Might the Emotionally Abusive treat pets like they do animals? (mine did)

Narcissistic, sociopathic, psychopathic people dont see you.

They just dont.

They only see you as an extension of themselves

Or as something to take from.

A tool.

You are their entitlement.

Thats the humans. Or the items they see, that they take.

But what about animals? The pets in the home?

What happens when such a person also has a pet? or if there is one in the home?

Research here indicates how pets are used as part of Domestic Abuse

And here too

They can be used as a way of keeping someone in a DV relationship, pets can be abused themselves.

One of the ways that I have heard repeatedly is that physically violent people (often men) enact their physical violence out on their pet. The stats in this piece are frightening and awful.

But I am wondering something else, something more subtle.

How might the way an emotional or psychological abuser treat a pet be an indication of abuse?

Can I tell you a short story please? About my psychopathic parent and what she could/couldnt do with animals?

When I was about 4, for some reason, probably to be helpful, my parents decided to look after 4-5 3-4 month old kittens, whilst the owner was away open holiday I guess, but I cannot remember. In our old house my Dad was in the process of blocking off one of the old chimney breasts, the other was kept open for fires. But there was a large bricked hole in the wall which, with blankets, could act as a bed for the kittens, and could also be blocked off to keep them in there at night. If I remember too, the kittens were only allowed downstairs. I dont remember much about the stay of the kittens themselves. Only that in the last 24 hours before the owners returned, they tried to escape by climbing the chimney. I think 2 or 3 of them went for it, climbing up. One parent shrieked and got upset, whilst the other and I tried to get them down, using broom handles etc, and they did, eventually, sooty and black, they were white ish to start with. Trapped kittens trying to escape.

Here’s another.

My Dad loved guinea pigs, he’d had them as a child. We weren’t allowed pets (aside from a goldfish that lasted 3 years that was won at a school fair) But we could have guinea pigs, if they stayed in the shed. Yup. Nothing was allowed in the abusers domain they she didnt want or like or distracted from her and definitely not an animal. That reminds me. She hated when her favourite people had pets, and she hated the pets too.

But back to the guinea pigs.

During the winter they would be allowed on a Saturday or Sunday inside the house for about an hour whilst my dad cleaned out their cage. In the Summer they could be left outside eating grass and in their outdoor cage. So the two of them, salt and pepper their names, were placed in a large flat plastic sheeting covered in hay etc and allowed to run around and we could groom them, stroke their hair etc and cut their nails. All the things that were required to look after them. We all loved them.

Well, three of us did.

One person would sit in the corner and have nothing to do with them. I remember us, naive and young, pleading that ‘mum should have a guinea pig too’ – and she would so so reluctantly make a big deal of having one on her knee, and then get all nervous, shaky and fearful it would move, scratch.

In Short, Psychopath, emotionally neglectful and abusive mother, couldn’t even stroke the guinea pigs.

The guinea pig could not give her anything. She had no maternal instinct what so ever. Not even to pets. She hated other pets as I said above.

She didnt even stroke the guinea pigs, might be the thing I wrote on her tombstone.

Thats my experience of the emotionally abusive and animals. Want to avoid them, can’t relate to them, cant be seen to be attentive of them, neglectful and hating of them.

So I am wondering, might other emotionally abusive, emotionally immature people extend their same behaviour to humans to their pets?

Physical abuse is obvious and tragic, but what about pets that are emotionally abused and neglected. Animals that are a tool and not an animal with needs. Treating a pet with the same way they treat a human, as just an extension.

Theres a definate link, but am just wondering if emotional abusive behaviour towards pets goes a bit under the radar. Do you have any examples?

Any thoughts? Might you have examples like this, of weird behaviour towards the family pets by someone psychotic or emotionally immature in the family?