cats

If a person deliberately removes themselves from a frustrating situation to cool off, people call them childish and petty.

If a person finds a way to signal "I'm frustrated and in no mood to talk right now" without speaking (or even by speaking!), people call them passive-aggressive and manipulative.

Those are both emotional regulation skills, and this cat found a way to do both with one action. Bravo.

People don't know shit about emotional regulation. In fact, they punish you for exercising the very skills you learn in therapy. And then they hit you with "YoU NeEd To Go To ThErApY!!!1!1!" (weaponizing the concept of therapy itself), while conveniently ignoring all the work that you've actually done in therapy, as if "therapy" itself is some magic bullet where you do and then you're better/cured and never have to deal with frustration or challenging emotions again.

Only someone who's never been in therapy could possibly believe that, but they're precisely the type to weaponize therapy as a means of ignoring their own responsibility to be a decent person. (i.e., when you're frustrated because they treat you like shit, and instead of examining their own behavior they just tell you to get therapy, and they accuse you of being manipulative if you have the audacity to demand a modicum of respect).

Agreed, narrowed eyes mean they trust you. Ears back would mean anger, those ears look relaxed. Yet all cats are different and if OP says they're angry presumably there's a reason why. Maybe the cat's tail is twitching? If so I think this expression is more like "exasperated about something annoying done by a loved one" and they're dealing with it by retreating to a space that feels comforting and that is close to the loved one. If a cat stares at you, it usually means something related to you. So I'd guess the cat is saying: "I love you even though you're being really annoying right now."