My cat regularly stretches his arms rather like that… while flying from a shelf at me or running at me on his hind legs like some kind of crazy Jesus lizard. He also splays his legs out similarly while he lays on the floor if he’s getting bored with whatever toy or possession of mine he’s been tearing to pieces. If he were in the right mood he could be this tolerant, when he’s relaxed he basically passes out in my arms. It’s cute, but if I took a picture people would seriously assume he was drugged. This get is getting irritated toward the end. He looks a lot less irritated than mine does when I’m cleaning his teeth though. Seems like if your theory was correct (animal being frightened into submission) you’d see the cat going the opposite way in behavior. he’d become more cooperative and docile as he’s being dominated or going into shock. Instead the cat seems to have no trouble indicating the point when it becomes irritated, and it doesn’t seem like this game could have gone on much longer before the cat would start to put those hind legs to use or begin nipping at the man’s fingers. Towards the end, the ears flatten, he licks his nose… that’s not a cat that is giving in but rather a cat which has been provoked enough to become aggressive. It seems to be the rapid movements, rather than the stretching, that irritates the cat. This makes sense as it’s actually probably not that painful to extend the arms if you aren’t using force to pull them away from the body. The man seems to be using the cat’s reflex motion to extend the them rather than pulling on them (holding a cat like this but without supporting the body would definitely hurt it). I’m not sure why people think their arms don’t extend that direction. Cats don’t have shoulders like ours so they are able to totally flatten their bodies. For this reason, unless the cat is jerked or pulled, they shouldn’t have trouble with that position. Just out of curiosity I reached over to my cat, who is sleeping conveniently next to my arm here. It’s pretty easy to extend his arms by massaging the muscle gently, and he seems not to mind it very much. In fact, he responded by lolling his head onto my chest and then sitting down in my lap for continued napping when I dropped his arms. When I had them out in what I usually call his “facehugger position” since that’s the direction it typically goes with him, he actually gave me a nose bump which he usually only does as a sign of intimacy/affection. I’m not going to try moving his arms rapidly though, because I don’t want to get bitten by my cat.
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