1972—ASPCA requires adopted animals to be spayed and neutered before going home.
1970s—Change to primarily indoor-only lifestyle (especially in United States)
Recommended by many veterinary and humane organizations to protect cats from danger, to protect wildlife from their hunting, and because cats are increasingly accepted as family members.
1990—TNR (Trap, Neuter, Return) emerges.
1994—First mobile spay/neuter truck is started in Houston, Texas, when it is recognized that people need the service, but cannot always travel to a vet clinic to get their pets spayed or neutered.
1999—The organization In Defense of Animals (IDA) begins the Guardian Campaign, seeking a change of language and legal status for companion animals by changing the term “pet owner” to “pet guardian.”
2003—West Hollywood becomes first U.S. city to ban declawing.
Section
TWO
A Crash Course in Cats
3
The Raw Cat Rhythm
BACK IN THE early days of my job, I just assumed my clients and students—along with cat guardians everywhere—were thirsty for knowledge about all cats. So I spent entirely too much time staying up at night trying to break my philosophy down into bite-sized pieces for them. It turned out that most of the cat people in my stratosphere were mainly interested in knowledge relating to their cats, because, understandably, those who hired me wanted to know how to make their cats stop acting out. As a result, they saw my impassioned attempts at connecting the cat dots as unnecessary icing on the cake. This led me to the revelation that, when it came to getting these folks on board the big-picture train, I had a very small window of opportunity before their eyes started glazing over.
And so, just as I did with the term “Cat Mojo,” I needed to find that hook: a quick-fire way of reminding guardians that their cats’ behavior was tied to the behaviors of the Raw Cat. In this case, I wanted them to understand the paramount importance of the “three Rs”—Routines, Rituals, and Rhythm—in their cat’s life; the three Rs are based on the hunter’s lifestyle of their ancestors. The Raw Cat, as we’ve established, needed to accomplish very specific tasks every single day in order to feel Mojo-fied.
The hook that I came up with—that mnemonic sticky note—was Hunt, Catch, Kill, Eat, Groom, Sleep (HCKEGS). I would (and still do) have my clients repeat the words in rhythm and with gusto, as if we were cat cheerleaders, until it became a mantra. The mantra, once absorbed, serves as a constant reminder to the guardian that this Raw Cat Rhythm makes the world go ’round for your cat, and it is your job to “feed the rhythm.” This reminds you to establish routines around playtime, rest time, and mealtime—even down to what your cat is eating. Every road leads to Mojo, and one of the major street signs along the route says, in neon letters, HCKEGS.
HUNT, CATCH, KILL, EAT
Historically, as we discussed in section 1, our goal for cats to serve as nature’s pest control, and their goal for themselves as honorary exterminators, aligned perfectly. Hunt, Catch, Kill, Eat (HCKE)—the anchoring foundation of Raw Cat Rhythm, and the four-step process that cats engage in to procure and devour their food—served both parties well, and that’s why our relationship with cats followed the same trajectory for so many years. It’s really been in just the last 150 years that this thread has frayed, and a fork has appeared in the road to cat domesticity. Until then, it was a given that cats should be outside and that it was cruel to move them indoors.
That’s what makes this moment in time so important for our future: what was a given for thousands of years suddenly is not anymore, as we continue to reconcile the safer, better quality of a life of indoor living with the cat’s innate, biological drives. HCKE is not about providing a minimum of care for your cat. It’s a reminder of the direct thread that connects your cat to her Raw Cat ancestor; it’s that “tin can on both ends of a string” communication I keep talking about.
Still, so many people want to know “Is it okay if I don’t play with my cat?” or “Can I get an automatic feeder and leave my cat alone for two days?” Instead of wagging my finger and saying “no,” the goal is to show you, from the crucial starting point of HCKE, how obvious the answer is, to the point where you won’t need to ask those types of questions. And if HCKE is our diving board, and Cat Mojo is the water we dive into, then understanding a cat’s key physiological mechanics—particularly as they relate to hunting—well, that’s the spring in the board.
HOW THE CAT EXPERIENCES THE WORLD AS A HUNTER
As natural-born hunters, cats rely on multiple senses to do their thing—primarily touch, vision, and hearing. This means that virtually every part of your cat’s physiology has a function in the hunting process.
Touch
Cats are extremely sensitive to touch. This is, in part, because they have skin receptors that fire continuously as long as they are being touched—meaning these cells don’t adapt to physical contact because the brain keeps getting a signal saying, “I am being touched.” This is in contrast to humans, whose sensory receptors, for example, do adapt to touch, as evidenced by the fact that we don’t consciously notice, moment by moment, that we are wearing clothes. The type of cells that cats have (Merkel cells) are ultrasensitive, more like those on your fingertips. Even their hair follicles are innervated, so having hairs out of place can be irritating for a cat.
Here are a few more interesting tidbits about cats and touch:
Cats have some areas that are extra sensitive: the nose, toes, and the pads of their front feet all have even more receptors than other parts of their bodies. (Dr. John Bradshaw describes cat’s feet as “sense organs.”)
