A cat has....

[Paul Whybrow]

“A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.”

Ernest Hemingway

Our Cats — The Hemingway Home & Museum

 

[Dorm Ant]

“A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.”

Ernest Hemingway

Our Cats — The Hemingway Home & Museum

This applies to all animals, not just cats. Except perhaps those that pretend to be something else temporarily, for a specific purpose. Dogs are the most expressive animals you can meet. In fact, this applies to toddlers, too. A toddler will shriek with joy and do a dance when you walk in, even if they've had a bad day. Nothing especially honest about cats.

 

[Hannah F]

Cats' emotional honesty is not always clear because they have a slow deflation of heightened emotion. Your cat might seem unsettled/angry etc. now, but that might be an emotional reaction to something that happened earlier (like a human mood). Dogs have a fast deflation of emotion, so the emotion you see now will be related to its environment now (with the exception of anxiety which is an expectation of future upset triggered by an environmental cue).

 

[Dorm Ant]

Seems like Hemingway was clumsily trying to make a point about humans. If he'd known anything about the ego, he'd realise why. Settling and living in ordered society gave adults a powerful urge to fit in, so children are taught from a young age to suppress their emotions. Toddlers haven't been subjected to the indoctrination yet, so they live in the present and vent at will. Nothing especially honest about cats.