Platt, Charles

THINGS YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT CATS By Charles Platt Author of “Cat Superstitions,” “Mummy Cats,” “Intelligence In Animals,” “Are Animals Immortal?” “Peculiarities Of The Cat World,” “Why We Keep Pets,” “Why Cats Purr,” Etc. Andrew Melrose Ltd. London & New York Printed in Great Britain by Billing and Sons, Ltd., Guildford and Esher Dedicated to that intelligent little friend my orange long- haired cat yclept Treckie. CONTENTS I – The Cat’s Unique Position II - Mummy Cats III – Colour in Cats IV – Pussy’s name V – The Cat in History VI – Superstitions about Cats VII – Mentality in Cats VIII – Cat and Other Animal Anecdotes IX – The Cat’s Senses X – Pussy’s Structure XI – Concerning Cats, Large and Small XII – Cats in Captivity XIII - Are Animals Immortal? XIV – Those Interesting Kittens XV - Curious Points in Cats Bibliography CHAPTER I - THE CAT'S UNIQUE POSITION Do you know that Puss has five toes on each of her front paws, but only four each on the back ones? The Cat holds a very uncommon position in the animal kingdom, and there are many interesting points about her that most people know nothing of. Puss has been a domestic pet and a companion of Man for many centuries, and it is impossible to get back historically to the time when this was not the case. We cannot, therefore, explain why Man first made a pet of the Cat, unless it was because of its utility as a mouser. We are then faced with the natural query: How was it discovered that Puss was a useful vermin-killer? It is the old problem again, in a new form: Which came first, the hen or the egg? It is not generally realised that no savage race has ever made pets of Cats. Dogs are tamed into service for hunting or tracking; cows, goats, or similar animals for their milk; but our friend Puss demands civilisation. This is a very curious and interesting fact, and demonstrates the essential difference between Cats and dogs — Man’s two principal animal companions. Puss is an animal of higher physical organisation than the dog; she is more highly strung and less plastic, and often suffers unjustly by comparison. The domestic Cat is in many ways very similar to Man, though it is true that this may partly be due to their centuries of life in common. It is not too much to say that, after Man, the Cat is the most independent of all animals. As a family, the Felidae (cat-shaped animals) live a solitary life, or at most have one companion of the opposite sex. Their sexual feelings are strong, and the mother-cat is notoriously devoted to her young. In Nature the Felidae have to fight their own battles, strive single-handed in the great struggle for existence. But the dog comes from a stock that has always lived in packs, dominated by a head and controlled by brute force. You can strike a dog and it fawns at your feet; not so the Cat, who never fully forgets a blow. A trainer can quickly teach a dog to perform tricks quite foreign to its nature; but it is far more difficult to coerce Puss, not because her intelligence is less than that of the dog, but because she is an independent creature used to thinking for herself. She does not want to perform; she is keenly sensitive to ridicule; she acknowledges no master, but gives and expects friendship and equality. Make a friend of a Cat, and she is far and away more faithful than a human friend. Many people, ignorant of the truth, state that a Cat is more attached to a place than to a person. This is quite a false idea, though Puss, from the nature of her prehistoric wild life and instincts, hates a disturbance or a removal to new surroundings. But this dislike to a removal has nothing to do with the question, and merely serves to hide or obscure the real faithfulness of the Cat’s nature. This independence of nature makes Puss resent any ill-treatment that she does not understand; but, as a rule, she is very gentle when children (whom she knows) pull her about in unintentional rough ways that must often be very painful. So in her very independence the Cat comes nearer to Man than almost any other animal. No wandering people have ever gained her sweet companionship; she cares little for the world at large, greatly dislikes the discomforts of travel, and is a true home-lover. She is the friend of those who are too happy — or too wise — for restlessness! “However mysterious and informal may have been her birth,” writes Agnes Repplier, “Pussy’s first appearance in veracious history is a splendid one. More than three thousand years ago she dwelt serenely by the Nile, and the great nation of antiquity paid her respectful homage. Sleek and beautiful, she drowsed in the shadow of mighty temples, or sat blinking and washing her face with contemptuous disregard alike of priest and people.” As a matter of fact, the earliest known record of a Cat dates back to about 1800 B.C. At that time Puss was a recognised domestic pet, so we can only wonder as to the dim and distant date when first she was rescued from the rough vicissitudes of wild, uncared-for life. Yet even today, after forty centuries of (more or less) peaceful domestic life, Puss still carefully washes her jaws and forepaws directly after a meal, an instinct passed down through countless generations from the wild days when any dripping blood from mouth or claws would have betrayed her lair and sleeping-place to prowling enemies! Many attempts have been made to define the exact meaning of the word “instinct.” Dr. Murray’s Oxford Dictionary gives the following:- “Instinct — an innate propensity in organised beings manifesting itself in acts which appear to be rational but are performed without conscious design or intentional adaptation of means to ends.” Herbert Spencer holds a somewhat singular view – i.e., that instinct was a higher development of reason, which it has replaced, owing to the more perfect adjustment of inner relations to outer than exists where mere reason is concerned. One can hardly accept this view. Reason may often car, but so does instinct. Take, as an example, the dread of the dark so common among human young. This curious instinct dates back to the time when night was really a time of stress and danger to primitive Man. In the same way a Cat will generally turn round and round in its bed — or even on the open floor — before it settles down, just as its primeval ancestor did in the long undergrowths when it sought to conceal its resting-place from prying enemies. In this way the wild-cat made a comfortable hollow space for itself, and, at the same time, brought together the tops of the long grasses so as to hide the sleeping animal. Perhaps a simple and useful definition of the word “instinct” would be: an inherited memory of useful actions. Mr. Douglas Spalding found kittens to be imbued with an instinctive horror of the dog before they were able to see it. He tells us: “One day last month, after fondling my dog, I put my hand into a basket containing four blind kittens three days old. The smell my hand carried with it set them puffing and spitting in the most comical fashion.” (Nature, October 7, 1875, p. 507) This typical example of “instinct” was clearly an inherited memory carried forward for countless generations; yet a few weeks later those same kittens would, by the exercise of reason, be quite friendly with that particular animal, but would retain the strong protective dislike for dogs in general. Yes, Puss holds a very uncommon position in the animal world: from its peculiar independence of nature which resists subjection to Man, in striking opposition to all other animals; the very large vocabulary of the Cat, which at times will “chatter” quite obviously in its anxiety to tell its news or thoughts; the strong feeling of “home” love (shown by no other animal); the structural resemblance in many ways of brain and vocal cords of Man and Puss; and the uncommon “purring” sound made by the Cat when pleasurably excited. No animal sings but Man — except, of course, birds, whose case is different — although the purring of the Cat can best be described as monotone singing. The peculiar sound very closely resembles a pedal note on the organ, or the vibrating undertone of the bagpipes. It has been maintained that the purring of the Cat arose from the fact that the animal is carnivorous, that it killed its prey by the powerful grip of the teeth, and that the monotone purring was caused by the exhaling of the breath through the incoming rush of blood from the newly killed “food.” In other words, that a Cat purrs in the same way as a man gargles. This suggestion will hardly bear keen examination. In the first place, the incoming rush of arterial blood would be too great and would almost certainly cause suffocation; in the second place, it is well known that a Cat will purr while licking its young, sucking the tip of its own tail, or caressing the hand of the friend who owns it. None of these actions could be performed by the tongue if the Cat were maintaining a film of moisture in the throat in order to “purr.” The explanation is an ingenious one, but needlessly far-fetched.

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