Could you identify your cat in a police lineup, identity parade? I could because my cat has three legs. Fine. But could you, for sure, with absolute certainty identify your cat if 8 other very similar cats were lined up with him/her?
I ask because there is a nice story about a woman in England who let her black cat roam. One day she was told he had been run over. She dashed out, scooped his body up off the road and buried him in her garden with a ceremony and headstone.
Next day her black cat turned up for breakfast. The first thing she did was to check the grave to see if he had risen from the dead.
Seeing that he had not, she realised she had buried someone else’s cat.
The point is, she did not distinguish her cat from the dead cat on the road. The dead black cat was the same size, shape, colour and had the same face, she says. The face seems to be key but are they similar fairly often?
I think black cats can be particularly difficult to identify because there are no identifying coat markings.
The interesting thing for me is, could we recognise our cat’s facial features if our cat was in a police line up? My black cat has a long, Siamese face so even if he had four legs I would hope to be able to identify him but I could not 100% guarantee it, I feel. I don’t know, perhaps I could. I feel, however, a lot of people could not identify their cat in an ID parade. The voice is an important identifier but for the purposes of this test that characteristic is excluded.
By contrast, I could guarantee identifying any person who I had lived with for a long time. There is no question about that.
If it is harder to identify a cat from appearance, the question is, “Why?” The answer must be because cat appearance is less distinct between individual cats than human appearance. The same could be claimed for dogs and other animals. What about parrots for example? Or goldfish. I bet you could not identify your goldfish in a police lineup 😉
So what does that tell us? It is probable that cats do have fine facial distinctions that are as distinct as humans but they are covered by fur. Secondly, people don’t pay quite so much attention observing a cat’s facial features. We don’t, after all, observe a cat’s expressions as we do a human’s expressions to gauge body language.
Perhaps cats do not have such an evolved face in terms of it being a means of communication through expressions because they rely a lot more on smell to identify another cat. I feel that is the answer. Cats identify cats through scent and therefore the face has not evolved to be so distinct.
Of course microchip identifications or ear tattoo identifications solve the problem. These are still relatively rare, aren’t they?
And where was my camera? The whole episode would have made a good video. But it was an emergency. What is a girl to do? I was sadly barefoot when I heard the yeowerling. Ouch, oak leaves.
I’m just glad there was a happy ending with Shrimpie.
Maybe I should note that my cats, both “moggies” are now never allowed outside unsupervised. We had moved three wks prior to this, so I thought Shrimp would be okay with me outside. But, as he wasn’t full-grown, well, that maybe have had quite a bit to do with his/my misadventure. (needless to say, he does not go out unless I am by his side every minute. Our bonding is quite tight.)
Freckles on the inside of a red tabby’s lips are possibly like fingerprints, but I don’t think so. They can change and so can follicles(ability to produce a whisker), as far as I know…Please, Ruth(Kattaddorra), you’re the cat expert here. Have you read this?
When my cat disappeared for a fortnight (we moved and thought he would come in within the hour), my roommate put up fliers and he magically appeared almost two wks later. He had lost weight, but I knew him immediately and he recognized my voice in the dark, and ran straight into my arms. My roommate didn’t think it was him (because of the weight loss and also maybe because he’s not in tune to my cats like I am), but I knew. Even before I scooped him up as he ran towards me from the alley gate. He just acted like Shrimpie, even though silhouetted.
I love that he came down head first. Monty would approve.
Interesting. I don’t recall writing that 😉 That does not mean I didn’t. I’ll look into it.