The following is my final essay for the persuasive writing college class that I took at the beginning of 2021. It's a longer one (3500 words, 10 double-spaced pages not counting sources). I thought I'd post it here so y'all could read it and maybe take its advice!
Cats, Rest, and Lo-Fi: Three Specific Suggestions for Maintaining Mental Health
Introduction
With society's increasing focus on mental health and wellness, researchers and therapists have shared many techniques that people can use to take care of themselves and improve their mental health. Ranging from medical advice for mental disorders, to simple but practical ideas for living a good life, such suggestions have helped many people to enjoy life more than they have before. This paper will give more suggestions—ones on the simple-but-practical side of things, ones that aren't related except through having positive mental effects. I'll explore the research, techniques, and benefits of three strategies that people should implement to maintain good mental health: living with a cat, planning a weekly day of rest, and listening to lo-fi music.
These ideas are not prescriptions from a doctor, nor are they inflexible demands on your life. In fact, it is my hope that you will read about these strategies and make your own personal decisions about how to implement them—if at all. The purpose of this paper is not to convince you to follow every piece of advice, but rather to show you their positive effects and leave you to do with them what you will. You may be unfamiliar with these strategies, or not. Maybe you know of them but need additional information before using them. The goal is to give such information, and also to provide a starting point for your own ideas—ideas for the small and simple things you can do in your life to create an ideal environment in which you can thrive.
Cuddly Cats
It is widely accepted that pets can be beneficial to people of all ages. Entire Instagram accounts are dedicated to happy dogs, silly birds, cuddly cats, and other pets. People find solace and love in their wide variety of pets, and serious consideration should be given to what kind of pet you want when buying or adopting. We'll talk specifically here about cats and their contributions to humans' mental health.
Cats are calming, loving creatures; their company brings peace to many a cat owner. They understand and lift their humans' moods, and their quiet natures and soothing purrs will allow people to focus on their work or schoolwork—or simply sit and relax. On the whole, cats are wonderful pets for people who need a peaceful friend.
Emotional Recognition. According to Gezy Vaughan, cats have been living with humans for about ten thousand years and are commonly said to have domesticated themselves—that is, chosen to live among humans in mutually beneficial relationships (Vaughan). What started out as a job hunting rodents on farms became a position of companionship, and today cat owners receive many psychological benefits from their cats, while feeding them and giving them shelter in return. People with mental health needs will sometimes have emotional support cats, for instance, and those cats give them company and motivation. But anyone can benefit from having a cat. A study from 2020 found that cats can recognize emotions in human expressions and sounds, not just cat expressions and sounds, and they reacted to the humans as well as the cats. The researchers suggested that this ability was "innate in domestic cats" because the cats were "able to recognize and interpret unfamiliar human emotional signals" (Quaranta, et al.). Cats can use this familiarity with humans to understand their owners and offer comfort when needed. Another group of researchers found cats to "react sensitively to the human mood" when interacting with their humans (Turner and Rieger, 45). When not expressly interacting with humans, the cats were more neutral to the moods, but the researchers took this to mean that "they are always available for the owner, no matter how that person feels" (Turner and Rieger, 45). Cats will not judge, so to speak, when their human is in a bad mood; and if the human reaches out to them in distress, they will reciprocate with their company. The level of responsiveness will vary between breeds and individual cats—and prospective cat owners can research this beforehand, with certain breeds like Birmans or Russian blues known to be particularly calm and loving. People can also visit shelters and get to know individual cats to see if they will be companionable. Still, cats can generally be said to be good emotional companions.
