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| Book Cover: Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S.Eliot. His work on the subject of cat naming broke new ground in the field. |
Anyone who has ever known a cat knows that
cats don't always come when we call them. We may mistakenly think that our cats
are either arrogant or stupid, but the truth may be that they're using, albeit
clumsily, B.F. Skinner’s conditioning methods to teach us to stop calling them
by dumb people-given names. They might consider names like “Smokey” or “Whiskers”
as just their aliases - their nom de la maison, so to speak. They do not
recognize these as their “names”. They are like Miranda Priestley, their
attitude being: “Bore someone else with your problems, human.”
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| Korean Painting: Cat with Chrysanthemums (ignoring humans) |
Some might say that cat names and behavior are
a frivolous subject, but no less an exalted personage than T.S. Eliot has written
extensively the importance of Cat Naming:
“Naming
of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games
You may think at first
I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES”
Eliot was a pioneer in
the field of cat naming, and his work on this important subject inspired the
play Cats, to the delight and/or
dismay of many. It’s been a neglected
but now newly important issue for modern science and we would do well to give
it the heightened scrutiny our modern age requires.
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| Cats
on the Roof Goya 1786-1787, reenacting a scene from Cats |
I’m not a scientist myself, but I trained to
do scientific research in college. But more importantly, my family has always
had cats. I come from a long line of cat-loving people, and we always took the business
of naming our cats (actually the giving of cat aliases seriously.) No simple “Socks” for us;
we had cats named after my brother’s second grade teacher (Mrs. Stewart; both the
cat and the woman had eyes of that lovely golden hazel color) and cats named
for their specific personality. We had a particularly naughty white cat named “Billy
Bother”, which is a name so awesome in retrospect that I think it should be the
title of a children’s picture book. My college companion cat was a handsome all
black shorthair named Monty Python. We take cat names seriously in my family,
as we all should.
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| Monty Python. 1977-1995 RIP World's Finest Cat |
Science has recently taken up and continued
Eliot’s groundbreaking work on cat naming and behavior, showing renewed
interest in the subject. These scientists (perhaps dog owning scientists?) have
long wondered why dogs, (reliable, affectionate, open–hearted dogs! Sterling
pets!) always come when they are called, sometimes even when they aren’t
called, anticipating our every dog-related desire like the enablers they are,
but cats almost never do. (I like to imagine the cats in this experiment
thinking of the dogs as needy, brown-nosing toadies. “You little fools!” thinks
Grumpy Cat in her cold, cold voice.)
After the experiment the
scientists were able to prove that cats do in fact hear us when we call them by
name, and yes, they recognize our voices, but they just don’t care enough to
get up and see what we want.
“These results indicate that cats do not
actively respond with communicative behavior to owners who are calling them
from out of sight, even though they can distinguish their owners’ voices”,
write Saito and Shinozuka. “This cat–owner relationship is in contrast to that
with dogs.”
Please note the puzzlement of the
researchers. Obviously they are unfamiliar with basic cat etiquette. Cats do
not wait breathlessly to fulfill your every cat-related desire. They are not
dogs! Page one of Emily Purrst’s Guide to
Pet Etiquette clearly states that, “One must not expect doglike behavior
from one’s cat, or one will be condemned to eternal disappointment.”
Any cat owner in history could have
told them this without them going to all the bother of hooking up all of their
fancy electronic equipment, but at least now we have Scientific Proof that cats
DGAF what we want. To paraphrase a different book: your cat is just not that
into you.
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| Pen and Ink, White Cat Ignoring His Owners calling Him, Even Though He Hears Them |
The best part of their study is the
wistful tone of their conclusion:
“ although “dogs are
perceived by their owners as being more affectionate than cats […] dog owners
and cat owners do not differ significantly in their reported attachment level
to their pets”. The study concludes by observing that “the behavioural aspect
of cats that cause their owners to become attached to them are still
undetermined.”
Meaning: We don’t have any rational explanation why people
love their cats. Their cats clearly do nothing to encourage them. The applications of this study to human
interpersonal relationships are wisely left unsaid.
Other research by
cat behavioral specialists tells us that cats don’t meow to other cats. Cats
meow to communicate with humans. Kittens meow to communicate with their
mothers, but adult cats only “talk” to humans this way. Cats use other methods
to communicate with other cats; including special body language, hissing, and
growling, but they only vocalize with us. Maybe this is the reason most cats
look patient and sometimes slightly exasperated when dealing with humans: they
have to use baby talk to communicate with us and we are so bad at understanding
what they are trying to say. Some scientists speculate that our communication problems
with cats originate in the fact that humans did not domesticate cats the way
that we did dogs. Due to centuries of human domestication and selection, our
dogs know us in a way no other species does. Dogs are quite skilled at interpreting
human behavior, aware of the meaning of gestures and very willing to please.
Cats, opportunistic takers that they are, domesticated themselves to gain
access to free food and shelter and obviously feel that they are not obligated
to do anything more for these things because they are gracing us with their
presence. If we were in a relationship counseling session with our cats, the
therapist would ask us why we stayed with a partner who expected us to do all
of the work in the
relationship, but made no extra effort to please us.
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| Mme Desroziers with her cat. Please note the annoyed expression on Miette's face. |
After I learned
that cats communicate with us in the parent-child context it suddenly made
sense why more women than men have an affinity to cats: we’re used to dealing
with sullen uncommunicative beings with entitlement issues. But I digress.
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| Cat With Bird, Painting. Bruno Liljefors, 1883. Domestic and feral cats kill millions of birds every year. |
With the invention
of tiny lightweight cameras and GPS trackers, suddenly scientists had the tools
they needed to solve the eternal mystery of what the heck cats do all day.
