They're independent; they're affectionate;
they're loyal; they're beautiful;
they're sagacious; they're mysterious;
they're ineffable; they're inscrutable.
Cats are magic. They really are magic.
Probably the most mysterious creatures in the world.
They're also very vicious;
they're very cruel things.
That's another thing I like about them
their ability to be one thing and then another.
The domestic cat harbors a sort of split personality.
Within even the most demure pussycat lurks a creature of the wild.
Even after thousands of years,
we still know little about the behavior of domestic cats.
Now, scientists and laymen alike
attempt to understand them to demystify this elusive feline.
For them, the domestic cat is every bit as intriguing to study
as the lion or the tiger.
To share one's life with a cat is to invite a bit of wildness indoors.
Perhaps the writer was correct when he philosophized:
"God made the cat that man might have the pleasure of caressing the tiger."
Today, the Western world enjoys an unparalleled love affair
between man and beast.
Cat coming through.
The cat now surpasses the dog as the number one pet,
and annually we spend more on cat food than on baby food.
On any weekend proud owners display their pampered pets
to thousands of fellow enthusiasts.
Some three dozen breeds compete longhairs, shorthairs,
and some that seem to have no hair.
There are nearly 58 million pet cats in the United States alone.
While many are common alley cats of little monetary value,
some exotic breeds sell for as much as $3,000.
And, although many people dislike and distrust cats,
a far greater number adore and indulge them.
Keeping cats and their owners happy has become a major industry.
It's extremely durable It's synthetic fur.
Look at the beads in the middle there. You see the beads?
Oh, yeah.
Okay, listen.
You hear that little scratchy sound?
Drives the cats crazy. They love it.
This is one of our kitty condos.
We have a birthing area or a litter area.
Kitty pan comes down on the bottom.
It's made of solid0-wood construction stain-resistant carpeting...
The cat, as you can see has a tubular body;
everything is in line.
It's got the long body the long tail,
the long head to go with the rest of the body.
Long bones.
The people keep it in wonderful condition, because he's very muscular.
He's not skinny at all; he's just slim and hard like an athlete.
Like a specter floating from the mists of prehistory
into the shadows of modern times,
two species of wildcats still prowl parts of Africa and Europe.
Presumed to be the ancestors of today's house cat,
they even look like tabbies.
But wildcats are fierce and formidable animals, in no way tame.
In ancient times many became tame when farmers fed and sheltered them
as valued rodent killers.
The farmers were Egyptian. The time more than 3,000 years ago.
The cat became adored and revered in Egypt.
Never since has the cat's honored role been matched anywhere in the world.
One goddess in the form of a cat symbolized pleasure,
fertility, and maternity.
Cats were also associated with the deity believed to start the sun
on its daily course
and one who symbolized life itself.
The Brooklyn Museum maintains one of the world's finest Egyptian collections
lts curator is archaeologist Richard Fazzini.
He divides his time between ancient ruins and ancient artifacts.
Prized in any such collection is a cat mummy,
embalmed as were the ancient pharaohs themselves.
This pussycat has been this way since,
well, he's hard to date,
but let's say at least 2,300 to 2,500 years.
Now why, you might ask, did the Egyptians mummify animals?
Well, because certain gods could appear in the form of certain animals.
And so it could be a pious gesture or part of some cult ritual
to present a mummified cat to place it in a temple
or to place it in one of the great animal cemeteries.
But the heyday of the cat was to pass.
Once sacred, the cat would come to be hated and scorned.
The same eyes perceived as the throne of the gods
became feared as the seat of the Devil
Believed by many to be the companions of witches,
thousands of cats were tortured.
Burned, and hanged, as recently as colonial times in America.
Veterinarian Michael Fox
is Vice President of the Humane Society of the United States.
He writes extensively on cat behavior and human cat relationships.
It is intriguing that cats have been revered in history and persecuted.
There was one pope who had all cats killed.
This love-hate relationship, I think,
reflects an aspect of the dualistic psyche of human beings.
We love things conditionally.
We love them if we can control them and they will bend to our will.
Or we love them because they are mysterious,
that they're an aspect of nature's wildness,
which the cat embodies.
The domestic cat is but one of 38 species of cats,
most of them astonishingly alike.
Take away their spots or stripes their short or long fur,
disregard the differences in size from four pounds to more than 600
and a cat is a cat is a cat.
Few pet owners are aware that most of the behaviors of their house cat
have a parallel somewhere in the wild.
