Autism (and cats)

This blog post is going to be (totally) different to my usual post; I’ll try and make it funny because in essence, the girl I’m going to talk about is hilarious. But it’s not such a ‘funny’ topic and I don’t want to stomp around trying to own this ‘thing’ and end up offending people in the process because I’m not an expert, I just have an amazing friend in my life who has educated me further in this field of… I don’t know, field of medicine? Emotional/social health? I don’t know. Why don’t YOU tell me what category Autism falls into? Because all I can put it in is ‘variation of normal’- just like everyone else.

Don’t get me wrong, seriously, do not mistake this for me saying autism isn’t complex, it is. Autism is complex as shit, and it can range over such a spectrum (hence the term ‘autistic spectrum’) and it can be so mild it can go undiagnosed for years, or it can be so severe that a child can never live an independent life, stuck in a world of meltdowns and hallucinations and an inability to communicate with anybody. Autism can tear families apart, and it can bring them together. For me, autism is a twinge on my friend’s life that messes with her head, emotions and social interactions.

Meet Meghan, known to my family as ‘Meghan-with-a-h’ (the ‘h’ is pronounce [huh], not [aych]), but to me she’s Meghan or Megmoo or stinky poo, because friends give friends nicknames, that’s just a thing that friends do. Meghan is almost 16, did 2 forward rolls on Saturday night and can’t stand the colour orange. She dances ALL THE TIME, sasses her parents and swears too much. She’s awkward around people she doesn’t know and often misinterprets what people say. Her mood can be fab one day and bad the next, and her autism sometimes makes her feel things that other people don’t feel, or blocks her from feeling what other people feel.

She’s pretty normal, just normal with autism, but she is quite a complex little munchkin. She often has us laughing over the tiniest little misunderstanding. I’ve been told by her family many times that when she was little she went shopping with her sister, who told her when they got home to ‘put your new clothes on and do the cat walk for mum and dad’. So Meghan put all of her new clothes on, got down on all fours, and started meowing and purring. The other night her family and I were watching a well-known talent show and Allie (Meghan’s mum) cried at a song along with some of the judges on said talent shows’ panel. Meghan said she knew people cried at songs, but didn’t know why. She said she knows people cry for happiness and sadness, but why a song? And it’s quite true really; what is it that signals in our brains for us to cry when we find a song ‘beautiful’? Because often the song isn’t sad or happy, the notes that are played or sang are just beautiful. And that logically wouldn’t be enough to make someone cry. Sometimes I think Meghan’s autism just makes her super honest, like if someone’s feet smell, she won’t do a round-about “Hmm, should we put our shoes back on?” Or “Oh I think my feet smell,” trying to hint at other people to check their own. Meghan will just flat out say “Hey, your feet smell”. I sometimes wish I could just carry her around in my pocket so she can say things I want to say but am too self-conscious to say. Like, when people you REALLY like’s breath smells. I don’t want to offend them, but if I carried round a pocket-sized Meghan, I could just whip her out and she’d be all:

“Your breath smells.”

And they’d be all “Frankie? Who is this?”

And I’d be all “Ah she’s autistic she can’t help it… but she’s right.”

And that’s how super-Megz would save the day for us all.

Other times she’s aware of how unaware she is, like when we went to buy some drinks because there weren’t any sugar free drinks in the house; Meghan decided what drink she wanted so I told her to go up to the cashier. She stood holding her drink, so I prompted her to pass it to the check-out lady. Then Meghan put the money on the wrong side of the till so the check-out lady couldn't reach it. After I’d corrected her, Meghan walked off with her drink- without her change. Silly Meghan. After that she joked about me being her carer because she doesn’t know how to ‘do shops’.

I don’t see all of the ways autism affects her, as I’m only around for a fraction of her life, but I do see quite a lot of what we call ‘autism moments’. Like when Meghan’s hamster died -- she poked him with a pen until she realised he was dead, then made me pick him up. “Only if you carry him downstairs,” I bargained. She agreed and held her hands out… until her cold, dead hamster was lying limp and lifeless in my hands and her hands escaped behind her back -- this bit’s all okay I think. The autism comes in when she carried the hamster down to her parents, holding the deceased Yoda up in front of her and singing the funeral march. Most people are gutted when their hamsters die -- as she was. Meghan just expresses herself in slightly different ways to other people.

Another thing I mentioned in brief earlier is about how she hates the colour orange. For instance, if this font suddenly changed to orange (sorry Meghan), she’d get either angry or upset, and would probably stop reading it. She’ll avoid things that she knows are orange, or rooms she knows have orange in, and doesn’t eat carrots or oranges.

A – quite prominent – symptom of autism is love of repetition or habitual behaviour. I haven’t seen this an awful lot with Meghan, but this weekend she was at home and she knew that where she had been that day, everyone was having a sandwich for dinner. When Allie told us the plan to have burgers for dinner, Meghan point blank refused. We did try haggling and I suggested slicing the burger in half so it was thinner, like sandwich meat, then putting that between two slices of bread, but Meghan just wouldn’t okay any of the ideas- other people were having sandwiches, so she would eat a sandwich. Probably because by essence, we were making her eat a burger, but it would have been her ‘norm’ to have a sandwich. I always think of cats when people talk about habitual behaviour in autism; cats love routine, and stick to a similar one each day. My cats both have very predictable patterns of what they do each day -- just like Meghan. Cats are actually so rigid in their routine that if something changes or their routine is knocked off balance, they can be quite poorly, even sick. This is similar to the anxiety people can feel in autism when their routine changes -- and anxiety can and does make people physically sick.

