A Question for a Behavioralist and a Logician

I am laying in the corner, with a cordless drill, without the drill bit in. I turned it on, and ran my finger in the front of it. The cat by my feet in the cornet jumped from it being turned on, it never heard one on before, much less know what it does.

So… I pointed it at him in a slow jam, and he cringed. I moved it back and forth, and he recoiled into the corner. I brought it real close, and he looked down. I laughter, turned it off, put it up on a counter. He was still looking down, so I patted him and he jumped sky high.

So… from a logical perspective, I can say he has a healthy fear of drills being pointed at him, and there for he has a fear of being drilled, as that was exactly what scared him the most, the slow jab of the drill towards him or near him.

From a bahavioralist perspective, I can’t say this. To be fair, I can’t say he knows what a drill is, he didn’t evolve to shy away from drills, and Bible is silent on the issue of cats and drills, so can’t take that route. Just… when I petted him, I intuitively knew what he was scared of when he jumped up high. He might not know “drill” and the “function of drill”, but the function of drill in our sense wasn’t the sense the cat knew it by, and I did make motions akin to drilling (had there been a drill but in it, cat be dead).

So why can’t I say my cat has a fear of drills, of being drilled? A irrational drillaphobia. Why isn’t my intuition enough, if we both seem to understand what just occured. He is by the door, crying like he does whenever he claws me or does something wrong (like shitting on the carpet) and I get mad and he gets scared. He might lack technical knowledge of drilling as we do, but knows the whole sensory experience signals danger and bodily harm… which is exactly what drills do. He seems rather spot on in identifying a important definition of drilling, it’s destructive. Drill can hurt cat… he has this down on a intellectual level, so as a behavioralist, tell me why I can’t say this? My cat has a fear of drills.