Cats as Pets and Predators
Jake Page explores the evolution and enigmatic ways of the most popular pet in America -- the house cat
- By Abigail Tucker
- Smithsonian.com, January 30, 2009, Subscribe
Becoming a “cat person” means renouncing your sanity, or so a quick skim of the Internet suggests. At the wildly popular Icanhascheezburger.com, besotted humans script nonsense captions for cat photographs, and Stuffonmycat.com is exactly that: pictures of stuff (running shoes, cocktail umbrellas) on top of cats. There are also countless cat blogs, many of them supposedly penned by felines themselves, as opposed to “food ladies,” as their owners are sometimes dubbed. The madness of cat fanciers dates back at least to the days of the ancient Egyptians, who painstakingly mummified their deceased kitties, interred them in cat necropolises, and shaved off their own eyebrows in mourning.
Jake Page, author of Do Cats Hear With Their Feet?: Where Cats Come From, What We Know About Them, And What They Think About Us (published by HarperCollins and Smithsonian Books), is not a cat lover in the deepest sense. “I like cats,” he protests. He may well, but no one whose personal menagerie includes bearded dragons and button quails but not a single kitty qualifies as a real aurophile. Sure, in the past he’s owned cats; one died, one was catnapped by an Episcopalian priest (ok, Page gave it to him), and one of his favorites, a three-legged Chinchilla Persian named Fig Newton – well, Figgy was passed along to a friend, too, after he developed a taste for Page’s expensive tropical finches. These days Page’s relationship with the cat family, never passionate, is tinged with fear. He currently resides in Lyons, Colorado, where – as the name hints -- mountain lions patrol backyards and terrorize neighbors’ guinea fowl. “It’s creepy to think about,” he says. “Typically around here people don’t go out all by themselves for a walk, though its rare that (the lions) take an adult.” The most recent addition to Page’s pack of a half dozen dogs is, perhaps not coincidentally, a Rhodesian ridgeback, originally bred to hunt lions in Africa.
Page’s memories of pet felines past and his keen awareness of local predators inform his natural history of the house cat, Felis catus, an extraordinary machine even by his clear-eyed standards. A cat can hear way up into the ultrasound range; the ridged roof of its mouth helps accommodate some 67,000 smell receptors (humans have a measly 20,000). A cat needs only one sixth of the light we need to see and in utter darkness it can still navigate by way of its whiskers. Cats can even fly – kind of. Dropped from heights seven stories or more, they spread their legs and glide, Page writes, “somewhat in the manner of a flying squirrel.”
Obligate carnivores (“no veggies or fruits,” Page explains), they spend up to a third of their waking hours placidly licking themselves, but – as any food lady knows – they’ll sever a smaller creature’s spinal cord in a heartbeat. At five weeks old they’re full-fledged killers, dispatching mice on their own. Cats have hunted whole islands of birds into extinction, but they don’t have to spill a drop of blood to be a threat, Page notes. British scientists have theorized that a cat’s mere presence is frightening enough to stop birds from breeding, thereby driving down population size.
I’ve often wondered if other cat owners sometimes gaze into the glowing pair of eyes at the foot of the bed and wonder why on earth this small, murderous being gets free room and board. Page informed me that my long-held suspicion is correct: in form and spirit, a house cat really is like a shrunken leopard. But it’s comforting to know that the big cats share some of the house cats’ cuddlier characteristics. Even mountain lions purr (though only house cats meow.) And jaguars like catnip.
Page, a science writer and editor who specializes in natural history, has also explored the evolution of dogs and, inevitably, his book contrasts our relationships with the two species. Dogs, he says, often die in the wild, while feral cats “thrive in a seedy sort of way.” Likewise, we don’t really need cats. They don’t drag our sleds or catch our Frisbees, Page points out, and though they originally guarded our granaries against vermin, the average American doesn’t harvest much of anything these days. Cats were the last major species to be domesticated (we managed to tame turkeys first) and they are pretty much the only “loner,” or non-herd, animals whose companionship we’ve secured. But even now they are not truly broken to our ways. They are neither true domesticates, like dogs, nor “exploited captives,” like reindeer or yaks, who are relatively tame but whose breeding patterns aren’t typically influenced by human selection. One London zoologist prefers to call cats “exploiting captives” – not exactly a term of endearment.
