They're independent;
they're affectionate;
they're loyal; they're beautiful;
they're sagacious; they're mysterious;
they're ineffable; they're inscrutable.
Cats are magic.
They really are magic.
Probably the most mysterious
creatures in the world.
They're also very vicious;
they're very cruel things.
That's another thing
I like about them
their ability to be
one thing and then another.
The domestic cat harbors
a sort of split personality.
Within even the most demure pussycat
lurks a creature of the wild.
Even after thousands of years,
we still know little about
the behavior of domestic cats.
Now, scientists and laymen alike
attempt to understand them to
demystify this elusive feline.
For them, the domestic cat is
every bit as intriguing to study
as the lion or the tiger.
To share one's life with a cat is to
invite a bit of wildness indoors.
Perhaps the writer was correct
when he philosophized:
"God made the cat that man might have
the pleasure of caressing the tiger."
Today, the Western world enjoys
an unparalleled love affair
between man and beast.
Cat coming through.
The cat now surpasses the dog
as the number one pet,
and annually we spend more on cat food
than on baby food.
On any weekend proud owners
display their pampered pets
to thousands of fellow enthusiasts.
Some three dozen breeds
compete longhairs, shorthairs,
and some that seem to have no hair.
There are nearly 58 million pet cats
in the United States alone.
While many are common alley
cats of little monetary value,
some exotic breeds sell
for as much as $3,000.
And, although many people
dislike and distrust cats,
a far greater number adore
and indulge them.
Keeping cats and their owners happy
has become a major industry.
It's extremely durable
It's synthetic fur.
Look at the beads in the middle there.
You see the beads?
Oh, yeah.
Okay, listen.
You hear that little scratchy sound?
Drives the cats crazy. They love it.
This is one of our kitty condos.
We have a birthing area
or a litter area.
Kitty pan comes down on the bottom.
It's made of solid0-wood construction
stain-resistant carpeting...
The cat, as you can see
has a tubular body;
everything is in line.
It's got the long body
the long tail,
the long head to go with
the rest of the body.
Long bones.
The people keep it in wonderful
condition, because he's very muscular.
He's not skinny at all; he's just
slim and hard like an athlete.
Like a specter floating from the
mists of prehistory
into the shadows of modern times,
two species of wildcats still prowl
parts of Africa and Europe.
Presumed to be the ancestors
of today's house cat,
they even look like tabbies.
But wildcats are fierce and formidable
animals, in no way tame.
In ancient times many became tame
when farmers fed and sheltered them
as valued rodent K*llers.
The farmers were Egyptian.
The time more than 3,000 years ago.
The cat became adored
and revered in Egypt.
Never since has the cat's honored role
been matched anywhere in the world.
One goddess in the form of a cat
symbolized pleasure,
fertility, and maternity.
Cats were also associated with the
deity believed to start the sun
on its daily course
and one who symbolized life itself.
The Brooklyn Museum maintains one of
the world's finest Egyptian collections
Its curator is archeologist
Richard Fazzini.
He divides his time between
ancient ruins and ancient artifacts.
Prized in any such collection
is a cat mummy,
embalmed as were the
ancient pharaohs themselves.
This pussycat has been
this way since,
well, he's hard to date,
but let's say
at least 2,300 to 2,500 years.
Now why, you might ask, did the
Egyptians mummify animals?
Well, because certain gods could
appear in the form of certain animals.
And so it could be a pious gesture
or part of some cult ritual
to present a mummified cat to place
it in a temple
or to place it in one of
the great animal cemeteries.
But the heyday of the cat was to pass.
Once sacred, the cat would come
to be hated and scorned.
The same eyes perceived as the throne
of the gods
became feared as the seat of the Devil
Believed by many to be the
companions of witches,
thousands of cats were tortured.
burned, and hanged, as recently as
colonial times in America.
Veterinarian Michael Fox
is Vice President of the
Humane Society of the United States.
He writes extensively on cat behavior
and human cat relationships.
