It was an ordinary day. Sitting on the footrest of my recliner is my beloved cat, The Gray Lady while our other cat, Snickerdoodle, is sound asleep on the sofa...next to my wife. Cats use the same senses as humans but they view the world differently. Understanding them could make us better cat parents. The world according to cats is very different from the one we travel through. To walk in a cat's paws, we first need to understand how a cat experiences the world. Although cats use and have the same senses as humans....sight, sound, taste, smell and touch....they understand and process their inputs quite differently. But knowing they have some tantalizingly similar senses to ours can help us live more harmoniously with our furry friends. Perhaps we can make an effort to learn more about how our cat works, and maybe sense a better connection. They posesss the same qualities that we humans possess and the same senses as we do: Sight, Sound, Taste, Smell and Touch.
Sight...like humans, cat use their vision to see the world around them and hunt down their next snack. But differences between human and cat eyes mean that we see the world quite differently. Although a cat's precision pouncing in the dark may make it seem that they have built-in night vision goggles, cats do need some light. But though a human's night vision is iffy at best the dark is a cat's time to shine. Millions of years of evolution have made it more likely that many cats can, and will be active and hunt at dusk and dawn. Cat's pupils are long and vertical, narrowing to a slit in broad daylight, but expanding up to 300-fold when it's darker. The backs of a cat's eyes have a layer called the tapetum lacidum, which reflects unabsorbed light back into the retina, and adaptation to help the cat see in dim light, and causes eye shine, the glow that can be seen when light shines on them in the dark. Cats retinas have fewer cones...the photoreceptors that perceive color, therefore cats see the world less vibrantly and in fewer hues than humans. These cones are also responsible for sharpness of vision, so a cat's eyesight is blurrier, despite their superior low-light vision. What cats can see from 20 feet away, we can see at 100 feet. But, cats respond more readily to motion than to the intricate details and colors of an image, so they aren't hindered by their reduced color vision.
Sound...a cat's triangle-shaped ears act like small, furry satellite dishes. Their ear flaps can rotate 180 degrees and can pinpoint the location of a sound to within several inches in just six-hundredths of a second which is faster than you can blink your eye. They can also distinguish extremely subtle differences in sounds, far superior to humans and even dogs.
Taste...despite having fewer taste buds than other animals, cats seem to be able to taste sour, bitter, salty and umami flavors well enough. This is likely due, in part, to the cat's highly acute sense of smell. As a rule, cats crave meat and other animal products. Many cats will enjoy snacking on other kinds of foods; they may try to eat your sweet snacks, even if they cannot fully taste the sweetness. In these cases, it is likely the fat that the cat is tasting and craving. Some cats even see to enjoy certain types of fruits. This just proves the stereotype that cats don't follow the rules!
Smell...is fully developed straight out of the cat womb. The newborn kitten uses its nose to navigate toward the nearest nipple and get its first sip of nourishing colostrum and milk.
Touch...the whiskeres on kittens may be one of our favorite things, but cats really depend on them. Known formally as a vibrissa, a whisker is longer and thicker than normal cat hair. Each whisker grows from a follicle packed with nerves and blood vessels, making them was sensitive as human fingertips. They detect subtle air movements that ca indicate the pressure of prey and her cats navigate around obstacles.
Well, The Gray Lady is still asleep on my lap, even after my having to move several times to get comfortable. My wife and I have had many dogs and cats during our married lifetime and enjoy both, but cats seem to be so much easier to take care of than dogs. The Gray Lady and Snickerdoodle have been our furry friends for over six years now, after showing up at our back door on Harrington Drive, and we wouldn't be the same without them. As I type this story, Snickerdoodle is next to my wife on our sofa while The Gray Lady is sound asleep on the bottom of my lounge chair. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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