Catwatching (12 page)

When cats find this plant in a garden they take off on a ten-minute 'trip' during which they appear to enter a state of ecstasy. This is a somewhat anthropomorphic interpretation because we have no idea what is really happening inside the cat's brain, but anyone who has seen a strong catnip reaction will know just how trancelike and drugged the animal seems to become. All species of cats react in this way, even lions, but not every individual cat does so, There are some non-trippers and the difference is known to be genetic. With cats, you are either born a junkie or you are not. Conditioning has nothing to do with it.

Under-age cats, incidentally, never trip. For the first two months of life all kittens avoid catnip, and the positive reaction to it does not appear until they are three months old. Then they split into two groups those that no longer actively avoid catnip, but simply ignore it and treat it like any other plant in the garden, and those that go wild as soon as they contact it. The split is roughly 50/50, with slightly more in the positive group. The positive reaction takes the following form: the cat approaches the catnip plant and sniffs it; then, with growing frenzy, it starts to lick it, bite it, chew it, rub against it repeatedly with its cheek and its chin, head-shake, rub it with its body, purr loudly, growl, miaow, roll over and even leap in the air.

Washing and clawing are also sometimes observed. Even the most reserved of cats seems to be totally disinhibited by the catnip chemical. Because the rolling behaviour seen during the trancelike state is similar to the body actions of female cats in oestrus, it has been suggested that catnip is a kind of feline aphrodisiac. This is not particularly convincing, because the 50 per cent of cats that show the full reaction include both males and females, and both entire animals and those which have been castrated or spayed. So it does not seem to be a 'sex trip', but rather a drug trip which produces similar states of ecstasy to those experienced during the peak of sexual activity. Cat junkies are lucky.

Unlike so many human drugs, catnip does no lasting damage, and after the ten-minute experience is over the cat is back to normal with no illeffects. Catnip (Nepeta caturia) is not the only plant to produce these strange reactions in cats. Valerian (V~le~~na officinalis) is another one, and there are several more that have strong cat-appeal.

The strangest discovery, which seems to make no sense at all, is that if catnip or valerian are administered to cats internally they act as tranquillizers. How they can be 'uppers' externally and 'downers' internally remains a mystery.

Over short distances each cat has an excellent visual memory, aided when close to home by familiar scents. But how does a cat manage to set off in the right direction when it is deliberately taken several miles away from its home territory?

First of all, can it really do this?

Some years ago a German zoologist borrowed a number of cats from their owners, who lived in the city of Kiel. He placed them in covered boxes and drove them round and round the city, taking a complex, winding route to confuse them as much as possible. Then he drove several miles outside town to a field in which he had installed a large maze. The maze had a covered central area with twenty-four passages leading from it. Looked at from above, the passages fanned out like compass points, at intervals of fifteen degrees. The whole maze was enclosed, so that no sunlight or starlight could penetrate to give navigation clues to the cats. Then each cat in turn was placed in the maze and allowed to roam around until it chose an exit passage. In a significant number of cases, the cats selected the passage which was pointing directly towards their home.

When these findings were first reported at an international conference most of us present were highly sceptical. The tests had certainly been rigorously conducted, but the results gave the cats a homing sensitivity so amazing that we found it hard to accept. We suspected that there must be a flaw in the experimental method. The most obvious weakness was the possibility of a memory map. Perhaps the cats could make allowances and corrections for all the twists and turns the van took as it drove around the city, so that throughout the journey they kept recalculating the direction of their home base. This doubt was removed by some other tests with cats done in the United States.

There, the cats were given doped food before the trip, so that they fell into a deep, drugged sleep throughout the journey. When they arrived they were allowed to wake up fully and were then tested.

Astonishingly, they still knew the way home.

Since then many other navigation tests have been carried out with a variety of animals and it is now beyond doubt that many species, including human beings, possess an extraordinary sensitivity to the earth's magnetic field which enables them (and us) to find the way home without visual clues. The experimental technique which clinched this was one in which powerful magnets were attached to the navigators.

This disrupted their homing ability. We are still learning exactly how this homing mechanism works. It seems likely that iron particles occurring naturally in animal tissues are the vital clue, giving the homing individuals a built-in biological compass. But there is clearly a great deal more to discover. At least we can now accept some of the incredible homing stories that have been told in the past. Previously they were considered to be wildly exaggerated anecdotes, or cases of mistaken identity, but now it seems they must be treated seriously.

Cases of cats travelling several hundred miles to return from a new home to an old one, taking several weeks to make the journey, are no longer to be scoffed at.

The short answer is yes, they can, but we are still not sure how they do it. They may be sensitive to vibrations of the earth so minute that our instruments fail to detect them. It is known that there is a gradual build-up to earthquakes, rather than one sudden, massive tremor. It may be that cats have an advance warning system. A second possibility is that they are responsive to the dramatic increase in static electricity that apparently precedes earthquakes. In humans there is also a response to these changes, but it is rather vague and unspecific. We speak of tenseness or throbbing in the head on such occasions, but we cannot distinguish these feelings from times when we have had a stressful day at work or perhaps when we are coming down with a cold. So we cannot read the signs accurately. In all probability cats can. A third explanation sees cats as incredibly responsive to sudden shifts in the earth's magnetic field. Shifts of this type accompany earthquakes.

