Yeah.

The first time I came into a conversation like this, I was like, "cats are self-aware, but not like humans." and got into a really vicious argument with someone who kept trying to reduce things to "cats only hang around people for food" (easily falsifiable) and "you want to see cats as humans in animal suits." It was really kind of ironic because the people arguing against what I was saying were basically arguing that cats weren't anthropomorphic enough to have self-awareness, and my point was that we can't judge feline self-awareness on the basis of how much they're like people.

Like the mirror test, I never bought the mirror test because I think it tests for human-like assumptions. I've been told based on the test that cats can't understand mirrors. And I mean, seriously arguing that cats perceive the reflection as another cat even though cats never treat reflections like that.

One of the most vehement arguments I got into was with a vet. I was all how can you think this when you work with animals all the time?

But yeah, it's really weird and frustrating.