The cat is an enchanting combination of beauty and utility.
Its sinuous movements delight the eye.
Cats get some of their suppleness from their shoulder joints,
which are so constructed that they can shift
the front legs freely in almost any direction.
They have almost no collar bone and an exceptionally limber spine.
Ever fluid and graceful cats are marvels of strength and balance.
All cats advertise their territory.
Spraying deposits a pungent scent.
Scratch marks are visual signals
and may also carry a scent from glands in the paws.
Glands on the face and tail deposit scents at home just as in the wild.
Sometimes more than one signal is left.
Territorial fights could be deadly between animals
with such sharp teeth and claws,
so most disputes are settled by body postures and intimidating bluffs.
Friendly greetings are generally more fleeting and subtle
a nose touch or body rubbing.
Exactly how and why cats purr remains a mystery.
We do know that both purring and kneading with the paws
first appear in infancy to stimulate the mother's milk to flow.
Being hunter, cats must conserve energy whenever possible.
They snooze about two-thirds of the time,
but always remain alert to sounds;
hence, the term catnap.
In all cats ovulation the release of an egg,
does not occur until mating triggers it.
After gestation of two to four months depending on the species,
they give birth to one to eight young.
Kittens and cubs are helpless at birth
At first they can neither see nor hear
their life guided primarily by touch and smell.
Amazingly, each has a preference for one particular nipple,
which it locates by smell.
In the wild this efficient behavior
frees the mother to resume hunting sooner.
Excellent, protective mothers,
cats will quickly move their offspring if they suspect danger.
To teach their young how to hunt and kill,
many cat mothers bring home live prey for practice.
These caracals nicknamed "desert lynx"
may seem to be playful or cruel,
but they are merely learning.
Striking the prey stuns it,
but the cubs are too inexperienced to deliver the fatal bite.
Cat mothers keep their young fastidiously clean.
The soothing sensation of tongue rubbing against fur
is duplicated each time a human strokes a cat.
In this way a bond is formed,
and cats come to regard us as surrogate mothers,
a role we hold throughout their lives.
In the wild, as young felines play,
they refine the predatory skills essential to survival as adults.
Whether domestic cats similarly practice stalking
and hunting is subject to debate.
Many experts feel that play exists as a behavior in its own right,
simply because it's fun.
With indoor cats many owners can attest to a phenomenon
affectionately called the "evening crazies",
when pent-up hunting instincts erupt into a frenzy.
Triggered by a prey's movements,
even the most well-fed cat may hunt given the opportunity.
But the connection between making a kill and eating it has to be learned.
An inexperienced cat may attack with precision,
yet not recognize its kill as food.
As hunters that rely on stealth,
cats are always alert for cues that could mean food or danger.
While smell is not their primary sense,
no odor escapes them.
They use smell mainly to find the territorial boundaries of other cats
or to know if other cats have been in their territory.
To gather information about potential mates,
cats use a second olfactory system in the roof of the mouth.
Inhaling the airborne scent while curling the upper lip
creates the grimacing look.
Cats move their funnel-shaped ears to zero in on sounds.
They probably have better acoustical discrimination
than either dogs or humans.
The function of a cat's whiskers is not entirely understood.
But if they are severed,
the animal may lose its equilibrium and stumble into things.
It may even be unable to make a clean kill.
Whiskers also transmit information about captured prey.
To remove all traces of food, cats regularly groom.
Fastidiousness is one of their best known traits.
Coarse and abrasive liken sandpaper,
the tongue is covered with hook-like projection
that can even tear flesh from bone after a kill.
To writers, artists, and poets,
cat's eyes have embodied all things magical and mysterious.
The scientist knows that vision is one of the cat's most vital senses,
the key to its success as a hunter.
At Florida State University,
the question of how cats see the world
has been studied for more than 25 years.
Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology,
Dr. Mark Berkley defied cynics who told him the independent cat would
never make a good laboratory subject.
He designed a system that not only works, but actually appeals to the cat
Banking on the animal's inquisitiveness,
Berkley built a box that invites exploration.
And when it responds correctly, the cat is rewarded with food.
Generated by a computer,
an image will appear in front of the cat on one side of the screen.
The cat must tell the researchers, "Yes, I can see that".
It does so by poking the right-hand plexiglass panel
when the image appears on the right,
and the other side when the image appears on the left.
From the work of Berkley and others,
we know cats cannot distinguish between human faces,
have poor color vision, and like us, experience visual illusions.
