Paws for thought in catalogue of quirks

Of course, these days there are umpteen tips about cats on YouTube and it doesn’t necessarily take a 250-page paperback to explain what it means when a feline holds its tail vertically or lets it droop. And whether they adore you or shun you, or they (in turn) don’t give a hoot about you either way; how to understand all their mysterious way, etc.

But I do have one big question that still perplexes me, and I’m hoping that Dr. Sarah Brown might shed some light. That is, how did cats come to learn to do their doings in litter boxes and not on the carpet? Once, I was given the silly answer that it was “their mother” who taught them. Yes, obviously, but what I want to know is who taught the mother’s mother, and the mother’s mother’s mother, and the mother’s mother’s mother’s mother, and so on.

That’s the real burning question, for me, anyway, so here’s hoping….. Before reading Dr. Brown’s insights though, I read about her, and learn that she gained her PhD on the social behaviour of neutered domestic cats while working at the Anthrozoology Institute at the University of Southampton. That’s impressive. Doubtless, not many YouTubers can say that.

So she has since worked as an independent cat behaviour counsellor, as a consultant for the cat-toy industry, and conducted research for and worked with several UK animal charities. Further, she is a “renowned cat behaviourist” and as “a leading charge at the forefront of research in the field, reveals the previously unexplored secrets of cat communication. By understanding how your cat communicates and what their behaviours really mean, you can build a deeper, more meaningful relationship with your cat”.

All to the good, and the book is off to a suitably serious start as Dr. Brown takes us back 3 million years or so to discuss when today’s domestic cats began to descend from the African wildcat, with much of the credit for this domestication going to the ancient Egyptians. It could be that the cats proved handy for controlling pests such as mice, scorpions and snakes.

These felines then stowed away on ships to spread around. “They followed the Romans to conquer their empire, then hopped on board with Vikings as they navigated the seas and rampaged their way through new lands.” And gene mutations resulted in new colours and patterns appearing in cats’ coats. But not all was pleasant for the little creatures.

Many were skinned for their pelts and some became associated with evil spirits, the sidekicks of women accused of witchcraft. In 1233 Pope Gregory sanctioned the extermination of the whole lot, and from the 13th to 17th centuries they were massacred mercilessly across Europe. In Spain they were eaten, but some reached the New World on Columbus’s ships.

Eventually they became fashionable again, featuring in paintings and with their virtues extolled in books and poems. Breeding began, but these are far outnumbered by moggies.

Dr. Brown moves on to the domestic cat’s impressive sense of smell and how they first investigate most things that they come across – whether food, another cat, a person or any object – by smelling them. Allied to this is the unpleasant habit that some have of spreading their social scent messages by urine spraying to mark their territory. And scratching furniture.

The author turns to scientific studies and research for those owners/readers who really want to know what makes their pet/s tick, especially what’s behind their vocalisations and what causes them to purr/growl/call/hiss/trill. As the front cover of her book rather clumsily puts it, “How they have us at meow”.

Some of the earliest insights into this conundrum date to a diary entry by the Abbé Galiani of Naples dated  March 21, 1772. In “a completely new field of scientific observation”, he records, he isolated his male and female and studied them closely. “Would you believe it,” he presumably gasped, “during the months of their amours thay haven’t miaowed once: thus one learns that miaowing isn’t their love language, but rather a signal to the absent.”

If that is slightly bewildering, so too, says Dr. Brown, is the book “Pussy and Her Language” published by Marvin R. Clark, a musician and lover of cats, in 1895 and which included “A Paper on the Wonderful Discovery of the Cat Language”.

This paper was apparently penned by a French professor, Alphonse Leon Grimaldi, who claimed to have elucidated the language of cats and provided an in-depth analysis of their use of vowels, consonants (apparently used “daintily”) and grammar, as well as words and numbers. Grimaldi thoughtfully offered a feline dictionary of what he considered to be the 17 most important words in the feline language, for instance “ptlee-bl” for “mouse meat”.

Oh well, time to move on. “The Hidden Language of Cats”, then, is a serious, rather academic study. A history, too, telling how domestic cats have managed to find homes with devoted owners worldwide. The educational text is leavened by her observations of a couple of cat colonies in rural England, and some personal encounters with Big Ginger, Bootsie, Smudge, Tabitha, Tigger and others, who display their personalities.

Dr. Brown looks into the significance of ear and tail movements, vocalisation and interaction between owners and their pets including talking, stroking and what is known as allorubbing. This latter is the practice of cats and many other mammalian species living in social situations to use bodily contact to communicate with each other.

In other words, a special kind of social touch between two individuals in which one rubs a part, or various parts, of their body against the recipient. Your cat rubbing its head, flank and sometimes its tail up against your leg, for instance. Many owners find this to be one of their pet’s most endearing behaviours. And adult cats meow to their owners, rarely to each other.

The author concludes that cats in all walks of life have impressed by learning to communicate both between themselves and with humans to succeed in our crowded and very social, anthropocentric world. From a solitary background, she deduces, they have adapted to living alongside each other, finding new signals and ways to avoid conflict so as to share resources.

“Even more impressively, they have tapped into our very different human language and adapted their own limited bank of communicative behaviours to fit in with ours, to grab our attention and try to tell us what they want. They understand us far better than most people give them credit for, and far better than we understand them.”

All of which poses the question of whther cat-human communication has evolved as far as it can? Dr. Brown and her “The Hidden Language of Cats” believe that this seems unlikely, given the talent that that they have for fitting into our human world. At The Budapest Times we have a theory that in a thousand years or so they will have learned to speak.

Cause, then, for continuing study of these enigmatic creatures with which Mother Nature has presented us and with which we share our homes. (The litter box puzzle remains.)