What affects us affects cats
A fully illustrated page on the self, tipped, shaded, smoke and ticked (tabby) cat coat hair strands and the positioning of pigmentation which is called melanin (eumelanin). Melanin is created in pigment producing cells called melanocytes in the skin. Their operation is dictated to by the genotype of the cat. Here are the various …
This tabby cat sitting outside minding his own business with a nice collar and bell to help protect the birds has very interesting eyes because the pupils are triangular-shaped due to a congenital condition called coloboma. This is particularly noticeable in domestic cats because we know that they have pupils which vary from a …
People ask “Why do domestic cats have slitted eyes?” The reasons are (a) they can use the closing of the eyelid to reduce even further the light entering the eye beyond simply closing the aperture of the pupil and (b) to maximise blur behind and in front of the object focused upon to improve …
I am proud to say that my cat has a beautiful saggy belly which gyrates from side to side when he walks as it makes contact with his hind legs. For me, it makes him look like a true wild cat when I see him walking across the lawn or patio. And my cat …
I received an email from Heather about her cat’s short, quadruple-kinked tail and as there is interesting domestic cat history about kinked and shortened tails, I thought it would be nice to discuss it! Here is Heather’s email. She lives with a rare cat in the USA. They are far more common in the …
The hearing range of the domestic cat is one of the broadest among all the mammals. A study published in 1985 concluded that “the hearing range of the cat for sounds of 70 dB extends from 48 Hz to 85 kHz, giving it one of the broadest hearing ranges among mammals.” They further concluded …
This is a question thrown up by the Google search engine. Cats’ whiskers do not normally break. They fall out and a replacement is grown but they don’t break unless, in an otherwise healthy cat, there are perhaps dietary problems causing the whiskers to be fragile. Apparently, vitamin A is a requirement for the …
The question is inherently incorrect! Evolution dictates the length of cats’ tails and evolution is always correct in the very long-term. Tails are functional and they have to be at a certain length in order to carry out the function for which they are designed. The function of the tail is to help provide …
