Yesterday, I talked about famous duos. In that list, I mentioned the cartoon wonder couple, Tom and Jerry. Of course, Jerry is a wonderful little mouse. And Tom is a cat. Which made me wonder more about Tom’s life and why he was always so angry. Was it because he was a cat? What about the rest of the cats in the world? I know we have one cat who is very angry about everything. Our girl kitty.
Well, it turns out that a house cat’s genome is 95.6 percent tiger, and they share many behaviors with their jungle ancestors. These behaviors include scent marking by scratching, prey play, prey stalking, pouncing, chinning, and urine marking. And probably growling.
So. You think your cats are sweet? Well, here’s a thing to consider. Cats are believed to be the only mammals who don’t taste sweetness. That might be telling of something, I’ll tell you.
We currently have three cats who live in our barn and garage. Dr. Pepper Jack, Franco Valducci, and Eleanor Roosevelt. For short, we call them “Pep,” “Franky,” and “Bitch,” respectively. A few others are milling around, thinking this may be the place.
One of our cat’s (Pep) has a bad eye. He looks like a badass because of his bad eye. Like an old battle ax or something. But in general, cats are nearsighted. I find this very interesting. Yet, their peripheral vision and night vision are much better than that of humans.
Here’s something I didn’t know. Cats are supposed to have 18 toes — five toes on each front paw and four toes on each back paw. I’ve never paid much attention, but today, I must go do some toe counting.
In general, when I think of cats, I see them as athletic and graceful. They can run and jump like crazy. In fact, cats can jump up to six times their length. They are good climbers too, when it comes to going up things, like trees, and legs. But cats’ claws all curve downward, which means that they can’t climb down trees head-first. Instead, they have to back down the trunk. I’ve seen this happen plenty. It always cracks me up because they have this panicked look on their faces every time.
Some people think cats are sneaky. They are kind of slinky when they walk, but it is for good reason. Cats walk like camels and giraffes. They move both of their right feet first, then move both of their left feet. No other animals walk this way, just those three.
Here’s another thing about how they move. Cats use their whiskers to “feel” the world around them to determine which small spaces they can fit into. And your cat’s whiskers are generally about the same width as its body. This is why you should never, EVER cut their whiskers. Of course, when my sister and I were eight and four years old, respectively, we cut our cat’s hair. In the dead of winter. She was a long-haired cat, too. At any rate, we took her whiskers down to nothing in the process of shaving all her hair off. Dumb heads.
But back to their sneakiness. Cats make very little noise when they walk around. It’s all in the feet. The thick, soft pads on their paws allow them to sneak up on their prey. Or sometimes their humans.
So here is the age-old question. Who is smarter? Cats or dogs. Well, here’s the thing. Let’s start with the cerebral cortex, the layer of the brain that controls functions such as problem-solving and decision-making. Studies have revealed that dogs have many more neurons than cats in the cerebral cortex. While dogs possess, on average, about 530 million neurons in the cortex, cats have only about 250 million. But. Don’t make a decision yet. This data might suggest that dogs are twice as intelligent as cats. But it may just be a direct correlation between larger brain sizes in dogs. Regardless, dogs’ higher neuron count is often viewed as a gauge of their superior intelligence.
For the record. My dogs sniff each other’s butts. And one of them chases her tail for recreational purposes.
So there it is. A little look at cats. Not the same as the Broadway rendition, but I’m on a limited budget here when it comes to my stage productions.
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“If cats looked like frogs we’d realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That’s what people remember.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies
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“There are two means of refuge from the misery of life — music and cats.”
― Albert Schweitzer
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“A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.”
― Ernest Hemingway
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Here, kitty, kitty.