The scientists who did
the Surrey study put a little thought into it:
'GPS
uses a lot of power, but we could only use a small battery, so in order to save
energy, we used an activity sensor to trigger the GPS only when the cat
was moving. This also saved us from collecting a lot of uninteresting data on
sleeping cats."
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| Renoir, Cat Sleeping. Sleeping is their favorite thing to do, followed by ignoring you., destroying flower arrangements, and scratching furniture. |
Someone on that team must have cat experience, because what cats do the
most of is nothing, and why waste precious battery time on monitoring cats
doing nothing? So far, the Surrey study scientists have
learned that cats are unfaithful to their owners, (visiting other houses for
food and affection), have distinct habits and territories, and are ruthless,
cold-hearted predators at times (which any cat owner could have told them, but
they needed to find out officially, for Science.)
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| Two House Cats Fighting, J.J. Audubon. Unneutered male cats are known to fight ferociously over territory, and sire thousands of unwanted kittens every year. |
The
Cat Tracker Project scientists, not be outdone by a bunch of British scientists,
are doing a study of their own. They
are enlisting the help of Citizen Science Cats to gather data from a much
larger and more diverse sample of cats from a variety of locations. It’s not clear whether or not we’ll learn that
American cats are more independent, or have larger territories, but in the end
we will probably find out that American cats are the same as British cats,
except without their charming accents.
The
best part of their study is this phrase, which I have been saying over and over
again, because it delights me so:
If you are concerned
about your cat's privacy, you can have the data published under a cat alias.
The sweet dear Cat Trackers are concerned
about my cat’s privacy! If we consider the actual level of cat caringness about
issues of personal privacy and recall that all cats are already living under an
alias, we’ll understand this is a completely unnecessary precaution for cat
feelings. Yes, cats have names that we give them, but we don’t know their real cat
names (if in fact cats have names for themselves at all. Cats might not even have
names as we know them, but instead identify each other by their individual
smell. These aren’t dolphins we’re dealing with, people.)
We are right back to T.S. Eliot again, with his
secret cat names. If we think about this rationally, and we should, since this
is for Science, what difference would it make if the study were published
listing your cat under her common name “Tiger” versus her alias “Madam Meow”?
Cats don’t read. They won’t be talking amongst themselves about what Mr. Pickles
was up to last weekend. What we are really worried about is our privacy. Cats, as always, Do Not
Care.
The Cat Tracker statement inspired me to invent
some possible Cat Aliases, which I present to fellow Citizen Science Cats for
their use, if they desire to protect their Cat Privacy.
Ming
the Merciless (After the evil emperor in the Flash Gordon serial)
Benedict
Cumbercat (this name should require no explanation)
Shere
Khan (The tiger in The Jungle Book)
Harry Longpaw (Harry Longpaw is a punning name for Harry
Longabaugh, the actual name of the Sundance Kid. My own ginger cat is named
Harry Longpaw because he looks like Robert Redford. No, really, he does. See
for yourself. The resemblance is uncanny.)
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| Harry Longpaw. Harry did not pose for this picture. He was staring at a giant killer wasp which was, unbeknownst to me, right behind me as I took this picture. |
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| Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid, Harry Longabaugh. Photo courtesy World Biography |
Eartha
Kitten (Eartha Kitt played the Catwoman on the Adam West Batman series, and she was also a wonderful jazz singer.)
Cat
Power (The actual name of a singer-songwriter)
Andrew
Lloyd Webber (He was just asking to be a Cat Alias by writing Cats)
Sergeant Tibbs (He was the cat who helped save
the puppies from Cruella DeVille in One
Hundred and One Dalmatians.)
Abelard (He was the ginger cat in I Capture the Castle)
Minerva McGonagall (She was an Animagus who
transformed into a lovely silver tabby in
Harry Potter I-VII)
Calvin
Coolidge (The President reportedly used to hide his two cats in various
locations in the White House for his wife to find. What a practical joker!
Knowing this Cat Fact about Coolidge has upgraded my estimation of him several
points ahead of Franklin Pierce, whose cat preferences are unknown.)
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| Calvin Coolidge with a cat that wants to get away |
Judge
Posner (The Judge is a huge cat person, and he speaks highly of his Maine Coon
named Pixie. He would probably be flattered if his name were used as a cat
alias.)
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| Pixie, Judge Posner's Maine Coon Cat. Picture by Judge Posner. Pixie is holding down the NY Times. Courtesy whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com |
After you have enrolled your Citizen Science
Cat in the project under a suitable alias, being as considerate of your cat’s
privacy as a decent cat guardian should be, you can be assured that the ensuing
fame that any cat citizen might gain from participating in this experiment will
not change your cat in any way. Because what we have learned from multiple
studies and anecdotal experience is that our cats Do Not Care. They don’t care
about us as people, however affectionate they seem. It would be much shorter to
list what they do care about: themselves. Cats are the uber-takers, and Ayn
Rand would be proud of their self-interestedness. (She was also a cat fancier,
as a self-respecting Randite would be.)
It’s
clear now to both science and the general public that cats hold all the power
in our codependent relationships, while we have only the Friskies on our side to
bind them to us. This kind of power imbalance should be of great interest to
science, and maybe one day we will discover how to make them love us as much as
we love them. The whole situation sounds like it should be in a letter to Dear
Prudie: “How can I tell if my cat cares?” Answer: He doesn’t.
References:
A portion of this essay was previously
published here http://airshipdaily.com/blog/09252014-t-s-eliot-naming-cats
