Fear of cats

Ailurophobia (''pronunciation:'' aɪˌlʊər əˈfoʊ bi ə) is the persistent and excessive fear or hatred of cats.
Like other specific phobias, the exact cause of ailurophobia is unknown, and potential treatment generally involves therapy.Milosevic, Irena; McCabe, Randi E. (2015). ''Phobias: the psychology of irrational fear''. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. pp. 11–12. . . The name comes from the Greek words (), 'cat', and (), 'fear'. Other names for ailurophobia include: felinophobia, elurophobia, gatophobia, and cat phobia. A person with this phobia is known as an ailurophobe.

Description

Ailurophobia is relatively uncommon compared to other animal phobias, such as ophidiophobia or arachnophobia. Ailurophobes may experience panic and fear when thinking about cats, imagining an encounter with a cat, inadvertently making physical contact with a cat, or seeing depictions of cats in media. The fear can also prevent the ailurophobe from doing certain activities, like visiting friends' houses, for fear of encountering a cat.Antony, Martin M.; McCabe, Randi E. (2005). ''Overcoming animal & insect phobias : how to conquer fear of dogs, snakes, rodents, bees, spiders & more''. Oakland, Calif.: New Harbinger Publications. . . They may experience extreme anxiety and fear when hearing meowing, hissing, or other sounds that the ailurophobe associates with cats. In one case, it was reported that a patient with ailurophobia was unable to touch clothing that had a soft, fur-like texture, possibly due to the clothing's similarity to a cat's fur.

Causes

Though the exact cause of ailurophobia is unknown, ailurophobes often trace their fear back to early childhood. This is a trend observed in many other specific phobias, especially those involving animals. One theory is that a singular traumatic incident, like being attacked by a cat or witnessing a cat attack someone else, can trigger the development of this phobia. Other theories as to the cause of ailurophobia include exposure to someone else's ailurophobia, or being inundated with troubling information about the danger of cats.

Another explanation could be that humans are somewhat preconditioned to fear felines because the ancestors of big cats preyed upon human ancestors. This may be the origin of leophobia (fear of lions), tigriphobia (fear of tigers), leopardaliphobia (fear of leopards) and acynonixphobia (fear of cheetahs). Fearing these predators is rational because the danger they present; however, fearing domestic cats is irrational, due to their small size.

Treatment

It is widely believed that one of the best treatments for animal phobia is exposure therapy. A particular form of exposure therapy called systematic desensitization has been successful for ailurophobes in the past. Exposure therapy is conducted by systematically exposing a patient to stimuli that are increasingly fear-inducing while only progressing when the patient is comfortable with the prior stimulus. For example, one ailurophobic patient underwent exposure therapy for her fear by being exposed to fur-like fabric, pictures of cats, a toy cat, and finally a friendly live kitten, which the patient subsequently adopted; as the kitten grew and remained friendly, the patient was able to be less afraid of full-grown cats. This method is used to help patients with both ailurophobia and cynophobia.

There are no medications designed to treat ailurophobia. However, medications that relieve anxiety and stress, such as beta blockers and benzodiazepines, can help to mitigate symptoms. D-cycloserine has been linked to facilitating better results in exposure therapy.

In popular culture

Dorothy L. Sayers twice made use of auilurophobia as a major plot point in her mysteries. In the Montague Egg story "Maher-Shalal-Hashbaz" (published in the 1933 anthology ''Hangman's Holiday''), a wealthy elderly man with auilurophobia and heart disease is deliberately frightened to death by his family, who sneak more than 50 cats into his room while he sleeps. In the more supernatural tale "The Cyprian Cat" (published in the 1939 anthology '' In the Teeth of the Evidence''), the narrator has such a severe case of auilurophobia that he can sense a cat's presence without seeing it. It is this fear that leads him to eventually shoot at a cat he thinks is haunting him, but which somehow metamorphoses into his friend's oddly cat-like wife, whose murder the narrator finds himself arrested for.

In the 1934 horror film '' The Black Cat'', the protagonist, portrayed by Bela Lugosi, has an extreme version of the phobia.

In the 1965 animated television special '' A Charlie Brown Christmas,'' the character Lucy lists a number of phobias to Charlie Brown and incorrectly states, "If you're afraid of cats, you have ailurophasia." The word-forming element "-phasia" is a Greek suffix used to form the names of disorders and phenomena that relate to words and speech, such as cryptophasia,
aphasia, dysphasia, and schizophasia.

In the 1969 horror film '' Eye of the Cat'', the protagonist, who is planning the murder of an elderly woman, has a fear of cats.

In the movie series '' The Mummy'', the main antagonist Imhotep has a fear of cats, since he is a living corpse and cats are guardians of the underworld in Egyptian mythology.

In '' Big Nate'', protagonist Nate Wright has ailurophobia, as per his statement, "Ailurophobia is such a drag".

In an episode of the television series '' Impractical Jokers'', Sal Vulcano, who has ailurophobia, has to undergo a punishment where he is exposed to a number of cats.

The titular character in the anime and manga series ''Ranma ½'' has ailurophobia, leading back to an instance in his childhood where his father wrapped him in fish sausages and threw him to a large number of hungry cats.

See also

* List of phobias
* Steven Bouquet, Brighton Cat Killer

References

Further reading

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{{domestic cat

Zoophobias
Felids and humans
Phobias