Is it normal that it bothers me when people impose human emotions onto animals?

What? There's plenty of evidence cats can form attachments. How the hell did you come to the conclusion they can't?

Whoops fatal error.
Someone starting from the position of 'Humans are above all other sentient creatures'.
Humans are like this; Because they can work a toaster, or send an email, or pontificate on any manner of subjects they think they 'know' everything.
I'm with Socrates: the only think i can know as an absolute truth is that i don't know anything.
We don't know what a cat's experience is, because we have never been a cat.

Cats rule!!!!

I beg to differ. The last cat I saved showed thankfulness. I had saved him on accident actually. You see, he looked a lot like the other cat I had at the time (which had no soul...j/k); they were both gingers and were about the same size and I was half drunk off my ass. I heard our dogs barking in the backyard and went out to investigate. The tangerine cat that I thought I already owned was perched on the fence, freaked the fuck out. I ran out to grab him and in my house he found refuge.

I was still pretty wasted so I flopped down on the couch. I looked over at "my" cat across the room and was noticing how pale he looked now, after all the commotion. I remember wondering if fear had weakened the pigment of his fur... it was either that or the alcohol was distorting my vision gravely. He kept staring at me hesitant, but longingly and in due course hopped up on the couch to join my drunken slumber. His affectionate purrs rumbled violently. I thought this was strange as this cat has never cared to bond before. I think he snuggled up under the blankets and everything, but I don't quite remember, and there in my arms he slept all the night. When I woke in the morning I observed the white flea collar that he wasn't wearing the day before. My sister consoled with, "Mom probably put it on him".

It still didn't make complete sense to me, but it took my mind off the matter for a few minutes. He was still quite pale and I was getting worried that he was ill. Even his stripes were awry. Just when it hit me my REAL cat came scurrying from one of the back rooms. He was quite timid so he did something weird like hide and surveil his doppelganger, his EVIL TWIN! I screeched and threw the intruder right out the door with no mercy!

However, that was not enough to ward the little creeper off. He hung around for a few days, without us feeding him or anything. He cupped water out of our bucket with his paw. Soon, my family members did start feeding him. I was still drenched in the guilt of sleeping with a stray cat. I felt so violated and my other cat seemed quite offended as well. Although the more the stray hung around the more I liked him. He came to prove his immense loyalty and appreciation by walking my sister and I to the end of our street, to a 6 lane roadway and waited patiently in some corner bushes for our return from the store.

And so we took him in because he manipulated the fuck out of us, which is pretty cool for a cat. Sadly, he went incognito when we moved to the country. I like to think he traveled back to the city, where his heart was (might have been?), arrived safely and continued his legacy of walking families to stores and slurping bucket water much like a raccoon might do.

It certainly is obvious which side you are on. Cats are the best. My cat is in Oriental grouping and they have the tendency of forming a close bond with their special person. Even cats that aren't in this grouping have the ability to form deep emotional attachments.

Cats do know emotions! When I'm upset she knows, when I cry she meows and licks my cheek. When my mum gets home she'll jump off the sofa and greet her. When I go in the bath she sits at the door meowing and waiting until I get out.

My cat was a stray, so she latched on to us. We weren't after a pet at the time (it was very bad timing with family issues). Shes created a whole bond of her own by choosing, and I'm so grateful she found us. (Yes, I know she latched on to us for the food, because we gave her tuna to build her weight up)

Yes, she may be clingy, but she's been through a lot as a stray and now she's finally comfortable. I find it endearing.

I also don't agree with putting clothes on animals but really, that is a whole different topic.

I think that until you can read an animals mind; you cannot definitively say whether or not they possess certain emotions. As human beings, we feel human emotions. Just because I say my dog is happy, doesn't mean I'm implying she's happy in the "human" sense of the word. We use human emotions to describe animals because we do not know how they feel our emotions so we can only use our own as a comparison.

ALL ANIMALS USE THEIR OWN EMOTIONS AS A BASIS TO UNDERSTAND THE EMOTIONS OF OTHERS. Mammals all basically speak the same language.

My cat is attached to me.

Yes, that is extremely annoying, and what's more annoying is when people impose their own ethics on to animals *shudders*. I know a woman who wanted to have her dogs killed in a painful way for killing a baby deer. What's your take on people who impose their own religions, political beliefs, and favorite TV shows on animals? I've met people who do all these things and more.

Dogs are better judges of human facial expressions and discerning what emotion a person is feeling than most people are of other people.

There is more and more scientific evidence coming out over a broad range of animals confirming that the do feel "human" emotions.

I experimented by purring after my cat used her scratching post. She then let me practice Reiki touch therapy on her. After a few weeks, she became fiercely loyal to me as if I was her kitten.

Go figure.

hard to say whether I agree with you on this or not
I might have to give it some more thought.
I'm leaning more towards agreement, I've thought the same thing about cats but I do not own one so I have not observed their behavouir in a owner relationship with them

Actually, there are many human-like emotions that other animals have. All mammals have a neocortex and a limbic system, the sites that control emotion in humans. And yes, that includes your meat mammals: Even cows in a way have "best friends" and will feel stressed if separated from them. There's also a neocortex homolog found in birds. There ARE many emotions that humans feel that some other mammals don't feel and many are overestimated by modern society, but there's evidence that it does go beyond simple satiety. It starts to become questionable once you go below mammals on the phylogeny.

BTW, 75% of all animals are insects (which lack vertebrate brain), so you TECHNICALLY may be right but if by "animal" you're referring to animals like cats, cows, pigs, etc. then they do have fairly complex emotions.

I think it's more about explaining our emotions in terms that we know. I know Fido isn't "my baby" and that I'm not his "mommy" but its the closet words we can get to using that describe our love and attachment for that animal.
Now it's definitely strange to see a dog being walked in a stroller, feasting on ice cream with shades on, but describing human characteristics to vocalize the love for a pet is not abnormal.