Catwatching

by Desmond Morris

  For the cat is employing a sense organ that we sadly lack. The cat's sixth sense is to be found in a small structure situated in the roof of the mouth. It is a little tube opening into the mouth just behind the upper front teeth. Known as the vomero-nasal or Jacobsen's organ, it is about half an inch long and is highly sensitive to airborne chemicals. It can best be described as a taste-smell organ and is extremely important to cats when they are reading the odour-news deposited around their territories. During human evolution, when we became increasingly dominated by visual input to the brain, we lost the use of our Jacobsen's organs, of which only a tiny trace now remains, but for cats it is of great significance and explains the strange, snooty, gaping expression they adopt occasionally as they go about the social round.

  How does a cat manage to fall on its feet?

  Although cats are excellent climbers they do occasionally fall, and when this happens a special 'righting reflex' goes into instant operation.

  Without this a cat could easily break its back. As it starts to fall, with its body upside-down, an automatic twisting reaction begins at the head end of the body. The head rotates first, until it is upright, then the front legs are brought up close to the face, ready to protect it from impact. (A blow to a cat's chin from underneath can be particularly serious.) Next, the upper part of the spine is twisted, bringing the front half of the body round in line with the head.

  Finally, the hind legs are bent up, so that all four limbs are now ready for touchdown and, as this happens, the cat twists the rear half of its body round to catch up with the front. Finally, as it is about to make contact, it stretches all four legs out towards the ground and arches its back, as a way of reducing the force of the impact. While this body-twisting is taking place, the stiffened tail is rotating like a propeller, acting as a counterbalancing device. All this occurs in a fraction of a second and it requires slow-motion film to analyse these rapid stages of the righting response.

  How do cats behave when they become elderly?

  Many owners fail to notice that their cats have reached 'old age'.

  This is due to the fact that senility has little effect on the feline appetite. Because they continue to eat greedily and with their usual vigour, it is thought that they are still 'young ~~~~~ But there are certain tell-tale signs of ageing. Leaping and grooming are the first actions to suffer, and for the same reason. Old age makes the cat's joints stiffer and this leads to slower movements. Leaping up on to a chair or a table, or outside up on to a wall, becomes increasingly difficult. Very old cats actually need to be lifted up on to a favourite chair. As the supple quality of the young cat's flexible body is lost, it also becomes increasingly awkward for the cat to twist its neck round to groom the more inaccessible parts of its coat. These areas of its fur start to look dishevelled and at this stage a little gentle grooming by the animal's owner is a great help, even if the cat in question is not one that has generally been fussed over with brush and comb in its younger days. As the elderly cat's body becomes more rigid, so do its habits. Its daily routine becomes increasingly fixed and novelties cause distress now, where once they may have aroused acute interest. The idea of buying a young kitten to cheer up an old cat simply does not work. It upsets the elderly animal's daily rhythm.

  Moving house is even more traumatic. The kindest way to treat an elderly cat is therefore to keep as much as possible to the wellzestablished pattern of the day, but with a little physical help where required. The outdoor life of an elderly cat is fraught with dangers. It has reached a point where disputes with younger rivals are nearly always going to end in defeat for the old animal, so a close eye must be kept on any possible persecution. Luckily these changes do not occur until late in the lives of most cats. Human beings suffer from 'old age' for roughly the last third of their lives, but with cats it is usually only the last tenth. So their declining years are mercifully brief. The average lifespan is reckoned to be about ten years. Some authorities put it a little higher, at about twelve years, but it is impossible to be accurate because conditions of catkeeping vary so much. The best rough guide is to say that a domestic cat should live between nine and fifteen years and should only suffer from senile decline for about the final year or so of that span. There have been many arguments about the record longevity of a domestic cat, with some amazing claims being made, some as high as forty-three years. The longest accepted lifespan at present, however, is thirty-six years for a tabby called 'Puss' which lived from 1903 to 1939. This is exceptional and extremely rare. Serious attempts to locate cats over twenty years old, both in Great Britain and the United States, have never managed to turn up more than a mere handful of reliable cases.

  One of the reasons why it is difficult to find good records of long-lived cats is that the most carefully kept details are always for the pure-bred animals, which live much shorter lives than the crossbred 'moggies' or mongrels. This is because the prized and carefully recorded pure-bred cats suffer from inbreeding which shortens their lives. The 'badly bred' alley cat, by comparison, enjoys what is called 'hybrid vigour' the improved physical stamina produced by outbreeding. Unfortunately, such cats are less well looked after in most cases, so they, in their turn, suffer more from fighting, neglect and irregular diet. This cuts down their lifespan. The cat with a record-breaking lifespan is therefore most likely to be the one which has a dubious pedigree but is a much loved and protected pet.

  For such an animal fifteen to twenty years is not too hopeless a target.

