Catwatching Read Online Free Page B

humans as 'mother cats'. Kittens are repeatedly licked by their mothers during their earliest days and the action of human stroking has much the same feel on the fur as feline licking. To the kitten, the mother cat is 'the one who feeds, cleans and protects'.
    Because humans continue to do this for their pets long after their kitten days are behind them, the domesticated animals never fully grow up. They may become full-sized and sexually mature, but in their minds they remain kittens in relation to their human owners.
    For this reason cats – even elderly cats – keep on begging for maternal attention from their owners, pushing up to them and gazing at them longingly, waiting for the pseudo-maternal hand to start acting like a giant tongue again, ming and tugging at their fur. One very characteristic body action they perform when they are being stroked, as they greet their 'mothers', is the stiff erection of their tails. This is typical of young kittens receiving attention from their real mothers and it is an invitation to her to examine their anal regions.
     

Why does a cat tear at the fabric of your favourite chair?
     
    The usual answer is that the animal is sharpening its claws. This is true, but not in the way most people imagine. They envisage a sharpening-up of blunted points rather in the manner of humans improving the condition of blunted knives. But what really occurs is the stripping-off of the old, worn-out claw sheaths to reveal glistening new claws beneath. It is more like the shedding of a snake's skin than the sharpening of a kitchen knife. Sometimes, when people run their hands over the place where the cat has been tearing at the furniture, they find what they think is a ripped-out claw and they then fear that their animal has accidentally caught its claw in some stubborn threads of the fabric and damaged its foot. But the 'ripped-out claw' is nothing more than the old outer layer that was ready to be discarded. Cats do not employ these powerful 'stropping' actions with the hind feet. Instead they use their teeth to chew off the old outer casings from the hind claws.
    A second important function of the stropping with the front feet is the exercising and strengthening of the retraction and protrusion apparatus of the claws, so vital in catching prey, fighting rivals and climbing.
    A third function, not suspected by most people, is that of scentmarking. There are scent glands on the underside of the cat's front paws and these are rubbed vigorously against the fabric of the furniture being clawed. The rhythmic stropping, left paw, right paw, squeezes scent on to the surface of the cloth and rubs it in, depositing the cat's personal signature on the furniture. This is why it is always your favourite chair which seems to suffer most attention, because the cat is responding to your own personal fragrance and adding to it. Some people buy an expensive scratching-post from a pet shop, carefully impregnated with catnip to make it appealing, and are bitterly disappointed when the cat quickly ignores it and returns to stropping the furniture. Hanging an old sweat-shirt over the scratching-post might help to solve the problem, but if a cat has already established a particular chair or a special part of the house as its 'stropping spot', it is extremely hard to alter the habit.
    In desperation, some cat-owners resort to the cruel practice of having their pets de-clawed. Apart from the physical pain this inflicts, it is also psychologically damaging to the cat and puts it at a serious disadvantage in all climbing pursuits, hunting activities and feline social relationships. A cat without its claws is not a true cat.
     

Why does a cat roll over to lie on its back when it sees you?
     
    When you enter a room where a cat is lying asleep on the floor and you greet it with a few friendly words, it may respond by rolling over on its back, stretching out its legs as far as they will go, yawning, exercising its claws and