But perhaps most noteworthy is their ability to see at night.
Under low light levels
the cat is anywhere from six to ten times more sensitive.
That is, at a light level where we perhaps couldn't see anything,
he still sees, not very will,
but certainly better than we do.
I suppose it might be the difference between
a starless night and a moonlit night,
where under a starless night that might be the way it looks to us,
but to the cat it might look as if the moon were up.
Able to pierce the darkness with vision at least six times more
sensitive than our own, the night truly belongs to the cat.
The cat's earliest ancestors
probably hunted both on the ground and in the trees.
To survive, they needed not only claws but remarkable balance,
an aptitude all cats retain to this day.
In keeping with its reputation, the cat usually does land on all fours.
And scientists have come to understand how.
Slow-motion photography
reveals that cats always right themselves in a precise order.
The head rotates first,
based on messages from the eyes and inner ear.
Then the spine twists and the rear quarters align.
At the same time the cat arches its back to reduce the force of impact.
Despite its agility,
the cat faces particular dangers in today's modern cities.
Here, although hundreds of feet above the ground,
the indoor cat is just as attracted by moving prey as is any other cat.
If anything, it may be a stir-crazy bundle of energy.
So many cats actually careen through unscreened windows
that the phenomenon now has a name "high-rise syndrome".
At the Animal Medical Center in New York City,
doctors were perplexed when they found that victims of higher falls
often had less severs injuries than those that fell a shorter distance.
Good morning, Miss Pizano, how are you today?
Fine, thanks.
Dr. Michael Garvey is medical director.
Hello, Harry.
Harry is recovering from serious fractures
after falling just a few stories.
We'd been puzzled by the high-rise syndrome for a long time
the name that we give for cats falling out of windows.
Our clinical impression is that cats that fall from medium-level
stories are hurt much worse than cats that fell from even greater distances.
That seemed to defy our logic
that cats that would fall farther would be hurt less.
So we undertook a study to examine the records on cats
that had been admitted here for falling out of windows.
And it actually confirmed that our clinical impression was correct.
It seems that cats that fall from higher stories
and have enough time to reach free-fall like a parachutist are relaxed.
And when you experience trauma when you're relaxed,
you will probably avoid injury.
When you experience trauma when you are very rigid and very tight,
you will tend to maximize injury.
The cat may not have nine lives,
but its uncanny ability to sail through the air
is almost certainly responsible for the myth.
Throughout its history,
myth and folklore have enshrouded the cat.
Near Oxford, England, scientists have been exploring
whether the legendary solitude of the cat is fact or fiction,
or can cats adapt successfully to living in groups?
Puss. Puss.
Puss.
Bert Parker has kept farm cats for more than half a century,
as many as 80 at a time.
Puss, puss, puss. Come on.
Puss. Puss, puss, puss, puss.
A good cat is worth a lot.
She's a valuable asset to any farm.
Our cats have increased.
There's few more than what we really need,
but what do you do? You just let them go on.
They do keep the rats and mice down to a limit.
I don't say they have every one,
but they do catch up with them at the finish.
But what happens when this usually solitary animal
lives in close quarters with so many others?
Oxford University Professor
David Macdonald has studied farm cats since 1978.
Why is it that people have tended to typecast cats
as anti-social, as solitary creatures?
I think there's two reasons.
Once of them could be that the sorts of things that cats do socially
are not the sorts of things that classically people have had in mind
when they though about wild animal societies.
And I think that's because cat society is based on
a rather subtle, covert language.
And the sorts of signals that pass between cats,
and the one I personally think is important is this business
of rubbing where one individual rubs its lips and its cheek against
another individual happen very quickly,
they happen very rarely, and if you're not tuned in to looking for it,
you just don't see it.
So I think people have spent their lives living amongst cats
and formed an impression which hasn't taken into account
the subtlety of the relationships that occur between the cats themselves.
It turns out that they are living in a society.
And, therefore, it's a bit irritating in a sense
that one hears so many people saying,
Oh, the only sociable felids,
the only sociable members of the cat family as a large group are lions.
That having been said, there are a lot of similarities
between these barnyard lions that we have around here
and the lions that we are ever more familiar with from programs
and researches about the African lions
Lions are the only wild cats
that normally live in a group, called a pride.
At its core are the adult females, usually related.
Researchers have discovered that within a pride
the females look after and nurse each other's cubs.