Why, then, are domestic cats the most popular pets in America, numbering some 80 million (and around 400 million worldwide)?
“Cats are nothing like people, and people are nothing like cats,” Page says. “We don’t interfere with each other. We don’t compete.” We simply let cats be cats -- a rather breathtaking undertaking all on its own. Indeed, Page sometimes considers acquiring another one himself.
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Tell the Smithsonian: Stop spreading junk science that will kill cats! http://getinvolved.alleycat.org/site/PageServer?pagename=em20130202_Smithsonian_petition
Posted by Lily Scott on February 2,2013 | 09:53 PM
I was wondering if when getting a cat you need to have more than one. Or can you just have one house cat. The reason I ask is because I want my cat to be happy and not lonely. I was trying to find this answer on internet, but have not.
Posted by Bonnie Kressman on March 26,2012 | 11:25 AM
love my cats, all six of them! i kept them all from a recent relationship where he chose to have four and foster 2 others. no luck finding new owners, but not a problem. my lab tolerates them and actually likes a couple of em. they are all very different, and so rewarding in their own way. funny but true, I had a drinking problem and have resolved it mostly because they need me at fit to take care of them.
Posted by mario perez on September 27,2011 | 11:30 PM
I have two cats one is a brown and black tabby he is nuetered,is soon to be nineteen yrs.old The other is a large grey hidden tabby he also is nuetered,soon to be seventeen yrs.old.Sam has been shot the bullet went clean through without no damage to any vital organs,I am thankful for that.I love them both very much they are very adgile for there age.They are very good hunters,cn be very funny when they want to be.I just wish I could get my hands on another lynx cub or even a bobcat cub and if I couldn't I would like to have a pare of manx cats again.Please feel free to email me if anyone knows where I could get either of these kittens I sure would appreciate it. Sincerely Katie
Posted by Katie Richards on February 1,2010 | 01:54 AM
I thought fish were the most popular pet in America, at something like 200 million. Oops, I meant USA.
Posted by Nathaniel Dawson on November 17,2009 | 03:09 AM
It's not 80 million cats in America. It's 80 million cats in the USA. America is the continent. There are other countries in America, you know. Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Bolivia, Cuba and so on.
Posted by Patola on September 15,2009 | 05:51 AM
My son often tells me that I love my old cat more than I do him. I smile when I tell him that Lilly has never eaten the last cookie or left the kitchen looking like a bomb went off, never asked to borrow the car, and, almost always, listens to me when I have something to say. Lilly has been a part of our lives for 16 years and we treasure her dearly. At one time we had four dogs and three cats; Lilly is the last one left and although it will be extremely hard when it's time to say goodbye, we feel honored to have had her share our lives.
Posted by Lee on March 6,2009 | 12:52 PM
cats are nasty creatures, you all make me sick that u actually like them. Whoever owns and loves cats deserve to be scratched by them.
Posted by sandy on March 2,2009 | 02:28 AM
Having grown up in a cat-loving family, I can concur with and echo the other cat lovers who've written above about how their cats are more than just pets, they are family and friends.
My mom's cat, an all-white short-haired beauty named Cokey, was a mere 10 years old when we discovered that he had a heart condition that would cost thousands of dollars to treat and would confine him to a bed for the remainder of his life. As we agonized over what was best for him (which turned out to be the inevitable), we recalled all of the hilarious and truly human things he did and was. Waking us up to keep him company in the AM while he ate his breakfast at 5 am, and, if we didn't want to get up and be his breakfasting companions, he'd first tap our noses or cheeks (no claws) and if we turned over, he'd kindly reach over and turn our faces back to him, just in case we thought he'd forgotten us; licking the condensation off of a frosty glass of anything, dipping his paw into a glass of milk (that we held for him, of course) and then shaking all but a drop or two off, licking his paws and then taking an full bath; enjoying the tastes of raw apples, watermelon and potatoes and drinking from a water glass on the coffee table put there just for him. I could go on and on, but you get the picture.
Currently, I can't have a pet in my building, and I miss having one so much, that I'm looking for a new place to hang my hat and catnip.
Oh, and if you are looking for a really cute (and addicting) website, try www.catsinsinks.com. It's a site devoted to pictures of cats and kittens in sinks and basins.
Enjoy!
