A Bit More Detail

Of course cats can play fetch. April Holladay's Globe and Mail piece proves what I know about Shakespeare, albeit only after Jerry taught me. Why else would I have so many rubber and foil balls lying around my apartment? Below's a YouTube video of a Bengal kitten playing fetch, if you don't believe my assertions.

"Kirsten Dunst - Turning Japanese (HD)" (Watch on YouTube)

Cats and dogs are both domesticated, but their domestications were quite different, as Holladay notes.

In 2007, researchers examined the mitochondrial genes of about 980 domestic cats and five subspecies of wildcats from three continents to determine when and where humans domesticated cats.

The studies showed human association with cats began much more recently than dogs, probably about “9000 years ago as the earliest farmers of the Fertile Crescent [approximately where modern-day Iraq is] domesticated grains and cereals as well as livestock animals,” writes molecular biologist Carlos A. Driscoll of the National Cancer Institute in Science magazine.

Cats helped early farmers by killing rodent pests infesting stored grains. You might think people domesticated cats because cats kept the rodent population down.

It's more likely, however, “we didn't bring cats into our homes, they brought themselves in,” Driscoll says. Cats like to chase mice (or, perhaps like Duma, flying green rings); it's instinctive behavior. We never trained cats to hunt rodents. But we did provide a profitable place to hunt: many mice and few predators. So cats domesticated themselves merely by evolving a tolerance for people. “And — voila! — they had adapted to their new niche.”

Thus, humans have had twice as long to train and communicate with dogs (16,000 years) as cats (9,000 years), so dogs train easier. Moreover, cats started associating with humans doing what they wanted to do — hunt and kill rodents. Whereas, dogs emerged from wolf family packs that hunted together. Dogs have been strongly selected for “an innate ability to learn complicated tasks”, such as shepherding, retrieving and guarding, which often require communication with humans, Driscoll says. In contrast, domestic cats do not “intuit the intentions of others” (either human or feline) to the extent that dogs do and that hinders a cat's ability to follow directions.

The main difference between dogs and cats, as revealed in a 2005 Hungarian study, was that the more social dogs looked to their owners for help problem-solving earlier than the more solitary cats, less used to collaboration with humans or other cats and perhaps also less physically expressive.

Still, cats definitely are social enough to play fetch!

Jerry took these two photos showing Shakespeare peeking his head around the corner. I like the suggestion of one commenter that Shakespeare looks like a little mystic.

Because of Prince Edward Island's relatively high population density and very large proportion of cultivated land, by the end of the 19th century Islanders had killed the large predators (like bears) while decimating old-growth forests. Of late, as cultivated land has given way to second-growth forest, small predators have returned. In rural areas, for instance, coyotes have become quite notable, such that it's a bad idea to let your pet cats and dogs roam freely. In the area of the capital of Charlottetown, suburban growth and/or the exploitation of a new ecological niche has led to the rapid growth of the fox population in the city. Guess what's happening now? The Brighton and Victoria Park districts, it's worth noting, are located in the middle of Charlottetown.

Paulette Hooley said she let her cat Red out after supper one night a couple of weeks ago, but the cat never came home.

Hooley looked up and down her street, asked neighbours, and even put a sign up in the local grocery store.

Then she got the bad news.

"One week later I met the mailman, John Pound, and I showed him the picture of Red, and he said he was very sorry to tell me that he found her body just up the street," said Hooley. "He said that something had got it at the neck."

[. . .]

Area residents said they've noticed more foxes in the city and the animals don't seem to be afraid to approach people.

Hooley's mailman said he often sees them on his morning route, especially around the Victoria Park area.

And Norman Sahely said he sees them at night outside his small neighbourhood grocery store. "They must be looking for food. They are coming closer to town now, very boldly," he said.

Provincial wildlife expert Randy Dibblee confirmed foxes are becoming more domesticated, but said he doubts they're responsible for the missing cats.

"In most cases house cats and foxes are seen out playing or jousting on the front lawn," he said. "I think it's rare even for a fox to prey on a cat, but that being said, foxes are capable of killing cats, but seldom do."

Asked about coyotes, Dibblee said: "These things are seen in rural and suburban areas, but again, if they encounter a house cat, coyotes are quite capable of killing them, but they don't key in on them specifically, but they are capable of taking them."

Shakespeare must look fierce in this post, as if he was "walking on imported air" past a pile of books he angrily tipped over as he narrowed his eyes at me, but, truly, it's an illusion: the books are scattered on the floor because of my ferocious housecleaning, and the angle is responsible for the illusion of anger. If anything, he's quite the opposite of an alpha male, timid and gentle.