  One of the strangest features of cat longevity is that it easily exceeds that of dogs. The record for a dog is twenty-nine years, seven years short of the longest-lived cat. Bearing in mind the fact that larger animals usually live longer than smaller ones, the figures should be reversed, so for their size cats do unusually well. And there is a compensation for those toms that suffer the mutilation of being neutered, for neutered toms have a longer lifespan than 'entire' ones.

  The reasons for this, it appears, are that they get involved in fewer damaging brawls with rivals, and also that they are, for some reason, more resistant to infection. One careful study revealed that a neutered tom could expect on average three more years of feline survival than an unneutered one.

  Why does a cat lick its face when it is not dirty?

  A quick flick of the tongue over the lips is one of the tell-tale signs that a cat is becoming agitated, while at the same time being fascinated or puzzled by something. Keeping an eye firmly fixed on the source of its agitation, the cat gives the impression that it has suddenly and inexplicably developed an urgent need to clean its nose or the fur around its mouth. But there is no dirt there. The cleaning is not functional and it does not follow the usual pattern seen after feeding or during a normal grooming session. The licks are short and sharp rapid sweeps of the tongue that do not develop in the usual way into proper washing actions. They are the cat's equivalent of a man scratching his head when perplexed or irritated. Reactions of this type are called 'displacement activities'. They occur when the cat is thrown into a state of conflict. Something which upsets it but at the same time arouses its curiosity, will simultaneously repel and attract the animal.

  There it sits, wanting to leave and wanting to stay. It stares at the irritant and, unable to resolve its conflict, shows its state of agitation by performing some trivial, abbreviated action – anything to break the stalemate in which it finds itself. Different species respond in different ways. Some animals nibble their paws, others scratch behind an ear with a hind leg. Birds wipe their beaks on a branch. Chimpanzees scratch their arms or their chins. But for felines the tongue-swipe is the favourite action. There is a harmless way in which this can be tested. Cats do not like vibrating noises with a high pitch, but they are intrigued by what makes such sounds. A coin rubbed back and forth along the teeth of an ordinary hair-comb produces such a noise. Almost every cat, when hearing the brrrrrr sound produced by this action, stares at the comb in your hand and then, after a few seconds, starts li
cking its lips. If the sound continues, the animal may eventually decide that it has had enough and it will get up and walk away.

  Amazingly, this works for fully grown lions just as well as for small tabbies. Sometimes the lip-licking gives way to a violent sneeze, sometimes to a wide yawn. These actions appear to be alternative feline 'displacement activities', but they are less common than the liplicking. Why a cat is so irritated by a vibration sound is something of a mystery unless, during the course of feline evolution, it has come to represent a noxious animal of some kind – something unsuitable to attack as a prey. An obvious example that comes to mind here is the rattlesnake's rattle. Cats perhaps have an automatic alarm response to such animals and this may account for the fact that they are upset and yet intrigued at the same time.

  Why do cats react so strongly to catnip?

  In a word, it is because they are junkies. The catnip plant, a member of the mint family, contains an oil called hepetalactone, an unsaturated lactone which does for some cats what marijuana does for some people.

  When cats find this plant in a garden they take off on a ten-minute 'trip' during which they appear to enter a state of ecstasy. This is a somewhat anthropomorphic interpretation because we have no idea what is really happening inside the cat's brain, but anyone who has seen a strong catnip reaction will know just how trancelike and drugged the animal seems to become. All species of cats react in this way, even lions, but not every individual cat does so, There are some non-trippers and the difference is known to be genetic. With cats, you are either born a junkie or you are not. Conditioning has nothing to do with it.

  Under-age cats, incidentally, never trip. For the first two months of life all kittens avoid catnip, and the positive reaction to it does not appear until they are three months old. Then they split into two groups those that no longer actively avoid catnip, but simply ignore it and treat it like any other plant in the garden, and those that go wild as soon as they contact it. The split is roughly 50/50, with slightly more in the positive group. The positive reaction takes the following form: the cat approaches the catnip plant and sniffs it; then, with growing frenzy, it starts to lick it, bite it, chew it, rub against it repeatedly with its cheek and its chin, head-shake, rub it with its body, purr loudly, growl, miaow, roll over and even leap in the air.

  Washing and clawing are also sometimes observed. Even the most reserved of cats seems to be totally disinhibited by the catnip chemical. Because the rolling behaviour seen during the trancelike state is similar to the body actions of female cats in oestrus, it has been suggested that catnip is a kind of feline aphrodisiac. This is not particularly convincing, because the 50 per cent of cats that show the full reaction include both males and females, and both entire animals and those which have been castrated or spayed. So it does not seem to be a 'sex trip', but rather a drug trip which produces similar states of ecstasy to those experienced during the peak of sexual activity. Cat junkies are lucky.

  Unlike so many human drugs, catnip does no lasting damage, and after the ten-minute experience is over the cat is back to normal with no illeffects. Catnip (Nepeta caturia) is not the only plant to produce these strange reactions in cats. Valerian (V~le~~na officinalis) is another one, and there are several more that have strong cat-appeal.