Their nose pads can detect wind direction and temperature.
Cats have hair receptors in their toes, which explains why long-haired cats in particular may be especially sensitive to things like the feel of litter on their paws, and being groomed.
They have short, stiff hairs around the mouth and wrists to detect vibration.
The base of the claws can sense displacement, which comes in handy, for example, when a mouse is wiggling in a cat’s grasp.
Overstimulation, and possibly even some self-grooming and compulsive disorders, are often related to this exquisite sensitivity. So the next time you are petting or brushing your cat and he whips around to take a chunk out of your hand or brush, try not to take it personally! (More on this in section 3.)
At the same time, understand that all of this sensory perception is not just intended to accommodate their hunting activities. Cats are also prey for some animals (like coyotes and hawks). Being sensitive to touch means being sensitive to pain. Cats need to know if they are being attacked, to be extra cognizant of the warning signs of an attack, so their razor-sharp fight-or-flight mechanism can kick in.
By a Whisker!
When it comes to touch, however, nothing comes close to the acute sensitivity of the whiskers. Compared to dogs, cats have a larger area of the brain dedicated to receiving signals from the muzzle area. Whiskers have receptors that communicate with the somatosensory cortex of their brain, giving them information about the ambient temperature, their balance, and the size of a space they are trying to move through. Whiskers can also detect movement and airflow, and send messages to the brain about how strong, what direction, and how quickly the air around them is moving, which could foretell potential movements of their kill.
Cats’ up-close vision is not especially sharp, so they rely heavily on information from their whiskers when prey is in or near their mouth. When in hunting mode, the twelve whiskers on both sides of the nose are held forward to detect the prey’s movement, so that the cat can make fine-tuned adjustments for the killing bite. These whiskers on their upper lip—combined with the whiskers on their cheeks, over the eyes, and on the chin, inner wrist, and back of the legs—all help cats “see” in 3-D.
Cat Daddy Fact
Wildcat species who are nighttime hunters have more prominent whiskers than daytime killers.
Vision
Everything about the anatomy and function of cats’ eyes (and for that matter, every Raw Cat muscle, body part, and instinct) supports their existence as hunters. Cats have large eyes (in proportion to both body and head size) that face forward, which is common in predatory animals. Their visual field covers about 200 degrees, including their peripheral vision. Of that field, 90 degrees is “binocular”—in which both eyes work together for depth perception (such as determining how far away a bird is). Cats’ eyes are also more responsive to fast movement, ideal for allowing our beloved hunters to catch a scurrying mouse.
However, their vision is not used so much for the up-close handling of prey, as their short-range vision is rather fuzzy and less detailed than ours. Instead, their optimal focal distance is between two and six meters—perfect for stalking a bird or mouse. If the prey is closer than a foot away, the cat’s eyes don’t even focus; at that point, the whiskers take over by pointing forward to pick up the details. That said, indoor cats are slightly nearsighted because the objects they focus on tend to be closer, while cats who go outside are usually farsighted, just like their Raw Cat ancestors.
The Eyes Have It: Comparing Cats’ Eyes to Humans’ Eyes
A cat’s eye works in a way very similar to ours: light enters the pupil, or the opening in the center of the iris (the colored part of the eye), is focused by the lens and cornea, then is projected onto the retina at the back of the eye. The retina has two types of receptors: rods and cones. Rods are specialized for low light conditions, and cones are best for daylight color detection. Here’s where a major difference between cat eyes and human eyes occurs: cats have three times the number of rods as the human eye, but they have fewer cones than we do. So, although they can detect some color in daylight, colors aren’t nearly as prominent—or, apparently, important—to them. In dim light, they see only in black and white, but they can see much more clearly than we can. As always, everything boils down to “whatever helps the hunt.” They will take clarity over color any day of the week!
Speaking of how evolution has helped the raw hunter, here are a few more key differences:
Cats’ pupils aren’t round like ours. Instead, they have a vertical slit shape that allows them to respond faster to light, and open and close more and in all directions.
Cat’s eyes are slower to focus because the lens of the eye is stiff. And when the pupils are highly constricted—such as in bright daylight—it is actually more difficult for them to focus.
Humans have a fovea, which is a tiny pit in the retina that is specialized for seeing details. Cats instead have a “visual streak,” which serves a similar function but is densely packed with rods, giving cats better vision under low light conditions.
Behind the retina, cats have reflective cells called tapetum lucidum. These cells are like a built-in flashlight, providing cats with a signal boost under low light conditions. Incidentally, they are also what make your cat’s eyes “glow” when you take a picture of them with flash.
Hearing
As with their touch and vision, cats’ hearing is also an important tool in their HCKE routine. Cats have the broadest hearing range of the carnivores—10.5 octaves. Cats and humans have a similar range at the low end of the scale, but cats can hear much higher pitched sounds (like mouse squeaks) than we can—about 1.6 octaves above the sounds we hear. Most aspects of a cat’s hearing are related to detecting prey rather than communicating with other cats.