As some of you may have noticed recently, I've become a bit preoccupied with cats in general and my growing kitten Shakespeare in particular. It's because I'm in love with him. I've really taken to him when, inspired by Jerry, I adopted him from the Toronto Humane Society. I like it when he cuddles up to me when I'm sleeping and sits on my chest to steal my breath when I'm trying to sleep, I like the energy and enthusiasm with which he plays and investigates the world, I like his furriness and his plaintive eyes, I--well, I just like him. (I still don't get LOLCATZ, though.)

That's why Shakespeare is an indoor cat. I want to keep Shakespeare with me for as long as I can, and the startling discrepancy in life expectancies between indoor and outdoor cats is more than enough justification. I don't want him to pick up from other cats the feline leukemia virus (which can be vaccinated against with some reliability) or FIV (which can't so much). I don't want him to be injured outside, to be attacked by a potential predator like a dog or to be hit by a car or to suffer any number of accidental injuries. And I especially don't want him to be intentionally injured by humans.

Like these predators did.

( Read more... )

I find it difficult to agree with the judge's emotional reaction.

"As a person who shares his life with cats and has done for 30 years," Justice Ormston wrote, and only an animal-lover would put it this way, "this case has been very difficult. The knee-jerk reaction to anyone who has seen the tape and, in fact, the knee-jerk reaction to anyone who has heard about the tape is that these individuals should go to jail for as long as they possibly can, they should have done to them what was done to the cat."

Perhaps with added salt towards the end.

But then, quite apart from the very very very important fact--as some lawyers working for the Bush Administration may yet discover--that basic human rights belong even to people you don't like, perhaps especially to people you don't like. The three were sentenced about as harshly as possible, with probation and fines and extended periods in lockdown in prisons. Animal cruelty laws have also been strengthened, as the article goes on to note.

Finally, there is the question of the current Canadian law on animal cruelty, which carries a maximum penalty of a $2,000 fine or six months in jail. That law is indeed under review. A new bit of legislation, which would raise the maximum penalties to $10,000 or five years in jail, has been approved by the House of Commons, and is now before the Senate, which is expected to send it back to the Commons with amendments before it is finally passed into law.

There are still some complaints though, as when recently a New Brunswick man was acquitted of charges of cruelty to animals on the grounds that the puppies he hammered to death were unconscious at the time. Some observers have argued that the laws should be further strengthened.

Since the animals were considered his property, the court decided he had the right to dispose of them as he saw fit, although he was ordered to pay $50 for injuring a dog that survived the hammer blow.

"Most Canadians do not view animals the same way that people did in the Victorian era," said Melissa Tkachyk, with the World Society for the Protection of Animals.

"They do not agree that killing an animal with a hammer is the same as vandalizing a person's car."

Critics complain that Bill S-203, which received Royal Assent in April 2008, has done little to protect animals and say such incidents underline a need to put teeth into the law.

The legislation enacted last year beefed up penalties for animal cruelty.

But Liberal MP Mark Holland (Ajax-Pickering) called the updated law "placebo" policy.

"Those that are committing animal-abuse offences are essentially able to do so with impunity," Holland said.

He has introduced a private member's bill that would create a separate offence for killing an animal without lawful excuse.

Across Canada, fewer than one-quarter of 1 per cent of charges under the animal-cruelty provisions of the code result in convictions.

What do you think? Should animal cruelty laws be strengthened, in Canada, or elsewhere in the world, with separate offences and increased penalties? Is it or is it not something that governments should concern themselves with, whether because there are more important issues to deal with or current penalties are sufficient? Should these laws be globalized, or are animal cruelty laws a luxury of the rich and well-off? (Then again, the United Kingdom adopted animal rights laws at a time when living standards and the sectoral distribution of labour was not much different from modern-day Indonesia's.)

The National Post's Colby Cosh writes about the good sense in neutering--or spaying--housecats.

Cats don’t have concepts or opinions — just a perceptual apparatus radically unlike our own, and a set of complex instincts. You can learn to predict a cat’s behaviour, and do things that will please it, but you can’t really “think like a cat”; you can only build a clumsy model for the cat’s mind. Anthropomorphizing them is irresistible because they’ve been bred for 10,000 years — think about that: ten thousand years, on a Darwinian clock spinning through generations much faster than our own — solely to be amusing, useful and endearing to humans. They have been designed, by a force much more cunning than mere human ingenuity, to trick us into regarding them as family members.