It is intriguing that cats have been
revered in history and persecuted.
There was one pope
who had all cats k*lled.
This love-hate relationship, I think,
reflects an aspect of the
dualistic psyche of human beings.
We love things conditionally.
We love them if we can control them
and they will bend to our will.
Or we love them
because they are mysterious,
that they're an aspect of
nature's wildness,
which the cat embodies.
The domestic cat is but one
of 38 species of cats,
most of them astonishingly alike.
Take away their spots or stripes
their short or long fur,
disregard the differences in size
from four pounds to more than 600
and a cat is a cat is a cat.
Few pet owners are aware that most of
the behaviors of their house cat
have a parallel somewhere in the wild.
The cat is an enchanting combination
of beauty and utility.
Its sinuous movements delight the eye.
Cats get some of their suppleness
from their shoulder joints,
which are so constructed
that they can shift
the front legs freely
in almost any direction.
They have almost no collar bone
and an exceptionally limber spine.
Ever fluid and graceful cats are
marvels of strength and balance.
All cats advertise their territory.
Spraying deposits a pungent scent.
Scratch marks are visual signals
and may also carry a scent
from glands in the paws.
Glands on the face and tail deposit
scents at home just as in the wild.
Sometimes more than one signal is left.
Territorial fights could be
deadly between animals
with such sharp teeth and claws,
so most disputes are settled by body
postures and intimidating bluffs.
Friendly greetings are generally more
fleeting and subtle
a nose touch or body rubbing.
Exactly how and why cats purr
remains a mystery.
We do know that both purring
and kneading with the paws
first appear in infancy to stimulate
the mother's milk to flow.
Being hunter, cats must conserve
energy whenever possible.
They snooze about
two-thirds of the time,
but always remain alert to sounds;
hence, the term catnap.
In all cats ovulation
the release of an egg,
does not occur until
mating triggers it.
After gestation of two to four months
depending on the species,
they give birth to one to eight young.
Kittens and cubs are helpless at birth
At first they can neither see nor hear
their life guided primarily
by touch and smell.
Amazingly, each has a preference
for one particular nipple,
which it locates by smell.
In the wild this efficient behavior
frees the mother
to resume hunting sooner.
Excellent, protective mothers,
cats will quickly move their offspring
if they suspect danger.
To teach their young
how to hunt and k*ll,
many cat mothers bring home
live prey for practice.
These caracals nicknamed "desert lynx"
may seem to be playful or cruel,
but they are merely learning.
Striking the prey stuns it,
but the cubs are too inexperienced
to deliver the fatal bite.
Cat mothers keep their
young fastidiously clean.
The soothing sensation of
tongue rubbing against fur
is duplicated each time
a human strokes a cat.
In this way a bond is formed,
and cats come to regard us
as surrogate mothers,
a role we hold throughout their lives.
In the wild, as young felines play,
they refine the predatory skills
essential to survival as adults.
Whether domestic cats
similarly practice stalking
and hunting is subject to debate.
Many experts feel that play exists
as a behavior in its own right,
simply because it's fun.
With indoor cats
many owners can attest to a phenomenon
affectionately called
the "evening crazies",
when pent-up hunting instincts
erupt into a frenzy.
Triggered by a prey's movements,
even the most well-fed cat may hunt
given the opportunity.
But the connection between making a
k*ll and eating it has to be learned.
An inexperienced cat may
attack with precision,
yet not recognize its k*ll as food.
As hunters that rely on stealth,
cats are always alert for cues
that could mean food or danger.
While smell is not
their primary sense,
no odor escapes them.
They use smell mainly to find the
territorial boundaries of other cats
or to know if other cats
have been in their territory.
To gather information
about potential mates,
cats use a second olfactory system
in the roof of the mouth.
Inhaling the airborne scent
while curling the upper lip
creates the grimacing look.
Cats move their funnel-shaped ears
to zero in on sounds.
They probably have
better acoustical discrimination
than either dogs or humans.