Here, three different females allow the same cub to nurse.
Though a lioness gives preference to her own cubs when they want to nurse,
at times she will allow younger sisters or brothers, nieces, nephews,
or grandchildren to join in too.
David Macdonald was intrigued
that among farm cats the same communal behavior occurs.
It comes and spends a bit of time...
A student, Warner Passanisi, often follow the cats around the clock,
just as naturalists do in the wild.
...their litters together.
So we have, generally, the females taking a turn
to suckle these kittens, again indiscriminately.
Any kitten that is there is suckled.
Although unrelated females may help each other in this way,
generally the behavior only follows bloodlines.
Mothers, daughters, and sisters cooperate most often,
but it is quite possible that other related females
will also nurse and care for the kittens,
much like an extended family.
Six weeks old, this kitten has begun only recently to explore on his own.
Today, he has accidentally become separated from his mother.
Out of hearing range, she knows nothings of her kitten's dilemma.
A related female hears him but does nothing.
He starts back uncertainly.
Out in the barnyard and still no sign of his mother.
He comes upon the related female, now nursing her own litter.
Hungry, tired, the kitten is willing to risk hostility to get close to her.
In the end, she accepts the tiny, distressed explorer.
Why should the females behave this way?
Once more the behavior of lions held the clue...
a behavior not of care and comfort, but of savagery and death.
In this graphic film footage,
the cameraman bears horrified witness to a systematic and vicious killing.
As three terrified cubs huddle nearby,
a male lion prepares to brutally attack and kill one of their sisters.
When there is a successful take-over of a pride,
the new dominant male kills the cubs of the ousted male.
Thus, the female will come into heat sooner,
the new male can then mate with her,
and thereby perpetuate his own genes.
The barnyard, again, was to prove remarkably like the plains of Africa.
Macdonald recalls the events leading to a gruesome discovery.
As I watched at the communal den with these four sets of kittens altogether,
nine kittens in total, the scene was really a very intimate one.
The kittens were, as you can imagine,
a chocolate box scene in amongst straw bales.
Their nest was built in amongst a stack of bales,
and a narrow passageway led into the kittens.
And they were all just piled on top of each other.
And each mother would come and go from that den,
each suckling the kittens indiscriminately.
On this occasion I was watching this nest of kittens and in slunk the male.
And within just a few seconds
this commotion brought the mothers running, but not soon enough.
Because by the time the mothers came back and chased had been
in that communal den to start with, six of them were slain.
So I think we've come up with two answers,
both of them perhaps rather surprising to why cats may
benefit individually from living communally.
One of them is that they can look after each other's young
by sharing the load of nursing,
and the other is that females may be able to repel murderous males.
Thus, cooperative care by a number of females increases the likelihood
that more kittens even orphans will be watched over and thereby protected.
What other unexpected parallels may exist between these barnyard lions
and their wild cousins is yet to be discovered.
In another English village,
the image of cats as ruthless killers was confirmed in a different way.
It began with a local teacher.
Peter Churcher has taught biology at the Bedford School for 15 years.
Those two have started before that one.
And of course it's important they all start at the same time,
isn't it? Right. So back to the beginning.
A cat owner himself, Churcher applied the discipline of
his scientific training to explore the unseen world
of the house cat on the prowl.
Throughout England, indeed in much of the world,
cats are let outdoors to roam the neighborhood at will.
How much impact on wildlife,
Churcher wondered, do cats actually have?
Unable to follow the cats,
he did the next best thing and enlisted the help of their owners.
Well, the first thing was to go around the village
and just find out who had cats.
And so I knocked on everybody's door and said,
Have you got a cat and were you willing to take part in the survey?
And surprisingly enough, virtually everybody in the village did.
And that meant that I had something around 78 cats to start off with,
which was a good number.
Oh, hello, Peter.
Good morning, Marjorie.
Have the cats caught anything this week?
Yes, I have a body for you ready and waiting.
Thanks very much. Well, that's nice.
Yeah, that's field vole. Who caught it?
Eccles.
Eccles again?
Yes, the black-and-white one.
Quite a good hunter for us, isn't he?
Yes. The others don't seem to be catching very much.
Laziness, I would say.
Here you are, Peter.
I think it's a wood mouse, a field mouse.
I was very surprised at how cooperative the owners were in the survey.
I think a lot of people don't like the idea of picking dead bodies
and putting them in polythene bags.
But most of the people in the village gritted their teeth and did it.
