therapy with seniors in nursing homes. Pet therapy cats are used to help with mentally, emotionally, and physically ailing humans to help with relaxing and healing. They lower blood pressure, reduce stress, and promote a feeling of happiness among people they visit in nursing homes, hospitals, schools and prisons. Here's How You Can Certify Your Cat As A Therapy Animal and How to Get Your Cat Certified as a Therapy Cat | CatsterHere’s Velvet on her cart while visiting residents at the local Caressant Care nursing home.I think it is also worth mentioning that, despite some of the things in the Cons section above about costs and the need for vaccinations, cats are generally low maintenance pets. Sure, you need to scoop the litter box regularly. However, you don’t need to take them for walks (although many will walk on a harness and leash) unless you want to and you can go away for a couple of nights leaving them with sufficient food and water. (Any more than two nights and it is generally recommended to have someone come in to clean the litter box, change the water and top up the food.)Cats are also very fastidious animals. They frequently clean themselves. This is excellent, since you really do not want to have to give a cat a bath unless you have to. Trust me on that. Cats and water do not mix well, but under normal circumstances they won’t need to mix.Cats are independent. They think for themselves and follow their own path in life, something that can be quite refreshing to see and experience. As they said in the ‘60s, “They do their own thing in their own time, man.”Cats are great communicators. They use body language involving their ears, eyes, whiskers, backs and tails to send signals to each other, but if you watch and learn or google “cat body language” you, too, can figure out what they are saying. And cats meow. Actually they meow, trill, chirp, purr, hiss, and yowl and each cat has slightly different sounds. Nevertheless there are subtle variations in what you might think is the standard meow to say “I’m hungry” or “I want my litter box cleaned” or “It’s playtime, hooman, get with it and let’s go!” Once you have a cat and learn to listen to it you can understand what it is saying and you and the cat can get on the same page in regards to conversing. That’s something you can’t do with a pet goldfish, snake, or hamster and it’s really quite amazing because you are really learning to talk to the animals when you both understand the message, kind of like being Dr. Dolittle..Cats are excellent hunters. If you have creepy crawly little critters in your house now you likely won’t after introducing a cat. Peach watches every little thing and would be happy to terminate every little thing’s existence. Sasha once showed me her collection of 17 dead silverfish that she’d arranged in two rows near her bed in the laundry room. Sasha has been dead for just over four years, but we haven’t had silverfish since she was our exterminator. Mind you, some cats seem to be too well fed to bother, but most cats, especially young cats, will enjoy catching your mice and insects.Cats thrive in a variety of settings. Just over a hundred years ago they lived in barns. Slowly they became outdoor/indoor cats in houses and now, especially in urban settings, cats have become largely indoor only pets and have taken to apartment living. Indeed it is because cats are low maintenance and can adapt to new surroundings so easily that cats have become the number one pet in the world, pushing dogs into second place.So there you have it, the cons and pros of having a cat. Like I noted before, I am hesitant to say cat ownership especially since a cat does what it wants, when it wants, and how it wants and, while there are certainly some logical reasons against having a cat, especially if it isn’t going to fit your preferred lifestyle, I think these are outweighed, at least for me, by the positives that cats bring to your life: coping, support, better overall health, companionship, personality, allergy protection, adaptability, cleanliness, and a strong emotional bond that may save your life or your home.Most of these points were taken from over 65 years of cat experience plus previous Quora posts by myself and my cats plus web sites noted in the text and these web sites: The Pros & Cons Of Cat Ownership, and The Pros And Cons Of Cat Ownership while the positive health effects of cats were drawn from 10 Scientific Benefits of Being a Cat Owner and 7 Scientifically Proven Health Benefits Of Being a Cat Owner - Goodnet. In this post I have mentioned material from Scientific American: The Science of Dogs and Cats, Vol. 27, no. 4, Fall 2018. It was available on news stands until 27 N 2018. Its ISSN is 1936–1513. It can be ordered from Scientific American, a division of Springer Nature America, Inc., 1 New York Plaza, Suite 4500, New York, N.Y., 10004–1562 for $US13.95 if in the United States or $US17.95 from abroad. If you are a dog or cat owner this is very good reading and arguably one of the best reference items I’ve seen of late.Normally I write Quora articles about cats and prefer to write about cats. Feel free to click on my profile to see them and hopefully read some. Hopefully you will find articles that are helpful and enjoyable.Thank you for taking the time to read this. I try to answer questions I think I can effectively answer but may pass if I don’t know the answer, or if I have previously answered a very similar question, or someone else may have answered the question as well or better than I could, or the answer can be found easily by googling the topic. I hope you understand and are not offended if I don’t post an answer to your question(s).