 The Thoughty Autie podcast. Perhaps understand what you think the benefits of having pets are to specifically autistic people. Maybe not specifically, but if there are some specific ones, maybe mention them, but obviously I can imagine the sort of... I've dropped some big ones for you. Yeah, so I've actually been reading in research in preparation for an upcoming video. I'm sorry to keep tempting this, but this is absolutely super fascinating to me, and it's like a number two question. And it's about how autistic people gravitate towards non-human animals. So all animals get out of the way, but if you've got cats, dogs, for example, companion animals, how extra value people are on the spectrum gain out of that compared to neurotypicals. That's the first thing. There's a certain... Unfortunately, reading a lot of these studies, there's a lot of... It's called like human replacement or people replacement. And it's a bizarre kind of concept. It's this othering language of, oh, look at Mike over there. He prefers cats to people. And it's like, well, yes, but I'm not replacing people with cats. It's not like I want an army of people around me. I'm just going to replace them all with cats. It's not where we're going with it. We get a lot of what we could gain out of social relationships with other humans from companion animals as well. And that's just not mammals, but that can be fish. It can be your bearded dragons and reptiles and things as well. But we get an awful lot out of that. And there's an awful lot of benefits that autistic people can gain from it being a fulfillment of a ritual. So it's really kind of hard to explain, but the act of caring for animals, like you've got like a routine in the morning. So for example, we have a routine for feeding the birds. It involves just chucking them out, load a corn. It's a really simple routine. It's very kind of medieval. You get a bucket, you get the corn, you pick it up and just flick it on there and you're done, right? That's them done. And it's like, there is something kind of like really peaceful about that and really kind of like, you know, it's like a life goal, just a bucket of corn and chickens and you just chuck corn out for birds. It's just like, it's very peaceful and it's really rewarding. So it's like, on one hand, it can be hard to actually get yourself into an actual routine, but on the other hand, once you are in it and you have that routine a part of your day, it's kind of like a nice thing. I also think that it's kind of almost a grounding thing. So another example is, I will forget to feed myself, but the cats won't let me forget to feed them. So if the machines are not there for the cats to feed them or they're empty or whatever, they will not let you sleep. They won't let you rest. They will bother you really badly to feed them. And once you're in that zone of like feeding the cats, it's then like, maybe I should make myself a sandwich or like cereal as well. So it reminds you to kickstart other parts of your routine. Yeah, exactly, Thomas. Thank you so much. That's exactly what I'm trying to say. So like the routine that goes along with the animal husbandry does kind of connect in with the routines that you need to follow through as it's a human as well. That makes sense. That's really cool. We also get really good sort of like stimuli value from them as well. So one of them wants to come in. I've got Emma here and Emma's kind of like, she's pretty neuro-spicy. But they're great to see. They feel good, they're purring away. If you're lying down on the bed with like 10 cats on you, it's a fantastic experience. It's like a weighted blanket, a heated blanket and like a stim toy is all in one. So there's kind of that element of it as well. So there's kind of like the physical sensory kind of element. Then there is a flip side as well. Things like litter trays and whatnot. We've got some unique ways to think of managing that. Like how are we doing in the chat, by the way? Yeah, if we're doing good. Maybe we'll read out a couple of things. Renee says, my cat's generally just steel covers or the best part of the pillow. Isabella says, do you have my favourite people doing a podcast? Thank you Isabella. Autistic. I'll answer that one. Where is Mike everyone? Did he say Malaysia? No, my mother's Malaysian. I'm on a place called the Isle of Man. The Isle of Man is a little island in the Irish Sea. It's not just men though, is it? It's not like a... No, no, no. There's a room over here I'm afraid. Oh, I can see a cover. Yeah, so this is Emma and she's at her bowl. But we're on the wrong stream, Emma. This is not the super chat stream. You see, I actually... I'll have to... Sorry, Thomas. It's so good. I actually... For a long time I think it was probably because of my grandma because she has like a really crippling phobia of cats. She has this story of like how one sort of summer day sort of a group of cats sort of cloned in through like a small window in one of her apartments and like stole it like an entire sort of Easter egg or something. And apparently that scarred her for life. She doesn't like cats. But that kind of rubbed off on me a little bit for a while so I've always been like a very much like a dog person. But when I went into Thailand basically like... I think probably about three or four nights a week I'd go to this Taekwondo center. It was this sort of Thai team. Chiang Mai was the place kind of the North Thailand. And after every session I would sort of sit on the mats and do some stretches and stuff. And there was always this one cat that would just come up to me and just like sit between my legs while I was like stretching. And I got chosen by the cat and I was like... I'm trying very very hard not to like it but it's getting more difficult and I kind of got a little bit of a bond with them and I was like maybe I should change my perspective. Yeah, maybe Thomas. I mean you're not a million miles from me you should perhaps visit and we'll see if we can sort of run you over with the cats. But you have dogs as well. I like them now, I like them now. The dogs and you can kind of stay for the cats. So we've got a few cats. This is Saber. Another one. Yeah, there's quite a few in here at the minute. Let me know if the audio is a problem guys. Daniel says cats get confused around gingers. Cats steal souls but gingers