The cat’s outer ear boosts frequencies and is shaped to literally funnel hard-to-detect sounds into the ear canal for better analysis. Their ability to move each ear separately allows cats to pinpoint the source of a sound—be it a prey animal, a predator, or a distressed kitten crying for Mom. They can also rotate each ear almost 180 degrees, allowing cats to be aware of anyone coming at them from behind.
NOW, EQUIPPED WITH a better understanding of how cats’ physiology and anatomy support them as master hunters, let’s look at a few particulars about how and what they kill.
“Smaller Than a Pigeon”: Killing in the Real World
Cats will hunt anything that is smaller than them, but they tend to prefer prey that is smaller than a pigeon. Their favorite prey is small rodents, with birds as a close second. Cats may also hunt bugs, reptiles, and amphibians.
Recent studies have shown that domestic cats, like their cougar cousins, have individual preferences for prey. Most cats are specialists—they hunt just one or two prey types—but some cats are generalists with a wider range of prey preferences (“anything that moves”).
Birds are a little harder for cats to catch, which is probably why the free-living cat diet is over 75 percent rodent. Prey preferences can be influenced by what’s available, and even by what a mom cat brought to her kittens when they were young. The bottom line is that hunters must adapt; so if there are fewer mice available, cats must hunt birds . . . or go hungry.
This leads us to cats’ preferred hunting styles, which are no doubt influenced by their food source of choice. Individual cats show different strategies for killing, some preferring to:
ambush from an open clearing
stalk-and-rush from behind cover
wait for their prey to pop out of entrances to burrows and warrens
Don’t forget, this applies to all cats, which means that your innocent indoor companion will have a preference in hunting style as well. It will be your job to discover this individual hunting “sweet spot” when we talk about cat play in chapter 7.
Going In for the Kill
Typically, cats grab prey with paws first, then dig in with their teeth, finishing the job with a “kill bite” to the nape of the neck, placed specifically to sever their prey’s spinal cord. If they’re unsure about the prey’s ability to fight back, or they’re not very experienced hunters, they may bite multiple times. They may also appear to be “playing with their food,” as they bat at it or toss it about in a torturous fashion. But this isn’t because the cat is being cruel; it is actually a strategy used to tire out a dangerous victim, making that final killing bite easier to deliver.
Until the bitter end, there is a method to their madness. In addition to the whiskers’ role in the final sensory confirmation of a kill, cats also have nerves in their teeth that allow them to detect movement and make small adjustments while biting. All of these fine behavioral details are part of their DNA and allow for an efficient, thorough, and low-risk kill.
While all of these components serve to make cats one of nature’s most perfect hunters, these are not just a random collection of attributes and talents; they are responses to specific environmental conditions. Likewise, understand that, as both predator and prey, cats have become uniquely adapted to both hunting and protecting themselves. What has made them successful is the fact that they can stay alive and kill with equal skill. For more on this unique blend of talents—and how it specifically influences their behavior and relationships with the other inhabitants of their home turf—check out “Cat Chess” in chapter 10.
NOW THAT WE have a better idea of how your cat’s body, behavior, and astute hunting prowess have evolved to serve HCKE, it’s easy to see how it is an indispensable part of Cat Mojo. Hunting is pleasurable to cats, and to the Raw Cat, experiencing pleasure and fulfilling their primary objective mean basically the same thing. Simply put, it is the primary end goal to every cat’s day. The biggest favor you can do for your cat is to help the Raw Cat find a home for his daily superobjective within the relatively new and somewhat restrictive confines of your home by establishing a flow of Routines, Rituals, and Rhythm around HCKE. More on this in chapter 7.
Eating—Meat, the Whole Meat, and Nothing but the Meat
After the hunt—whether it be in the “real world”
or via your faithful reenactment of one during a play session—it’s time to eat. And after all that’s been discussed so far, it should make perfect sense by now that your cat is not a vegan. No, cats are obligate carnivores: their digestive system is designed, specifically and exclusively, to process meat. Likewise, it should come as no surprise that cats, as opportunistic hunters, are not scavengers, and as such are not digestively built to graze. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are meant to eat huge meals, either. Opportunistic, by definition, means that whatever presents itself will do—whether a grasshopper enters the crosshairs, or a bird.
Generally, cats have a weak sense of taste, with fewer taste buds than humans. Their sense of smell is much more useful for them in hunting, and thus important for eating. That sense is so ingrained that congested cats often lose their appetite; it’s as if with one frayed wire, the entire machine will go on the fritz. That said, cats can still detect salty, sweet, sour, and bitter, and tend to show dislike for sour and bitter (this is likely a response that evolved to prevent the ingestion of dangerous toxins). Additionally, cats have a taste receptor for adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a molecule that’s a source of energy for all living cells. ATP is sometimes referred to as a signal for meat, and, interestingly, we can’t “taste” it.
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