Posted by Carolyn on February 25,2009 | 10:06 AM
The term, 'obligate carnivores' does not mean a cat can not eat fruits and vegetables. Surly they can. What it means is that they MUST have meat. Cats have 3 essential fatty acids, acids that can not be made by the body but must be gotten from food: Omega 3 and Omega 6 like people and Arachidonic Acid that can only be gotten from meat. Your cat can not be a vegetarian. There is some pretty good evidence that they are much better off without grains, such as wheat and corn. These grains are suspected in the growing rise in diabetes in cats (in people too). Of course most commercial foods are heavy in wheat and corn. I have my 8 (rescued, all neutered and spayed) cats on a raw food diet of ground turkey and a supplement powder supplied by a wonderful company "Feline Future". The younger cats eat it exclusively and have the best fur and hardly shed. I use a dry food that is free of wheat and corn, "Chicken Soup for the Cat's Soul" They are worth every penny I spend of them for their companionship, humor, mouse killing skills, and watch kitty skills. I would not choose to live without a cat. Next time put pictures with the article
Posted by Rhoda Brubaker on February 24,2009 | 11:39 PM
Among six cats we have two female kittens, born July 2008, same litter. One, a beautiful orange/white, fetches one-inch fuzzballs tossed by my wife. This cat will repeat the process up to ten times before wandering off to find something else to do. Her sister, a slender black longhair with tiny wisps of white at throat and belly, is as strange a cat as I have ever encountered. She follows my wife and I around the house, usually in such close proximity that we have to slide our feet to avoid stepping on her. Unlike her sister, she cannot be picked up -- just doesn't like it. At times, I wonder if she is really a cat. The other cats are two outoor toms who, I think, live at more than one address, the mother cat, a pleasant, intelligent young lady, and a fraidy cat, a yellow tom raised in our woodpile who tolerates my wife and will not let me touch him.
Posted by Jim Haight on February 24,2009 | 07:00 PM
Loved this article. I currently am owned by two cats. 25 pound Tadpole, rescued from a railroad car when he was about two weeks old. At 11 PM he starts loudly demanding that we turn in for the night. He even reaches up and slaps me. (No claws.) Was a barn cat but now a house mouse since something scared him about going out. So he usually makes it to the gazebo for a while and back in. Tilly Ann his slim bud is nothing but a killer on paws. She wants out all the time, weather permitting, and is in the fields killing mice half the night. Leaving the half eaten remains on the back porch. Also she haunts the 10 foot high rafters in the barn working on bird nest extraction. Well the birds do make a mess. So... And while Tad is a lap boy, Tilly is a give me a pat only when I say. Otherwise...touch-me-not unless she is laying in front of me on this desk....like she is now.
Posted by Noreen Donat on February 23,2009 | 05:41 PM
I enjoyed this article, as the exploited captive of a loving master, Leo a Maine Coon, it offered some interesting points I hadn't known about my owner. He could feed us both if he wasn't so enamored of the canned tuna I buy. He's quite the hunter, and I do appreciate not having mice in my house any more. He loves to sleep with me and give me kitty massages. He's my first cat, I have always had dogs, but a new job would not allow me to keep a dog due to long hours. Leo graciously is able to get along for long periods of time without problems and greets me with great care when I arrive, follows me through the house, he has my schedule memorized, like the good pet owner that he is. Several times a week he puts on a show just for my entertainment. How could it be better? We're almost equals,or at least he lets me think so.
Posted by Tere Rohret on February 21,2009 | 11:57 PM
I, too, prefer cats, although I love dogs and other animals too. Both my parents loved animals, but preferred cats over all others. The cat ruled the house and all things in it. a If the cat was in your lap, you could not be called on to run errands because you could not make the cat move. I was in my 40's before I could comfortably displace a cat from my lap. My favorite kitty was "Miss Priss", who was really an altered male. Her sex was discovered after the name was given. The name stayed. An unbelievably beautiful white Persian, and we loved each other totally.If anyone she didn't know got too close to me, she would bite their legs. So funny to see, but it would hurt the person! Yes, I would love to have a dog and a cat, but I don't want to have to start walking an animal again in every kind of weather,and cats, too, have their drawbacks. Nobody spoke about their furniture being destroyed and little mention was made of hairballs and cat hair everywhere. Ugh! We'll see. Phyllis W.
Posted by Phyllis Woodard on February 21,2009 | 10:48 AM
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