And some even went as far as to put them in the deep freeze,
which was nice, because, as you can imagine,
at the end of a week in the summer,
often the dead bodies were getting rather smell.
And it was pleasant to have them put in the deep freeze
before I got hold of them.
...take it to work and look at it under the microscope.
That's Wednesday.
When the specimens were labeled and the numbers of dead totaled,
Churcher and cats of Felmersham made headlines.
If the cats in Felmersham caught
14 animals each during the course of a year,
we know there are about five million cats,
domestic cats, in Britain.
So that means that 70 million
small mammals and birds are caught by cats in a year.
And so, domestic cats,
in spite of their reliance on man for food and a lot of other things,
are still remarkably independent.
And I think what our survey has shown is that they're also very important
as predators on the ecological stage.
Churcher does not propose that cats be confined indoors.
Others insist it is essential, not just for the wildlife,
but for the safety of the cats themselves.
While debate continues, one thing is certain:
In every well-fed cat by the fire lies a dormant tiger primed
for the thrill of the hunt.
Because cats are seen as self-sufficient hunter,
many people feel no qualms about abandoning them.
Nationwide, millions are dumped every year.
Near Oxnard, California,
animal welfare activist Leo Grillo has tried for weeks
to trap two cats living in this jetty.
Such brutal conditions are a death sentence for cats,
and he devotes his life to rescuing them.
When the winter hits, these rocks are really cold and the waves
are cold and the mist is cold and the fog is cold, The cats are cold.
And everybody thinks they have a fur coat, they're going to be fine.
And it's always like this,
and when it's a bad winter especially, it's really pitiful.
Here, at the farthest tip of the rocks
the cats have retreated from the taunts
and bottle throwing of uncaring strangers.
But they are also completely cut off from fresh drinking water.
So Leo baits his traps with it.
Hi, Jet.
He has named the cats "Marina" and "Jetty"
because of where he found them.
Come on, Jet. Com on, Jet. Come on.
It is not uncommon for Leo infinitely patient
to return to the same spot week after week.
Marina
To Grillo, these cats appear relatively tame.
Clearly, they were not born wild,
but raised in the comfort of a human home.
But these same humans abandoned them.
The cats no longer trust.
For Leo it is always a waiting game to see which is stronger, thirst or fear.
Atta boy. I'm coming down.
All right, Jet, all right. Here you go.
When I get a cat, and those traps are set,
and I get a cat to go in the trap and that door comes down and slaps,
that is the most exciting feeling.
And that little saga, that little story,
the trips to this one little rock to feed that
one little cat is now over. It has an ending.
After weeks of failed attempts this day would finally bring success.
Tired but exultant, Leo would trap both Marina and Jetty
and bring them back to a world of care and love.
Grillo runs four licensed shelters in California.
But they are only for animals he himself has rescued.
An ever-changing number of cats and dogs live out their lives here.
If it gets too crowded, he says, I just expand.
Leo and family live nearby with 60 cats.
This ranch house is home to more than 150 at last count.
Dry food seven tons a year is left out at all time.
Canned food is fed twice daily,
totaling more than 80,000 cans per year.
All of this is paid for by private donations.
There we go. Come see Jetty and Marina.
After a trip to the vet for shots blood tests, spaying, and neutering,
Marina and Jetty are ready to meet the others.
But only from the safety of their cages.
J.J., Junkyard, come on.
Come see your friends. Come on.
This cat is in ecstacy just to have food,
real food.
Yeah, look at that.
Beautiful thing is they were caught together and they can
tame down together, comfort each other
For many people the cat is all but hypnotic
soothing and calming just to behold.
Through the ages,
an uncounted number graceful, beautiful, and mysterious
have captivated the human mind and eye
Scientists learned that simply petting a cat lowers human blood pressure.
Now, some go further and suggest cats may actually benefit our longevity.
In a small town on Long Island, one innovative woman is playing a role
in the sweeping changes in health care.
When her cats helped her cope with an illness,
Joan Bernstein was inspired to reach out to others.
I became ill. I developed Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,
at that time not knowing what it was.
The disease was not defined at that time.
And there were days when there was no way
I felt like getting out of bed,
crawling out of bed literally in pain, and feeding the cats,
changing litter pans,
and doing everything else that has to be done.
But I did it because the cats insisted that I did it.
Sometimes they'd just by my hot-water bottle or my comforter.
Whatever I needed them to be, they became.
