What affects us affects cats
The domestic cat as a top predator has a range of attributes to make killing and defense more efficient, one of which is their reaction times. They are so fast that they can catch a cat owner off guard sometimes. Many people have been scratched by a playful cat who rapidly reaches out with …
Is domestic cat stress/whisker fatigue a genuine problem? We hear quite a last about whisker fatigue in domestic cats. It refers to the whiskers touching the sides of a food bowl as the cat eats which can make it less pleasant to eat which in turn may lead to eating less or more messily. …
This is about the science – which is about the genetics of all the cat species – behind the failure of cats to detect sweetness in their food. We know that cats can’t detect the taste of sweetness in their food but what happened? It is a bit strange when you think about it …
In discussing small cat hair colour, I think we have to divide the world of the small cats into two groups: the purebred cats and the non-purebred cats. Purebred cats These are created through artificial selection a.k.a. selective breeding. Selective breeding determines the genes that the cats carry and these genes determine the coat …
To be clear I am referring to the small cat species of which there are 30 (plus the domestic cat) . The cat breeds are not separate species of domestic cat. They are all domestic cats and the domestic cat is techically one of the wild cat species albeit domesticated and socialised when living …
It is a thought: can small cats swim? Yes, is the firm answer. The answer is seen in the best-known small cat, the domestic cat. Not particularly keen to be in water but once in a very capable swimmer. It goes against the general belief of many people that cats hate water. When they …
When you watch the domestic cat eating food you might think that they use their incisor teeth to grab food and then push it back to their premolars to masticate it into a form where it can be swallowed. But you would be mistaken. The domestic cat’s wild cat ancestor evolved dentition which is …
Because the domestic cat is almost identical to the small wild cats morphologically, we can say right away that all small wild cats have whiskers without knowing much about small wild cats. They have about 24 movable whiskers. They appear in four or more parallel rows. They are situated above the upper lip on …
