From sat-naving cats, we learned that they like to roam
around a bit and catch the odd mouse. But what about the answers about
cats' behaviour we really wanted?
It's been a momentous couple of weeks for the feline of the species.
First we learned that Karl Lagerfeld would happily marry his moggy if he could. Then the BBC’s flagship science programme Horizon devoted its considerable academic resources to probing The Secret Life of Cats.
The creative director of Chanel really does have a muse that mews. Lagerfeld’s fluffy white feline Choupette is set to become the most talked about cat since Mrs Slocombe’s pussy.
She apparently loves shopping, iPads, antique lace and has two maids. She also has her own Twitter account, has given “interviews” in multiple high end fashion magazines and modelled for a 10-page photo-shoot.
The 50 cats featured in Horizon didn’t enjoy quite the levels of luxury lavished on Lagerfeld’s four-legged friend. Though, as they populated a well-heeled village in Surrey, they were still pretty posh pusses. The roll call of names sounded like a prep school register – Brutus, Claude, Kato...
Then the voiceover informed us we were going to be introduced to the “cat scientists.”
Blimey, these really were well-educated mogs. But before we could spot a Siamese in a white coat, a pair of human boffins appeared with enough surveillance kit to fill a series of Spooks.
Trussed up with GPS tracking devices and collar cameras, the cats of Shamley Green were monitored night and day – from midnight hunting expeditions to laying down audio tracks of their purrs. It was like Big Brother with fur.
Owners were encouraged to collect the prey their cats had dispatched. It produced a surreal morgue of small mammals. One family turned up with a frozen mole in Tupperware.
Back at kitty HQ, the findings were analysed. Satellite maps of Surrey revealed the extent of the cats’ wanderings – each puss’s path plotted in a different colour.
One particularly adventurous Tom called Sooty completed a route of the local woodland so circuitous it could have formed the basis of a Michael Palin expedition.
But what did we actually learn about the Secret Lives of Cats? Not much more than I could have told you based on my own experience of the feline life as lived vicariously through my 17-year-old ginger and white cat, Scully.
Horizon “revealed” that cats break into other people’s houses and help themselves to other moggies’ meals. Covert footage of cheeky Claude chowing down on a neighbours’ supply of Gourmet Chicken Chunks in Jelly confirmed this.
But I gathered even more evidence of cat flap burglary when I came home to find my neighbour’s geriatric and incontinent tom, Jasper, had illegally entered the premises, knocked over a bottle of Merlot, slurped it up and regurgitated it over a cream sofa.
Horizon showed us intrepid cats like Sooty can travel great distances. Scully has shown me cats can also stay on their fat ginger backsides for most of their lives.
For 16 years I thought she spent all day, every day, outside, possibly terrorizing the small mammal population of Cardiff’s Thomson Park.
But then Scully is a particularly indolent feline. Exercise is restricted to shifting herself from one settee cushion to the next and perhaps a little light combat with a Ferrero Rocher wrapper.
I only found out quite how slothful she is, however, when I dropped a sock down the side of the bed. I slid my hand down the gap between the duvet and the wall to retrieve it, hit warm fur and heard an indignant meow.
I pulled out the bed to discover Scully had a bed of her own, fashioned from a small storage basket lined with missing socks. And once she’s polished off a breakfast of Felix Sensations she spends seven hours there every single day.
After 9,000 years of domestication, Horizon claimed cats have adapted their behaviour to fit in with the human household.
They even purr craftily at the same pitch as babies to capture our attention.
The anthropomorphizing continues in cat-care books. For example: “Do not show distress when your cat brings you a dead animal. He is simply trying to contribute to the family.”
If I’d read this top tip before Scully slinked into the house recently with an enormous slow worm drooping from her mouth like Fu Man Chu’s moustache, I may have been a little more understanding.
Contributing to the family is doing the Tesco Extra run not turning the living room into a Bushtucker Trial.
Horizon’s surveillance exercise was impressive. But the programme failed to address some of the essential feline questions that niggle me.
Why do cats always lick their bottoms when you have visitors?
How can one cat produce enough fur to coat every item of clothing I own?
Why is giving a cat a worming tablet more difficult than the Seven Labours of Hercules?
Why do cats regard your thighs as pin cushions with that infuriating paw kneading routine – why can’t they just sit down straight away?
Why does Scully resist all wipe-clean surfaces and vomit on the one piece of carpet I have in the entire house?
And why have women cat owners been having a bad press since the Witchfinder General?
Men can get away with moggy affection without stereotyping. Look at Byron, Dickens, Churchill – cat-lovers all of them.
And remember Graham Henry’s kitty journalism? At the height of a national rugby crisis, Henry gave a startling insight into the pressures of being Welsh coach with the following revelations in his newspaper column: “A couple of weeks after Cysgu’s passing, I arrived home to see black and white Twiggy with her cute multi-coloured son Dudley.”
Single women with cats don’t get executed as supernatural hags these days but we are advised to omit details of sharing a house with a ginger tabby on dating websites.
The anti-feline brigade never think of Audrey Hepburn wafting round her trendy pad with her cool kitty in Breakfast at Tiffanys, they always picture a madwomen with smelly houses full of litter trays.
But there are certain folk who look down on cat-lovers of either gender.
We’re talking, of course, about Dog People. Ironic when dogs are the creatures that demand so much more emotional investment.
The most telling moment of the Horizon investigation came with its pay-off line: “Owners are often left with the uncomfortable feeling their cat is in charge.”
Of course they’re in charge. Dogs have owners, cats have staff – just ask Choupette.