Meghan makes us all laugh most of the time, but often autism is very difficult to deal with. She gets quite anxious over little things like paying for things or talking to people. Sometimes she gets anxious for no reason or gets upset or angry over very small things, and she doesn’t know why she’s overreacting. This is very common in autism, and with more severe autism or autism in younger children, this is where meltdowns come in. A meltdown is different to a tantrum in one very specific way -- a child having a tantrum will care about what happens around them, they will look for reactions and want people to notice they’re not okay and comfort them. A child having a meltdown however, will go into their own world, where the reactions or the staring or the disapproving gasps from strangers don’t matter. The world outside their immediate emotion doesn’t exist and it can be very distressing, both for the autistic person/child and their parent/carer. In these meltdowns, self-harm can often occur, both intentional and unintentional. So if you do see a child kicking and screaming in the streets and a clearly embarrassed parent, don’t immediately judge them for being unable to ‘control’ their child -- for all you know they could have autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and be unable to control themselves.

I personally have never known prejudices against people with ASD, but I know that it exists out there. The world can be a really horrible place sometimes, and I can only imagine how much harder that is with ASD, sometimes being unable to understand what and why you’re feeling the way you are. I would probably say that having such a close friend as Meghan with autism has opened my eyes to autism and how it affects people. I wasn’t a ‘stranger’ to autism; I know what it is, that it can come in lots of shapes and sizes, and that sometimes everyone displays little ‘autistic moments’. But having Meghan just makes me care more about autism, I think.

Now I did find a post once on why cats should be the autism symbols not the puzzle piece, but I can’t find it; however I can pretty much make my own argument for it.

1. Cats like routine. As I previously mentioned, habitual behaviour is both a big symptom of autism and being a cat.
2. Cats are very touch-sensitive. They like being stroked a certain way, hate getting wet and do NOT like having the base of their tail stroked. Cats also avoid some textures because of the way their brains process them, such as walking on snow. This can be likened to an autistic child crying and wailing because they stood on a piece of cucumber (which is a horrible feeling anyway) and they don’t know how to process it. Also, I think it’s quite a common symptom that people with autism (kids especially) don’t like having their hair brushed? Please correct me if I’m wrong. Like I say, I’m not an expert.
3. Cats have poor social awareness. Ever heard someone calling their cat in? Ever thought ‘they’ve been calling for 45 minutes, why is the cat not responding?’ Well cats don’t respond to their names. It’s true that certain pitches are registered better than others by cats, but they generally won’t respond to someone calling their name. This can be likened to more severe autism, where sometimes the person will make noises in response to noises, such as copying an animal’s sound, but not even blinking when their own name is called.
4.  Cats reply to sounds. I often play the call-and-response game with my cat- she meows, I meow back, etc. This can be quite common in autism (as far as I know). Because of difficulties with communication sometimes experienced in autism, it can be comforting to just copy a noise you hear; such as a meow or a bark or a moo.
5.  Cats are cautious around new people. Just like Meghan, my cats will be very quiet and nervy if a stranger comes round and will sometimes hide until they’ve gone.
6. Cats are often sensitive to sound. A major degree of autism is to do with sensory processing, and sensory includes sound. My cats hate the vacuum cleaner, lawn mower, shouting or loud laughing, just like sometimes people with autism feel anxious when there are loud sounds or bright lights- even sometimes background noise like blinds flapping in wind. 
7. Cats react differently to different colours. In the same way the Meghan hates orange, one of my cats, Tigger, loves pink. Almost as strongly as Meghan is driven away from orange, Tigger is drawn to pink. I have a bed cover which is a cartoon character with his pink tongue sticking out- Tigger would only ever sit on the pink tongue on that duvet, and always preferred his pink blanket to the identical blue one my Mum originally bought for him.
8. Cats will choose when and how they show their affections to you. A cat will always be the decider of when you get a cuddle or are allowed to stroke them, and as soon as they're finished, no more fussing or cuddling can continue. Just like with higher end autism or in younger children, often they will decide when and when not hugging/kissing or even eye contact will happen.
9. Cats stim. For those of you who don't know what stimming is, it's a repetitive motion (can be physical or vocal) which is used to express emotions. NT's (neuro-typicals/people without autism) sometimes stim, for example, I make sounds like dinosaurs and rub my hands together really fast either when I'm happy or anxious, some people fiddle with things or chew their hair when they're nervous. Cats purr when they're happy, rub their teeth against books on a bookshelf and flick their tails when they're irritated or anxious.

Anyway, please feel free to leave a comment below if you agree with the cat-autism thing, or if anything stood out to you in this article or particularly made you laugh- I always love feedback and especially if something has been particularly prominent to you.

Also, I feel like I should just pop this fact in somewhere- it’s estimated that 80% of males have diagnosable autism, it is just often so mild that it can go undiagnosed, and also because such a high percentage of males display behaviours like that, it is considered ‘just how men are’.