Catwatching (11 page)

It immediately stops moving and will remain immobile in your grasp for some time before becoming restless. If you grasp it firmly on some other part of its body the restlessness is much quicker to occur, if not instantaneous. This 'immobilization reaction' is the trick the toms apply to their potentially savage females. The females are so claw-happy that the toms badly need such a device. As long as they hang on with their teeth, they have a good chance that the females will be helplessly transformed into 'kittens lying still in their mother's jaws'. Without such a behaviour trick the tom would return home with even more scars than usual.

As the tom finishes the brief act of copulation, which lasts only a few seconds, his female twists round and attacks him, swiping out savagely with her claws and screaming abuse at him. As he withdraws his penis and dismounts he has to move swiftly, or she is liable to injure him.

The reason for her savage reaction to him at this point is easy to understand if you examine photographs of his penis taken under the microscope. Unlike the smooth penis of so many other mammals, the cat's organ is covered in short, sharp spines, all pointing away from the tip.

This means that the penis can be inserted easily enough, but when it is withdrawn it brutally rakes the walls of the female's vagina. This causes her a spasm of intense pain and it is this to which she reacts with such screaming anger. The attacked male, of course, has no choice in the matter. He cannot adjust the spines, even if he wishes to do so.

They are fixed and, what is more, the more sexually virile the male, the bigger the spines. So the sexiest male causes the female the most pain.

This may sound like a bizarre sado-masochistic development in feline sex, but there is a special biological reason for it. Human females who fail to become pregnant ovulate at regular intervals, regardless of whether they have mated with a male or not. Human virgins, for example, ovulate month after month, but this is not the case with cats.

A virgin cat would not ovulate at all. Cats only ovulate after they have been mated by a male. It takes a little while – about twenty-five to thirty hours – but this does not matter because the intense period of heat lasts at least three days, so she is still actively copulating when ovulation occurs. The trigger that sets off the ovulation is the intense pain and shock the queen feels when her first suitor withdraws his spiny penis. This violent moment acts like the firing of a starting pistol which sets her reproductive hormonal system in operation.

In a way, it is not far from the truth to call a female cat on heat 'masochistic' because, within about thirty minutes of having been hurt by the first male penis, she is actively interested in sex again and ready to be mated once more, with a repeat performance of the screamand-swipe reaction. Considering how much the spiny penis must have hurt her, it is clear that in a sexual context there is one kind of pain which does not produce the usual negative response.

Every so often a cat can be seen to pause and then adopt a curious sneering expression, as if disgusted with something. When first observed, this reaction was in fact called an 'expression of disgust' and described as the cat 'turning up its nose' at an unpleasant smell, such as urine deposited by a rival cat. This interpretation is now known to be an error. The truth is almost the complete opposite. When the cat makes this strange grimace, known technically as the flehmen response, it is in reality appreciating to the full a delicious fragrance. We know this because tests have proved that urine from female cats in strong sexual condition produces powerful grimacing in male cats, while urine from females not in sexual condition produces a much weaker reaction.

The response involves the following elements: the cat stops in its tracks, raises its head slightly, draws back its upper lip and opens its mouth a little. Inside the half-opened mouth it is sometimes possible to see the tongue flickering or licking the roof of the mouth.

The cat sniffs and gives the impression of an almost trancelike concentration for a few moments. During this time it slows its breathing rate and. may even hold its breath for several seconds, after sucking in air. All the time it stares in front of it as if in a kind of reverie. If this behaviour were to be likened to a hungry man inhaling the enticing smells emanating from a busy kitchen, it would not be too far from the truth, but there is an important difference.

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.

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.

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.

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 licking 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.

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.