  The strangest discovery, which seems to make no sense at all, is that if catnip or valerian are administered to cats internally they act as tranquillizers. How they can be 'uppers' externally and 'downers' internally remains a mystery.

  How does a cat find its way home?

  Over short distances each cat has an excellent visual memory, aided when close to home by familiar scents. But how does a cat manage to set off in the right direction when it is deliberately taken several miles away from its home territory?

  First of all, can it really do this?

  Some years ago a German zoologist borrowed a number of cats from their owners, who lived in the city of Kiel. He placed them in covered boxes and drove them round and round the city, taking a complex, winding route to confuse them as much as possible. Then he drove several miles outside town to a field in which he had installed a large maze. The maze had a covered central area with twenty-four passages leading from it. Looked at from above, the passages fanned out like compass points, at intervals of fifteen degrees. The whole maze was enclosed, so that no sunlight or starlight could penetrate to give navigation clues to the cats. Then each cat in turn was placed in the maze and allowed to roam around until it chose an exit passage. In a significant number of cases, the cats selected the passage which was pointing directly towards their home.

  When these findings were first reported at an international conference most of us present were highly sceptical. The tests had certainly been rigorously conducted, but the results gave the cats a homing sensitivity so amazing that we found it hard to accept. We suspected that there must be a flaw in the experimental method. The most obvious weakness was the possibility of a memory map. Perhaps the cats could make allowances and corrections for all the twists and turns the van took as it drove around the city, so that throughout the journey they kept recalculating the direction of their home base. This doubt was removed by some other tests with cats done in the United States.

  There, the cats were given doped food before the trip, so that they fell into a deep, drugged sleep throughout the journey. When they arrived they were allowed to wake up fully and were then tested.

  Astonishingly, they still knew the way home.

  Since then many other navigation tests have been carried out with a variety of animals and it is now beyond doubt that many species, including human beings, possess an extraordinary sensitivity to the earth's magnetic field which enables them (and us) to find the way home without visual clues. The experimental technique which clinched this was one in which powerful magnets were attached to the navigators.

  This disrupted their homing ability. We are still learning exactly how this homing mechanism works. It seems likely that iron particles occurring naturally in animal tissues are the vital clue, giving the homing individuals a built-in biological compass. But there is clearly a great deal more to discover. At least we can now accept some of the incredible homing stories that have been told in the past. Previously they were considered to be wildly exaggerated anecdotes, or cases of mistaken identity, but now it seems they must be treated seriously.

  Cases of cats travelling several hundred miles to return from a new home to an old one, taking several weeks to make the journey, are no longer to be scoffed at.

  Can cats predict earthquakes?

  The short answer is yes, they can, but we are still not sure how they do it. They may be sensitive to vibrations of the earth so minute that our instruments fail to detect them. It is known that there is a gradual build-up to earthquakes, rather than one sudden, massive tremor. It may be that cats have an advance warning system. A second possibility is that they are responsive to the dramatic increase in static electricity that apparently precedes earthquakes. In humans there is also a response to these changes, but it is rather vague and unspecific. We speak of tenseness or throbbing in the head on such occasions, but we cannot distinguish these feelings from times when we have had a stressful day at work or perhaps when we are coming down with a cold. So we cannot read the signs accurately. In all probability cats can. A third explanation sees cats as incredibly responsive to sudden shifts in the earth's magnetic field. Shifts of this type accompany earthquakes.

  Perhaps all three reactions occur at once – detection of minute tremors, electrostatic activity and magnetic upheavals. One thing is certain, cats have repeatedly become intensely agitated just before major earthquakes have struck. Cat-owners recognizing their pets' fears may well owe them their lives. In many cases cats have been observed suddenly rushing about inside the house, desperate to escape.

  Once the doors are opened for them they flee in panic from the buildings. Some females even rush back and forth carrying their kittens to safety. Then, a fe
w hours later, the quake strikes and levels the buildings. This has been reported time and again from the most vulnerable earthquake areas and now serious research is under way to analyse precisely which signals the cats receive. Similar responses have been recorded when cats have predicted volcanic eruptions or severe electrical storms. Because of their exceptional sensitivity they have often been foolishly credited with supernatural powers. In medieval times this was frequently their undoing, and many cats met a horrible death by burning at the hands of superstitious Christians because they appeared to be possessed of 'unnatural knowledge'. The fact that we now know this knowledge to be wholly natural makes it no less marvellous.

  Why do we talk about catnaps?

  Because cats indulge in brief periods of light sleep so frequently. In fact, these short naps are so common in cats and so rare in healthy humans that it is not exaggerating to say that cats and people have a fundamentally different sleep pattern. Unless human adults have been kept awake half the night, or are sick or extremely elderly, they do not indulge in brief naps. They limit their sleeping time to a single prolonged period of approximately eight hours each night. By comparison, cats are super-sleepers, clocking up a total, in twenty-four hours, of about sixteen hours, or twice the human period.