The function of a cat's whiskers
is not entirely understood.
But if they are severed,
the animal may lose its equilibrium
and stumble into things.
It may even be unable
to make a clean k*ll.
Whiskers also transmit
information about captured prey.
To remove all traces of food,
cats regularly groom.
Fastidiousness is one of
their best known traits.
Coarse and abrasive liken sandpaper,
the tongue is covered with
hook-like projection
that can even tear flesh
from bone after a k*ll.
To writers, artists, and poets,
cat's eyes have embodied all
things magical and mysterious.
The scientist knows that vision
is one of the cat's most vital senses,
the key to its success as a hunter.
At Florida State University,
the question of how cats see the world
has been studied for
more than 25 years.
Professor of Neuroscience
and Psychology,
Dr. Mark Berkley defied cynics
who told him the independent cat would
never make a good laboratory subject.
He designed a system that not only
works, but actually appeals to the cat
Banking on the animal's
inquisitiveness,
Berkley built a box
that invites exploration.
And when it responds correctly,
the cat is rewarded with food.
Generated by a computer,
an image will appear in front of the
cat on one side of the screen.
The cat must tell the researchers,
"Yes, I can see that".
It does so by poking the
right-hand plexiglass panel
when the image appears on the right,
and the other side when the
image appears on the left.
From the work of Berkley and others,
we know cats cannot distinguish
between human faces,
have poor color vision, and like us,
experience visual illusions.
But perhaps most noteworthy
is their ability to see at night.
Under low light levels
the cat is anywhere
from six to ten times more sensitive.
That is, at a light level
where we perhaps couldn't see anything,
he still sees, not very will,
but certainly better than we do.
I suppose it might be
the difference between
a starless night and a moonlit night,
where under a starless night that
might be the way it looks to us,
but to the cat it might look
as if the moon were up.
Able to pierce the darkness with
vision at least six times more
sensitive than our own,
the night truly belongs to the cat.
The cat's earliest ancestors
probably hunted both
on the ground and in the trees.
To survive, they needed not only claws
but remarkable balance,
an aptitude all cats retain
to this day.
In keeping with its reputation,
the cat usually does land on all fours.
And scientists
have come to understand how.
Slow-motion photography
reveals that cats always
right themselves in a precise order.
The head rotates first,
based on messages
from the eyes and inner ear.
Then the spine twists
and the rear quarters align.
At the same time the cat arches
its back to reduce the force of impact.
Despite its agility,
the cat faces particular dangers
in today's modern cities.
Here, although hundreds of
feet above the ground,
the indoor cat is just as attracted
by moving prey as is any other cat.
If anything, it may be a
stir-crazy bundle of energy.
So many cats actually careen through
unscreened windows
that the phenomenon now has a name
"high-rise syndrome".
At the Animal Medical Center
in New York City,
doctors were perplexed when they found
that victims of higher falls
often had less severs injuries than
those that fell a shorter distance.
Good morning, Miss Pizano,
how are you today?
Fine, thanks.
Dr. Michael Garvey is medical director.
Hello, Harry.
Harry is recovering
from serious fractures
after falling just a few stories.
We'd been puzzled by the
high-rise syndrome for a long time
the name that we give for
cats falling out of windows.
Our clinical impression is that
cats that fall from medium-level
stories are hurt much worse than cats
that fell from even greater distances.
That seemed to defy our logic
that cats that would fall
farther would be hurt less.
So we undertook a study to examine
the records on cats
that had been admitted here
for falling out of windows.
And it actually confirmed that our
clinical impression was correct.
It seems that cats that fall
from higher stories
and have enough time to reach free-fall
like a parachutist are relaxed.
And when you experience trauma
when you're relaxed,
you will probably avoid injury.
When you experience trauma when you
are very rigid and very tight,
you will tend to maximize injury.
The cat may not have nine lives,
but its uncanny ability
to sail through the air
is almost certainly responsible
for the myth.
Throughout its history,
myth and folklore
have enshrouded the cat.
