Basic Information
Domesticated cats have been around for thousands of years and have been worshiped, cast out, eaten, mummified, and shunned. The Egyptians worshiped them and mummified them in tombs with the dead, black cats have been shunned and cast out by many superstitions accounts, and in some countries even the domesticated breeds have been food.
Since each cat has it's own personality, some make great companions and some are just loaners. Finding the right combination of human and cat household can be quite a task and often one or the other has to make concessions in the living quarters if the relationship is to work. How a cat is treated when it is young can have a lasting impact on how it behaves when it is older. Most cats cannot be taught tricks the way dogs are, but if a cat chooses to learn a trick you teach, consider yourself lucky.
There are many different behaviors that humans share in common with cats, including fear, aggressiveness, sadness, destructiveness, obsessiveness, and playfulness to just name a few. There are also several kinds of domesticated cat breeds. The Cat Fancier's Association recognizes 40 breeds for showing.
Many people can be classified as either a cat person or a dog person. Those who are not cat people may also suffer from ailurophobia - the fear of cats. Just like any other irrational phobia, it doesn't have to be a product of some event in the person's past, but can simply just be a present fear in their lives. Historical sufferers include Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Mussolini, and Hitler.[4]
The objection to cats (whether part of a phobia or not) may well result from their extremely invasive nature. Being both curious and extremely mobile they have a tendency to move from where they are welcome to places where they are not. No cat has ever been sucessfully trained to recognise and respect human property boundaries and besides invading outdoor areas where their normal behaviour can bring them into conflict with the owners they are also known to enter strange homes and workplaces, often to the annoyance of those inside and/or their own detriment (hence the proverb about curiosity killing the cat). They are also great invaders of human personal space, and due to an unfortunate mismatch in human and feline body language they have a tendency to seek out precisely those people least fond of them, even to the extent of climbing onto them.
The ecologically minded also object to the predatory behaviour of domestic cats, particularly in places where they are an alien species. Even a well fed domestic cat will hunt instincitively for birds and small mammals, notching up a significant number of kills in a year. Feral cats, hunting for subsistence, will kill far more.
Cats have been food for a long time, just as many animals are today. Dog is eaten in many parts of China, but only in Guangdong do people eat cat. In 2008 one business was reported to capture up to 10,000 cats per day from different parts of China. The cat snatchers are typically formerly unemployed people who use large fishing nets and are paid $1.50(US) per cat.[7] Unsurprisingly cat (like dog) is also eaten in many places where food supplies become short - even some urban areas of England saw cat being sold as "roof rabbit" during shortages brought on by the U-boat blockades of WW1 and WW2. Once the head, feet, tail and skin are removed cat and rabbit carcasses are very hard to tell apart.
Physiology and Biology
Cat allergens that trigger human reactions are usually related to cat hair and cat dander. The Canadian Hairless Cat (or Sphynx Cat) eliminates a large portion of this problem. In 1967 a cat in Toronto gave birth to genetically mutated kittens that caught on.[8] Today the breed is among the most popular cats to be chosen by those with high allergen issues. They actually do have hair, but it is so short it does not feel like the hair we know of cats today. Whiskers and Eyebrows can either be present or not, varying from cat to cat, and their markings vary as much as other cat breeds, from patches, to stripes, to single colors.
Cats physiology has some unique elements to it. They have loose skin that permits the mother to carry her young by her mouth and can allow cats to turn on their predators or prey even if gripped in battle. Cats have about 50 vertebrae (over 20 in their tail) and humans have about 30. Cats do not have a fixed clavicle bone like humans do, so they can fit through spaces about the size of their head if they are pressed to do so. Cat teeth are very much like scissors are highly designed for slicing meat. The gentle gnawing bite a cat might do to your finger is more likely just their attempt at bonding or perhaps their way of using you as a chew toy to clean their teeth. Cats have more than 30 muscles in each ear allowing for a wide range of audio abilities, and when they fold their ears back in a fight or in play they can actually hear behind themselves. This could be useful for checking your back if you were playing a cat character and about to get in a fight - hint, hint.
