CitroJim wrote:Rattiva_Mike wrote:
Sorry Jim. There goes that thread drift again..
That's no worries Mike. It's the FCF after all
Actually a very interesting drift
How do you know cat food tastes of nothing? personal experience? I know it stinks and sometimes it makes me want to retch when feeding mine.
Cats are fascinating creatures. I'm no real lover of them but I've always had a cat and life just wouldn't be right without one in the house. My old girl is a real character. She lives for food, warmth and winding me up - the latter she does very effectively and knows limits and exactly which buttons to push to provoke me into the action she desires..
Which lends well to the theory that cats (and in fact all domesticated animals) are still kittens at heart. cats especially have a lot of what we'd expect from a baby!
As for feline intelligence. No, not as we understand intelligence and in fact I think sometimes cats are rather stupid and thick with little capacity to learn. Something I also think about a vast majority of dogs although some dogs appear to be remarkably intelligent in some ways.
Cats have a little capacity to learn - not a huge amount in my experience. For example. Sam is 3. He used to be scared of the vacuum cleaner and hairdryer. Now he happily pushes the vac around, and lets us dry his hair with the dryer. One of our cats is 5. Despite Adriana using the hairdryer and vacuum most days, she is still terrified of both of them, even though they've never threatened her at all. She simply hasn't learnt. I think cats are programmed automatons that are very adaptable, but not hugely intelligent. I've had 11 cats of my own over the years, and there's been more in the family. They're all much of a muchness, bar some "personal" traits. We had a large tabby that used to delight in chasing away an Alsatian that lived up the road. The first time it happened, the big dog had cornered our new kitten outside my mum's garage. Bones (so called as he was a bony stray when we got him) came storming out of the house, fur up, yowling, spitting, lashed a big gouge out the stunned dog's face, then as it turned and ran, chased it, making deathly noises, for about 100yds up the road. Great cat. Succumbed to poisoning too we think sadly, I just found him dead in the kitchen one morning, he'd be about 5.
Cat food - yes, it used to be one of my party tricks when I was bored and people needed a shock to liven them up. Walking in, eating cat food out of a can with a fork really freaks people out. It stinks, but it's really, really bland. The biscuits are even worse, some of them smell quite nice, like crisps do, but they are also completely bland. I guess cats must get "taste" with their noses..
It is said that cats long ago learnt to mimic the tones of a crying baby when they were first domesticated. This is why humans tend to do stuff for them. It's a natural subconscious response to a miaow of a cat. If you hear a wild-cat miaow, it sounds nothing like a domestic cat.