Near Oxford, England,
scientists have been exploring
whether the legendary solitude
of the cat is fact or fiction,
or can cats adapt successfully
to living in groups?
Puss. Puss.
Puss.
Bert Parker has kept farm cats
for more than half a century,
as many as 80 at a time.
Puss, puss, puss. Come on.
Puss. Puss, puss, puss, puss.
A good cat is worth a lot.
She's a valuable asset to any farm.
Our cats have increased.
There's few more than
what we really need,
but what do you do?
You just let them go on.
They do keep the rats
and mice down to a limit.
I don't say they have every one,
but they do catch up
with them at the finish.
But what happens when this usually
solitary animal
lives in close quarters
with so many others?
Oxford University Professor
David Macdonald has studied
farm cats since 1978.
Why is it that people have tended
to typecast cats
as anti-social, as solitary creatures?
I think there's two reasons.
Once of them could be that the sorts
of things that cats do socially
are not the sorts of things that
classically people have had in mind
when they though
about wild animal societies.
And I think that's
because cat society is based on
a rather subtle, covert language.
And the sorts of signals
that pass between cats,
and the one I personally think
is important is this business
of rubbing where one individual rubs
its lips and its cheek against
another individual happen very quickly,
they happen very rarely, and if you're
not tuned in to looking for it,
you just don't see it.
So I think people have spent their
lives living amongst cats
and formed an impression
which hasn't taken into account
the subtlety of the relationships
that occur between the cats themselves.
It turns out that they are
living in a society.
And, therefore,
it's a bit irritating in a sense
that one hears so many people saying,
Oh, the only sociable felids,
the only sociable members of the cat
family as a large group are lions.
That having been said,
there are a lot of similarities
between these barnyard lions
that we have around here
and the lions that we are ever more
familiar with from programs
and researches about the African lions
Lions are the only wild cats
that normally live in a group,
called a pride.
At its core are the adult females,
usually related.
Researchers have discovered
that within a pride
the females look after
and nurse each other's cubs.
Here, three different females
allow the same cub to nurse.
Though a lioness gives preference to
her own cubs when they want to nurse,
at times she will allow younger
sisters or brothers, nieces, nephews,
or grandchildren to join in too.
David Macdonald was intrigued
that among farm cats the same
communal behavior occurs.
It comes and spends a bit of time...
A student, Warner Passanisi,
often follow the cats around the clock,
just as naturalists do in the wild.
...their litters together.
So we have, generally,
the females taking a turn
to suckle these kittens,
again indiscriminately.
Any kitten that is there is suckled.
Although unrelated females may
help each other in this way,
generally the behavior
only follows bloodlines.
Mothers, daughters,
and sisters cooperate most often,
but it is quite possible
that other related females
will also nurse
and care for the kittens,
much like an extended family.
Six weeks old, this kitten has begun
only recently to explore on his own.
Today, he has accidentally
become separated from his mother.
Out of hearing range, she knows
nothings of her kitten's dilemma.
A related female
hears him but does nothing.
He starts back uncertainly.
Out in the barnyard and still
no sign of his mother.
He comes upon the related female,
now nursing her own litter.
Hungry, tired, the kitten is willing
to risk hostility to get close to her.
In the end, she accepts the tiny,
distressed explorer.
Why should the females
behave this way?
Once more the behavior
of lions held the clue...
a behavior not of care and comfort,
but of savagery and death.
In this graphic film footage,
the cameraman bears horrified witness
to a systematic and vicious k*lling.
As three terrified cubs huddle nearby,
a male lion prepares to brutally
attack and k*ll one of their sisters.
When there is a
successful take-over of a pride,
the new dominant male kills
the cubs of the ousted male.
Thus, the female will
come into heat sooner,
the new male can then mate with her,
and thereby perpetuate his own genes.
The barnyard, again, was to prove
remarkably like the plains of Africa.
Macdonald recalls the events
leading to a gruesome discovery.