So I became very aware of the value of the cats as a therapy.
Lonely, often forgotten,
the institutionalized elderly have been cut off from a
lifetime of friends and memories.
Ladies and gentlemen,
one of the most beautiful Grand Champion,
champagne mink Tonkinese...
At the Brookhaven Health Care Facility Joan's Tonkinese cats
are eagerly awaited every month.
Bred for their stable temperament and sociability,
they offer therapy at many levels.
The warmth of the cat on her lap is very important.
Just holding the cat in her arms.
First of all, it's good exercise for her;
she's utilizing the muscles in her arms and her hands.
So we have the physical aspect of it.
Look what I brought you.
You think she's trying to tell you something?
Come on. Okay.
She'll stay right there with you, Mr. Hook.
Patients who have difficulty with recall,
with recall of the present, okay, in other words remembering
the present from now to tomorrow, or now to next week,
or now to a month from now, they will remember the cats.
She's a lot like the one I brought here one time
who was sitting on your shoulder. Remember?
Yeah.
And I took a picture of you with the kitten sitting on your shoulder,
and only half the picture came out.
She really is a good guy.
So soft and so pretty, isn't she?
Some scientists believe cats touch people more than other pets do,
literally and figuratively.
Their lithe and graceful movements are non-threatening.
And the cat's shape and size are basically the same as a human baby's
for most people, an automatic invitation to nurture and love.
She is beautiful.
Aw. I'd love to hold you call day and all night.
I really would.
Another world touched by Joan and her cats
is a residential school for autistic youngsters.
The cause of autism is not fully understood and currently
there is no known cure.
Locked largely in a world of their own
the children are extremely difficult to reach.
Some, like John, erupt uncontrollably.
Easily frustrated, he often reacts with raging tantrums.
While no one pretends the cats are a miracle cure,
they regularly bring about miraculous breakthroughs.
How can you tell me what color they are if you don't look?
For John, the cats open a window on a bright, new world.
...game with me.
I know.
I think you're playing a game.
John, if she's red, then I'm from Mars
Do I look like I'm from Mars?
No.
No! She's brown.
And what color are her eyes again?
Blue.
That's right. How about looking at the eyes?
How about looking at them? Oh, okay.
Did you want to give her a kiss? Okay.
Etta
Etta, what have I got?
Etta becomes very agitated as you can see from her
rocking back and forth, a constant motion.
And the more she rocks, of course, the more agitated she is.
I can take the cat over to her, and at first she may thrust it away.
But if I'm persistent,
sometimes I have to withdraw a little bit and come back to her.
But if I'm persistent, the cat can stop her.
Later, Joan will try again.
What have I got?
Cat.
Is this a nice cat?
Do you like this cat?
I see them relating to the cat so much more openly, so much more freely,
than they do to other people.
They can trust the animal.
With every individual I've worked with they have eventually reached out,
and I think it's because there is again that sense of
communication the says, 'Trust me'. I won't hurt you.
Is she saying give her a kiss?
Do you want to? Okay.
Do you want me to turn her around this way and give her a kiss back here?
A little closer. Good. Okay!
Joan senses she can approach Etta again.
By holding the cat and focusing her attention on the cat,
she will stay still, and she will talk to the cat.
She's with us for several minutes at a time.
How about saying, 'Hi, kitty.'
Hi, kitty.
Good!
Hi, kitty.
Good! Okay!
We're talking about therapy.
We're talking about hands-on,
and we're talking about one-on-one and up-close.
We're also talking about cats that are capable of creating
interaction or curling up in somebody's arms and saying.
I'm all yours. Right this minute I belong to you.
You're special to me and I love you. So hold me and feel good.
It was said that a long time ago,
probably in our own Golden Age as gatherer-hunters,
that we could talk to the animals and they would talk to us.
And I think part of understanding "felinese" is that we can learn
the cat's repertoire and have a deeper communication
and communion with our cats.
Love for cats is part of a universal love for all creatures,
which impels us toward a reverence for all life.
Subtle, amusing, enigmatic... regal and serene...
cats remain ultimately independent of their human companions.
They move among us as half-wild creatures,
the only domestic animal man has never fully conquered.
Plain or fancy, barn mouser or lord of the hearth,
they have fired our imagination.
But, we wonder, did we adopt the cat
or did tabby simply deign to share his life with us?
In the end, it is a tantalizing mystery,
one that we, being mere humans, can never hope to solve.