Perhaps all three reactions occur at once – detection of minute tremors, electrostatic activity and magnetic upheavals. One thing is certain, cats have repeatedly become intensely agitated just before major earthquakes have struck. Cat-owners recognizing their pets' fears may well owe them their lives. In many cases cats have been observed suddenly rushing about inside the house, desperate to escape.

Once the doors are opened for them they flee in panic from the buildings. Some females even rush back and forth carrying their kittens to safety. Then, a few hours later, the quake strikes and levels the buildings. This has been reported time and again from the most vulnerable earthquake areas and now serious research is under way to analyse precisely which signals the cats receive. Similar responses have been recorded when cats have predicted volcanic eruptions or severe electrical storms. Because of their exceptional sensitivity they have often been foolishly credited with supernatural powers. In medieval times this was frequently their undoing, and many cats met a horrible death by burning at the hands of superstitious Christians because they appeared to be possessed of 'unnatural knowledge'. The fact that we now know this knowledge to be wholly natural makes it no less marvellous.

Because cats indulge in brief periods of light sleep so frequently. In fact, these short naps are so common in cats and so rare in healthy humans that it is not exaggerating to say that cats and people have a fundamentally different sleep pattern. Unless human adults have been kept awake half the night, or are sick or extremely elderly, they do not indulge in brief naps. They limit their sleeping time to a single prolonged period of approximately eight hours each night. By comparison, cats are super-sleepers, clocking up a total, in twenty-four hours, of about sixteen hours, or twice the human period.

This means that a nineyear-old cat approaching the end of its life has only been awake for a total of about three years. This is not the case in most other mammals and puts the cat into a special category – that of the refined killer.

The cat is so efficient at obtaining its highly nutritious food that it has evolved time to spare, using this time to sleep and, apparently, to dream. Other carnivores, such as dogs and mongooses, have to spend much more time scurrying round, searching and chasing. The cat sits and waits, stalks a little, kills and eats, and then dozes off like a wellfed gourmet. Nothing falls asleep quite so easily as a cat. There are three types of feline sleep: the brief nap, the longer light sleep and the deep sleep. The light sleep and the deep sleep alternate in characteristic bouts. When the animal settles down for more than a nap, it floats off into a phase of light sleep which lasts for about half an hour. Then the cat sinks further into slumber and, for six to seven minutes, experiences deep sleep. After this it returns to another bout of thirty minutes of light sleep, and so on until it eventually wakes up. During the periods of deep sleep the cat's body relaxes so much that it usually rolls over on to its side and this is the time when it appears to be dreaming, with frequent twitchings and quivering of ears, paws and tail. The mouth may make sucking movements and there are even occasional vocalizations, such as growls, purrs and general mutterings.

There are also bursts of rapid eye movement, but throughout all this the cat's trunk remains immobile and totally relaxed. At the start of its life, as a very young kitten during its first month, it experiences only this deep type of sleep which lasts for a total of about twelve hours out of every twenty-four. After the first month the kittens rapidly switch to the adult pattern.

This may sound a strange question, but there is a great deal of evidence to prove that cat-owning is good for your health. And there is some comfort for beleaguered pet-owners, often criticized today for 'messing up the environment with their animals', that the anti-pet lobby will die younger than they will. There are two reasons for this.

First, it is known that the friendly physical contact with cats actively reduces stress in their human companions. The relationship between human and cat is touching in both senses of the word. The cat rubs against its owner's body and the owner strokes and fondles the cat's fur. If such owners are wired up in the laboratory to test their physiological responses, it is found that their body systems become markedly calmer when they start stroking their cats. Their tension eases and their bodies relax. This form of feline therapy has been proved in practice in a number of acute cases where mental patients have improved amazingly after being allowed the company of pet cats.

We all feel somehow released by the simple, honest relationship with the cat. This is the second reason for the cat's beneficial impact on humans. It is not merely a matter of touch, important as that may be.

It is also a matter of psychological relationship which lacks the complexities, betrayals and contradictions of human relationships. We are all hurt by certain human relationships from time to time, some of us acutely, others more trivially. Those with severe mental scars may find it hard to trust again. For them, a bond with a cat can provide rewards so great that it may even give them back their faith in human relations, destroy their cynicism and their suspicion and heal their hidden scars. And a special study in the United States has recently revealed that, for those whose stress has led to heart trouble, the owning of a cat may literally make the difference between life and death, reducing blood pressure and calming the overworked heart.

Because when she is on heat she lords it over the toms. They must gather around her like a circle of courtiers, must approach her with great deference, and are often punished by her in an autocratic manner.

This can be traced back precisely to the year 1760 when an anonymous story was published called The Life and Adventures of a Cat. In it the 'ram cat', as a male was then known, was given the name 'Tom the Cat'.

The story enjoyed great popularity, and before long anyone referring to a male cat, instead of calling it a 'ram', used the word Tom, which has survived now for over 200 years.

Prostitutes have been called cats since the fifteenth century, for the simple reason that the urban female cat attracts many toms when she is on heat and mates with them one after the other. As early as 1401, men were warned of the risks of chasing the 'cattis tailis', or cat's tail.

This also explains why the word 'tail' is sometimes used today as slang for female genitals. A similar use for the word 'pussy' dates from the seventeenth century.

The origin of this phrase, meaning 'he gave away a secret', dates back to the eighteenth century when it referred to a market-day trick.

Piglets were often taken to market in a small sack, or bag, to be sold.

The trickster would put a cat in a bag and pretend that it was a pig.