As I watched at the communal den with
these four sets of kittens altogether,
nine kittens in total, the scene was
really a very intimate one.
The kittens were, as you can imagine,
a chocolate box scene
in amongst straw bales.
Their nest was built in
amongst a stack of bales,
and a narrow passageway
led into the kittens.
And they were all just
piled on top of each other.
And each mother would come
and go from that den,
each suckling the
kittens indiscriminately.
On this occasion I was watching this
nest of kittens and in slunk the male.
And within just a few seconds
this commotion brought the
mothers running, but not soon enough.
Because by the time the mothers came
back and chased had been
in that communal den to start with,
six of them were slain.
So I think we've come up
with two answers,
both of them perhaps
rather surprising to why cats may
benefit individually
from living communally.
One of them is that they can
look after each other's young
by sharing the load of nursing,
and the other is that females may be
able to repel murderous males.
Thus, cooperative care by a number of
females increases the likelihood
that more kittens even orphans will be
watched over and thereby protected.
What other unexpected parallels may
exist between these barnyard lions
and their wild cousins
is yet to be discovered.
In another English village,
the image of cats as ruthless K*llers
was confirmed in a different way.
It began with a local teacher.
Peter Churcher has taught biology
at the Bedford School for 15 years.
Those two have started before that one.
And of course it's important
they all start at the same time,
isn't it? Right.
So back to the beginning.
A cat owner himself,
Churcher applied the discipline of
his scientific training
to explore the unseen world
of the house cat on the prowl.
Throughout England,
indeed in much of the world,
cats are let outdoors to roam
the neighborhood at will.
How much impact on wildlife,
Churcher wondered,
do cats actually have?
Unable to follow the cats,
he did the next best thing and
enlisted the help of their owners.
Well, the first thing was
to go around the village
and just find out who had cats.
And so I knocked on
everybody's door and said,
Have you got a cat and were you
willing to take part in the survey?
And surprisingly enough, virtually
everybody in the village did.
And that meant that I had something
around 78 cats to start off with,
which was a good number.
Oh, hello, Peter.
Good morning, Marjorie.
Have the cats caught
anything this week?
Yes, I have a body
for you ready and waiting.
Thanks very much. Well, that's nice.
Yeah, that's field vole.
Who caught it?
Eccles.
Eccles again?
Yes, the black-and-white one.
Quite a good hunter for us, isn't he?
Yes. The others don't seem to
be catching very much.
Laziness, I would say.
Here you are, Peter.
I think it's a wood mouse,
a field mouse.
I was very surprised at how cooperative
the owners were in the survey.
I think a lot of people don't like the
idea of picking dead bodies
and putting them in polythene bags.
But most of the people in the village
gritted their teeth and did it.
And some even went as far as
to put them in the deep freeze,
which was nice, because,
as you can imagine,
at the end of a week in the summer,
often the dead bodies
were getting rather smell.
And it was pleasant to have them put
in the deep freeze
before I got hold of them.
...take it to work and look at
it under the microscope.
That's Wednesday.
When the specimens were labeled and
the numbers of dead totaled,
Churcher and cats of
Felmersham made headlines.
if the cats in Felmersham caught
the course of a year,
we know there are about
five million cats,
domestic cats, in Britain.
So that means that 70 million
small mammals and birds
are caught by cats in a year.
And so, domestic cats,
in spite of their reliance on man for
food and a lot of other things,
are still remarkably independent.
And I think what our survey has shown
is that they're also very important
as predators on the ecological stage.
Churcher does not propose
that cats be confined indoors.
Others insist it is essential,
not just for the wildlife,
but for the safety of
the cats themselves.
While debate continues,
one thing is certain:
In every well-fed cat by the fire
lies a dormant tiger primed
for the thrill of the hunt.
Because cats are seen
as self-sufficient hunter,
many people feel no qualms
about abandoning them.
Nationwide, millions
are dumped every year.
Near Oxnard, California,
animal welfare activist Leo Grillo
has tried for weeks
to trap two cats living in this jetty.