When cats walk, they directly register their foot placements, which means that the back feet are placed almost directly where the front ones went. This means fewer foot prints to track, and sure footing for the back feet if it's uneven/unstable terrain. It also reduces the number of things stepped on that could produce noise. This is also used by other mammals like dogs, but unlike dogs, cats walk by putting both paws of one side forward first and then the other side second. That means instead of Right-Front and Left-Back, as most mammals do, they put both right legs forward first and then both left legs. This is also how camels, horses (pacers specifically), and giraffes walk. That means the cat has to have more balance than the dog (and most other mammals) because one half of it's support limbs are off the ground at a time when moving fast. At a slow pace it could mean only one paw is off the ground at a time.
Cheetahs are the only cat that cannot retract their claws. Domesticated cats tend to be more polydactyl due to a genetic mutation way back and can have 6 or 7 toes on each foot, but most have 5 toes on each front paw and 4 or 5 on each back paw.
It's very common to hear that cats see better at night than humans do, but they actually see worse in daylight than humans. Cats hear higher pitches than humans, by a long shot and actually hear an octave above dogs. Going back to what was stated earlier about a cat choosing to learn a trick you teach, it would be very rare for a cat to come running at the use of a 'dog whistle' even though they can hear it. Cats can smell 14 times better than humans can - yes, they know when you haven't showered - but they have lost the sense of taste for sweet things - no wonder they'll lick the salt off your fingers.[5]
Cats as Predators
Your typical "outdoors cat", one that owns people and has a home it returns to frequently, will still make an average of 28 kills per year. [9] Most of these kills are birds. This is despite the fact that such a cat doesn't have to kill anything in order to survive, it just needs to wander back home to get food more-or-less on-demand. Hunting is instinctual for cats, and many forms of playful kitten behavior are biologically-programmed training for later hunts. After The End, cats will continue to hunt, and quickly adapt to the lack of humans left around. Cats are the equipped to be extremely successful predators in the overgrown windowless skyscrapers that will stand for decades after man's passing. See Post-Apocalyptic Decay for further details.
Cat-Related Tropes
These are tropes pertaining to cats, cat-related characters, and/or human's reactions to cats.
- Cat Concerto
- Cat Girl (see also Half Human Hybrid)
- Cat Scare
- Cats Are Mean
- Cats Hate Water
- Cats Have Nine Lives
- Crazy Cat Lady
- Everything's Cuter With Kittens
- Lolcats
- Mega Neko
- Right Hand Cat
- Snarky Cat (related to Snarky Non Human Sidekick)
- That Poor Cat
- Uncatty Resemblance
- Your Tomcat Is Pregnant
See Also
Sources
More fun with cats:
Random Kitten Generator
Cat Name Generator
Lolcats (Cats with personality)
Guinness World's Fattest Cat
Guinness World's Smallest Cat
Fiction: The Cats Of Ulthar by H.P. Lovecraft Free Online Version
Game and Story Use
- A role playing adventure where the heroes are all Cats might be fun since each cat has a completely different personality with different motivations.
- Classic story lines can be told with cats in place of main characters: Sleeping Beauty, The Emperor's New Clothes, Soylent Green.
- A conspiracy of black cats invading the town would be a good superstitions storyline to follow.
- For a different take on a related idea, read The Cats of Ulthar.
- A character could take on a "burden/flaw/hindrance" of a grumpy/finicky/troublesome cat familiar/companion/pet.
- A city that has run out of their primary food source may ask the heroes to find a new source of cats.
- The evil master/mistress at the end of the adventure may just be an Egyptian Queen Cat demanding worship and treasures.
- "He made me his cat carrier! And what did he give me for it? Nothing!" … delivering a pedigree cat, nervous or otherwise, might turn out to be an unexpectedly complicated job for PCs. Finding and retrieving a mislaid cat could be even harder.