Thus is the tragedy of the domestic cat. I frequently run into people who like to have cats around, but who think it would be cruel to neuter or spay them. I’m not saying I run into any smart people who think this way, mind you; but it’s not as though there is some IQ qualification for owning a cat. If there were, we wouldn’t have to euthanize somewhere around 100,000 unwanted cats a year in Canada.

Why would anyone think it was cruel to have a pet cat surgically prevented from reproducing? Mostly, it’s pure anthropomorphism. We humans have affectionate, satisfying primate sex, designed to promote pair-bonding and investment in the raising of energy-expensive children with overgrown brains. We don’t want to deny to our cats a capacity that is so essential to our own lives; we think of them as sharing our most complicated emotions, and we hesitate to deny them the “right” to go have “fun.” (This thinking is especially typical of people who don’t know any other way to have fun.)

[ . . .]

[T]to own a cat is to succumb to sentimentality in the first place, and it only takes a few soft-hearted cretins in a city to keep the numbers of stray cats larger than the capacity of humans to care for them. We can expand the niche, but as long as non-neutered pets are allowed to roam, it is almost inevitable that they will outbreed our efforts, Malthusian-fashion. Which forces humane societies and shelters — run by the people who care for animals most — to euthanize them in myriads. Evolution is crafty, but it respects no higher law, and can create some pretty miserable equilibria.</blockquote<

The Huffington Post's Mini Hanaoka blogs about a cafe in Tokyo that caters quite specifically to the cat lover.

In an increasingly childless and aging nation, cat cafes fill a void. The more fortunate Japanese are the middle-aged couples who cradle Dachshunds like grandchildren at car dealerships and the young women who hand feed their Maltese puppies on park benches. For those who live with long work hours, no-pet apartments and work-related travel, there are cat cafes.

I first heard of Calico cat cafe when it opened in March 2007, but then it was an oddity and the preserve of lonely women and cat fanciers. It is now staggeringly popular. This March it opened a second branch in the high-rent Shinjuku business and shopping district. Last October it published a glossy coffee table book featuring its "feline staff." The original branch is so packed that reservations are recommended on weekends.

Browsing in a bookstore, I found 39 establishments listed in the "cat cafe yellow page" section of a magazine. Calico advertises itself as a great "date spot," a place to make "friends" -- both cats and humans -- and a "fun place" to swing by after work.

Rebecca Dube writes about the subject in this post's subject line.

Any single woman with cats, plural, cringes at that dreaded stereotype - the Crazy Cat Lady.

But there's another beleaguered minority that has been suffering silently in her shadow: men who own, and love, cats.

Dudes with feline friends have historically been put on the defensive. Romping through the park with Rover is one thing, but spend some quality time with Mr. Whiskers and people start whispering about your masculinity.

But recently there have been signs of change. Online, men are professing their love for cats, and congregating with like-minded fanciers. A popular Flickr group has collected more than 600 photos of men cuddling their cats. "Down with rabid dogism!" cries the group's administrator. (In many of the photos the cat is actually obscuring the man's face - displaying either the residual shame associated with male cat ownership or the feline tendency to hog the camera, I'm not sure which.)

One of the biggest YouTube hits of last year was "An Engineer's Guide to Cats," a hilariously deadpan look at the joys of sharing one's life with cats, by engineer Paul Klusman. The video has been viewed more than 3.4 million times, and Mr. Klusman received more than a few marriage proposals as a result. (So far, he's sticking with his cats.)

As it should be, the new movement is long overdue, says cat lover Michael O'Sullivan, president of the Humane Society of Canada. He and his wife have one cat and one dog now, though in the past they've had as many as four cats. It was Mr. O'Sullivan who introduced his wife, a dog person, to the joys of felinity.

"I like their independent personalities," Mr. O'Sullivan says. As for the stereotypes, he says he knows plenty of macho men who wouldn't hesitate to adopt a cat. "I think I'm fairly masculine, and it's never really mattered to me."

The flickr group that Dube mentions is Men with their cats, and yes, I've joined.

Shakespeare, here, is being a cat, and almost stereotypical one, even. Well, it's that, and that he can also role-play quite well.

Living in Koreatown on Bloor Street, during good weather this independent-minded cat is regularly left by his owner to bask in the warmth outside. The sign behind the cat, barely visible, tells people to leave the cat be. For the most people, the cat is left, but that doesn't scare away the spectators (like me).