Such brutal conditions are a death
sentence for cats,
and he devotes his life
to rescuing them.
When the winter hits, these rocks
are really cold and the waves
are cold and the mist is cold
and the fog is cold, The cats are cold.
And everybody thinks they have
a fur coat, they're going to be fine.
And it's always like this,
and when it's a bad winter especially,
it's really pitiful.
Here, at the farthest tip of the rocks
the cats have retreated
from the taunts
and bottle throwing
of uncaring strangers.
But they are also completely cut off
from fresh drinking water.
So Leo baits his traps with it.
Hi, Jet.
He has named the cats
"Marina" and "Jetty"
because of where he found them.
Come on, Jet. Com on,
Jet. Come on.
It is not uncommon for Leo
infinitely patient
to return to the same spot week
after week.
Marina
To Grillo,
these cats appear relatively tame.
Clearly, they were not born wild,
but raised in the
comfort of a human home.
But these same humans abandoned them.
The cats no longer trust.
For Leo it is always a waiting game to
see which is stronger, thirst or fear.
Attaboy. I'm coming down.
All right, Jet, all right. Here you go.
When I get a cat,
and those traps are set,
and I get a cat to go in the trap
and that door comes down and slaps,
that is the most exciting feeling.
And that little saga,
that little story,
the trips to this one
little rock to feed that
one little cat is now over.
It has an ending.
After weeks of failed attempts
this day would finally bring success.
Tired but exultant, Leo would trap
both Marina and Jetty
and bring them back to a
world of care and love.
Grillo runs four licensed
shelters in California.
But they are only for animals
he himself has rescued.
An ever-changing number of cats
and dogs live out their lives here.
If it gets too crowded, he says,
I just expand.
Leo and family live
nearby with 60 cats.
This ranch house is home to
more than 150 at last count.
Dry food seven tons a year
is left out at all time.
Canned food is fed twice daily,
totaling more than
All of this is paid
for by private donations.
There we go. Come see Jetty and Marina.
After a trip to the vet for shots
blood tests, spaying, and neutering,
Marina and Jetty are
ready to meet the others.
But only from the
safety of their cages.
J.J., Junkyard, come on.
Come see your friends. Come on.
This cat is in ecstasy just
to have food,
real food.
Yeah, look at that.
Beautiful thing is they were
caught together and they can
tame down together, comfort each other
For many people the cat is all
but hypnotic
soothing and calming just to behold.
Through the ages,
an uncounted number graceful,
beautiful, and mysterious
have captivated the human mind and eye
Scientists learned that simply petting
a cat lowers human blood pressure.
Now, some go further and suggest cats
may actually benefit our longevity.
In a small town on Long Island,
one innovative woman is playing a role
in the sweeping changes in health care.
When her cats helped her
cope with an illness,
Joan Bernstein was inspired
to reach out to others.
I became ill.
I developed Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,
at that time not knowing what it was.
The disease was not
defined at that time.
And there were days
when there was no way
I felt like getting out of bed,
crawling out of bed literally in pain,
and feeding the cats,
changing litter pans,
and doing everything else
that has to be done.
But I did it because the cats
insisted that I did it.
Sometimes they'd just by my
hot-water bottle or my comforter.
Whatever I needed them to be,
they became.
So I became very aware of the
value of the cats as a therapy.
Lonely, often forgotten,
the institutionalized elderly
have been cut off from a
lifetime of friends and memories.
Ladies and gentlemen,
one of the most beautiful
Grand Champion,
champagne mink Tonkinese...
At the Brookhaven Health Care Facility
Joan's Tonkinese cats
are eagerly awaited every month.
Bred for their stable temperament
and sociability,
they offer therapy at many levels.
The warmth of the cat
on her lap is very important.
Just holding the cat in her arms.
First of all,
it's good exercise for her;
she's utilizing the muscles
in her arms and her hands.
So we have the physical aspect of it.
Look what I brought you.
You think she's trying
to tell you something?