have no souls. It's conundrum. That ginger cat's their one brain. I cannot confirm or deny if this is true. Probably true. I can, well I don't know. It's quite hard to sort of determine if someone has a soul by looking at them but I'd assume that the follicles on someone's head does not determine the encapsulation. What am I trying to say? The containment of a soul. I would say probably. That's a little bit ghostbusters. I would definitely like say for me when it comes to like the benefits of sort of pets. Like as I said I've only really had a dog and it wasn't really looked after by me but my first dog he was from the kennel. He was called Bob. We quite often called him bobby dog of course. He had like a midnight coat, midnight eyes. My parents got him from the kennel like about a year before I was born as a puppy. He was basically my big brother and I think he lived until about the age of about 14, 15. So it was a large part of my life for a long time. And I do remember sort of coming home from days at school and sort of like cuddling with him at the top of the staircase. Yeah I don't know. It's kind of like an unspeakable bond. I don't really know how to describe it very much but it was a big part of my life for a long time. I still haven't really got over it to be honest. I don't think you do and it is actually the worst thing. And sometimes I find myself getting into thought spirals where I'll be like, you know, cuddling onto the cat's presumably and it'll be like imagining like when they're going to die or something. And I'll be stressing myself out about it and it sounds kind of ridiculous and I know it's a human thing but I get pretty sad and then I find myself getting quite sort of anxious and upset about it. And it's like, you know, like mourning them before they're gone or even afterwards. It's like to a degree it's healthy but the next time it's not like an equal sum game of like the amount of joy you get is all got to be repaid with some sadness as well. And it is hard. I completely understand that. In a weird sort of way I said cats and the average human age of that was about 18. So, you know, a long period. I mean, I think I was 35 before I lost my first cat. My first pet. So it was kind of like quite a hard thing to kind of go through and then quite a few in order. I think it definitely does like highlight sort of the fragility of life. Like that was kind of like my first experience with like having it having a death, you know, in an around me rather, which was really hard, of course. I mean, my parents said that it just kind of run off somewhere. But, you know, that's just like what parents say. But it really, I don't know. It kind of, I suppose, prepared me for like the nature of what life is like and, you know, the sort of subtleties of like the value that each day has with somebody or a pet or I remember it hit me quite hard, even though I was quite young. No, especially because you were quite young, I think. And I think it's like, it's quite, I mean, life is difficult and you don't know when, and I don't mean, it's not in a morbid way, but you don't know when the last time you'll speak to someone will be or when the last time you'll see someone. So kind of it is a reminder, it's a very cognizant reminder of kind of taking each day on its own, you know. But yeah, I mean, it's well understood anyway that pets help with anxiety. I know folks from the army that have PTSD service dogs and it's, I worry about them not having the dog anymore, you know, it's kind of like critical need for one. We need to like succession plan these dogs and like encourage them to get another one because their service dogs are getting a bit old. You know, because it gives them so much hope and it gives them so much hope is the wrong term, actually. Relief might be a better one, comfort might be, it's hard to pick the right word. But, you know, it's like, even when they can't care for themselves, they can for their service animal, you know? Yes, yeah. Because that is, I guess, another thing that's talked about a lot when it comes to like autism and pets because you can get autism sort of support, dogs and things that are like I had interviewed on the podcast, I think, probably sometime within season two, we were talking about their service dog Coco, how they help people like meltdowns and stuff like that. I thought that was really interesting. And also to kind of position themselves between you and other people to kind of give you just that space that perhaps you might not be aware of yourself. There's so much to it. A bubble, yeah. And dogs are great at that. That almost comes naturally to them, perhaps even more than perhaps a blind person service dog will be. But I don't, short of the other content creators, I don't know anyone with an autism service animal, but I do know a lot of autistic people with companion animals. Yes, yeah. In fact, I can see from even in this chat, there's quite a few people with like their pets as profile pictures. And I noticed that quite a lot on my live streams. People have also emailed me pictures of their pets. I've got an email inbox full of photographs of people's pets. I encourage people to send pictures of their pets. I really enjoy, you know, people sending me pictures of their cats and their dogs and their fish and all sorts of stuff, rabbits and reptiles and lizards. And I think it's fantastic. It's a great way to bond with other people. The friends that I have in real life as well, IRL. I mean, Thomas, you're a friend of your life, but you know what I mean? Like IRL, you know, like, irregularly geographically nearby. Yeah. I've all come broadly speaking from either my work with Marine and environment stuff or pets. So it's kind of like, like even having pets, kind of things you're closer to other people in a good way. Like if you walk a dog, if I walk Maisie, in fact, she doesn't get walked as much as she should because people want to talk to me all the time. They go, oh, such a cute dog. How old is she? What's her name? You know, it's like, okay, okay, okay. At least it's a script. But it's like, please, I just want to walk my dog. Yeah. I think I think Purple Ella was talking about that too. Like as it being like, it's kind of nice because you get a pass towards people, but also like sometimes you just don't want to, you can't be asked for that.