* Carolyn will be swapping small cats for big cats next Saturday – don’t miss her Lions Diary from the First Test in Brisbane.
source
First we learned that Karl Lagerfeld would happily marry his moggy if he could. Then the BBC’s flagship science programme Horizon devoted its considerable academic resources to probing The Secret Life of Cats.
The creative director of Chanel really does have a muse that mews. Lagerfeld’s fluffy white feline Choupette is set to become the most talked about cat since Mrs Slocombe’s pussy.
She apparently loves shopping, iPads, antique lace and has two maids. She also has her own Twitter account, has given “interviews” in multiple high end fashion magazines and modelled for a 10-page photo-shoot.
The 50 cats featured in Horizon didn’t enjoy quite the levels of luxury lavished on Lagerfeld’s four-legged friend. Though, as they populated a well-heeled village in Surrey, they were still pretty posh pusses. The roll call of names sounded like a prep school register – Brutus, Claude, Kato...
Then the voiceover informed us we were going to be introduced to the “cat scientists.”
Blimey, these really were well-educated mogs. But before we could spot a Siamese in a white coat, a pair of human boffins appeared with enough surveillance kit to fill a series of Spooks.
Trussed up with GPS tracking devices and collar cameras, the cats of Shamley Green were monitored night and day – from midnight hunting expeditions to laying down audio tracks of their purrs. It was like Big Brother with fur.
Owners were encouraged to collect the prey their cats had dispatched. It produced a surreal morgue of small mammals. One family turned up with a frozen mole in Tupperware.
Back at kitty HQ, the findings were analysed. Satellite maps of Surrey revealed the extent of the cats’ wanderings – each puss’s path plotted in a different colour.
One particularly adventurous Tom called Sooty completed a route of the local woodland so circuitous it could have formed the basis of a Michael Palin expedition.
But what did we actually learn about the Secret Lives of Cats? Not much more than I could have told you based on my own experience of the feline life as lived vicariously through my 17-year-old ginger and white cat, Scully.
Horizon “revealed” that cats break into other people’s houses and help themselves to other moggies’ meals. Covert footage of cheeky Claude chowing down on a neighbours’ supply of Gourmet Chicken Chunks in Jelly confirmed this.
But I gathered even more evidence of cat flap burglary when I came home to find my neighbour’s geriatric and incontinent tom, Jasper, had illegally entered the premises, knocked over a bottle of Merlot, slurped it up and regurgitated it over a cream sofa.
Horizon showed us intrepid cats like Sooty can travel great distances. Scully has shown me cats can also stay on their fat ginger backsides for most of their lives.
For 16 years I thought she spent all day, every day, outside, possibly terrorizing the small mammal population of Cardiff’s Thomson Park.
But then Scully is a particularly indolent feline. Exercise is restricted to shifting herself from one settee cushion to the next and perhaps a little light combat with a Ferrero Rocher wrapper.
I only found out quite how slothful she is, however, when I dropped a sock down the side of the bed. I slid my hand down the gap between the duvet and the wall to retrieve it, hit warm fur and heard an indignant meow.
I pulled out the bed to discover Scully had a bed of her own, fashioned from a small storage basket lined with missing socks. And once she’s polished off a breakfast of Felix Sensations she spends seven hours there every single day.
After 9,000 years of domestication, Horizon claimed cats have adapted their behaviour to fit in with the human household.
They even purr craftily at the same pitch as babies to capture our attention.
The anthropomorphizing continues in cat-care books. For example: “Do not show distress when your cat brings you a dead animal. He is simply trying to contribute to the family.”
If I’d read this top tip before Scully slinked into the house recently with an enormous slow worm drooping from her mouth like Fu Man Chu’s moustache, I may have been a little more understanding.
Contributing to the family is doing the Tesco Extra run not turning the living room into a Bushtucker Trial.
Horizon’s surveillance exercise was impressive. But the programme failed to address some of the essential feline questions that niggle me.
Why do cats always lick their bottoms when you have visitors?
How can one cat produce enough fur to coat every item of clothing I own?
Why is giving a cat a worming tablet more difficult than the Seven Labours of Hercules?
Why do cats regard your thighs as pin cushions with that infuriating paw kneading routine – why can’t they just sit down straight away?
Why does Scully resist all wipe-clean surfaces and vomit on the one piece of carpet I have in the entire house?
And why have women cat owners been having a bad press since the Witchfinder General?
Men can get away with moggy affection without stereotyping. Look at Byron, Dickens, Churchill – cat-lovers all of them.
And remember Graham Henry’s kitty journalism? At the height of a national rugby crisis, Henry gave a startling insight into the pressures of being Welsh coach with the following revelations in his newspaper column: “A couple of weeks after Cysgu’s passing, I arrived home to see black and white Twiggy with her cute multi-coloured son Dudley.”
Single women with cats don’t get executed as supernatural hags these days but we are advised to omit details of sharing a house with a ginger tabby on dating websites.
The anti-feline brigade never think of Audrey Hepburn wafting round her trendy pad with her cool kitty in Breakfast at Tiffanys, they always picture a madwomen with smelly houses full of litter trays.
But there are certain folk who look down on cat-lovers of either gender.
We’re talking, of course, about Dog People. Ironic when dogs are the creatures that demand so much more emotional investment.
The most telling moment of the Horizon investigation came with its pay-off line: “Owners are often left with the uncomfortable feeling their cat is in charge.”
Of course they’re in charge. Dogs have owners, cats have staff – just ask Choupette.
* Carolyn will be swapping small cats for big cats next Saturday – don’t miss her Lions Diary from the First Test in Brisbane.
source
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