Come on. Okay.
She'll stay right
there with you, Mr. Hook.
Patients who have
difficulty with recall,
with recall of the present, okay,
in other words remembering
the present from now to tomorrow,
or now to next week,
or now to a month from now,
they will remember the cats.
She's a lot like the one
I brought here one time
who was sitting on your shoulder.
Remember?
Yeah.
And I took a picture of you with the
kitten sitting on your shoulder,
and only half the picture came out.
She really is a good guy.
So soft and so pretty, isn't she?
Some scientists believe cats touch
people more than other pets do,
literally and figuratively.
Their lithe and graceful movements
are non-threatening.
And the cat's shape and size are
basically the same as a human baby's
for most people, an automatic
invitation to nurture and love.
She is beautiful.
Aw. I'd love to hold you call
day and all night.
I really would.
Another world touched
by Joan and her cats
is a residential school
for autistic youngsters.
The cause of autism is not fully
understood and currently
there is no known cure.
Locked largely in a world of their own
the children are
extremely difficult to reach.
Some, like John, erupt uncontrollably.
Easily frustrated,
he often reacts with raging tantrums.
While no one pretends the cats
are a miracle cure,
they regularly bring about
miraculous breakthroughs.
How can you tell me what color
they are if you don't look?
For John, the cats open a
window on a bright, new world.
...game with me.
I know.
I think you're playing a game.
John, if she's red, then I'm from Mars
Do I look like I'm from Mars?
No.
No! She's brown.
And what color are her eyes again?
Blue.
That's right.
How about looking at the eyes?
How about looking at them? Oh, okay.
Did you want to give her a kiss? Okay.
Etta
Etta, what have I got?
Etta becomes very agitated
as you can see from her
rocking back and forth,
a constant motion.
And the more she rocks, of course,
the more agitated she is.
I can take the cat over to her,
and at first she may thrust it away.
But if I'm persistent,
sometimes I have to withdraw a
little bit and come back to her.
But if I'm persistent,
the cat can stop her.
Later, Joan will try again.
What have I got?
Cat.
Is this a nice cat?
Do you like this cat?
I see them relating to the cat so much
more openly, so much more freely,
than they do to other people.
They can trust the animal.
With every individual I've worked with
they have eventually reached out,
and I think it's
because there is again that sense of
communication the says,
'Trust me'. I won't hurt you.
Is she saying give her a kiss?
Do you want to? Okay.
Do you want me to turn her around this
way and give her a kiss back here?
A little closer. Good. Okay!
Joan senses she can
approach Etta again.
By holding the cat and focusing
her attention on the cat,
she will stay still,
and she will talk to the cat.
She's with us for
several minutes at a time.
How about saying, 'Hi, kitty.'
Hi, kitty.
Good!
Hi, kitty.
Good! Okay!
We're talking about therapy.
We're talking about hands-on,
and we're talking
about one-on-one and up-close.
We're also talking about cats
that are capable of creating
interaction or curling up
in somebody's arms and saying.
I'm all yours.
Right this minute I belong to you.
You're special to me and I love you.
So hold me and feel good.
It was said that a long time ago,
probably in our own Golden Age
as gatherer-hunters,
that we could talk to the animals
and they would talk to us.
And I think part of understanding
"felinese" is that we can learn
the cat's repertoire
and have a deeper communication
and communion with our cats.
Love for cats is part of a universal
love for all creatures,
which impels us toward
a reverence for all life.
Subtle, amusing, enigmatic... regal
and serene...
cats remain ultimately independent
of their human companions.
They move among us as
half-wild creatures,
the only domestic animal man
has never fully conquered.
Plain or fancy,
barn mouser or lord of the hearth,
they have fired our imagination.
But, we wonder, did we adopt the cat
or did tabby simply deign to share
his life with us?
In the end,
it is a tantalizing mystery,
one that we, being mere humans,
can never hope to solve.
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National Geographic: Cats - Caressing the Tiger (1991)
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