I’m pretty sure they think of the person taking care of them as some analogous of a mother. We should be careful not to anthropomorphism their emotions as they are probably not quite as complex as we would like. They certainly have some degree of emotions though.

But they have no concept of “human” or “mother” so I would guess it is more like “thing stops hunger, thing warm, thing safe”. Thus they bother you when they are hungry, sit on you when they are cold and come to you when they are afraid.