The domestic cat is NOT weird as stupid newspaper journalists claim

Online newspaper journalists have a tendency to claim that the domestic cat is "weird". It just plain stupid. Domestic cats behave as they instinctively have evolved to behave. They behave differently to humans and from a cat's perspective, no doubt humans behave weirdly. 

In fact human behaviour is far more weird than cat behaviour. Look at what humans are doing to the planet at the moment? They are destroying the planet upon which they rely for sustenance and for all their needs. If that isn't weird I don't know what is.

But a website called Your Tango says that cats are weird and they list 15 facts to prove it. So what are these facts? I will touch on a few of them to illustrate my argument.

Perspiration

The first one they list is that "cats sweat through their paws". What is weird about that?! That's perfectly normal. Cats can't sweat through their bodies because they have a coat which is highly functional. And they keep their coat clean all by themselves without having to go into the shower! Far more practical than human behaviour. 

Also when they groom themselves it helps to cool them through the same scientific process which makes sweating effective: the latent heat of evaporation.

Tasting sweetness

And they add that "cats can't taste anything sweet". So what? Cats are obligate carnivores. They've evolved to eat meat. They don't need to be able to taste sweetness. 

Look, if humans couldn't take anything sweet just like cats there would be much less human obesity. Around 40% of Americans are obese. It is a similar percentage UK residents. This obesity is nearly always caused by overeating and eating the wrong foods including foods high in carbohydrate i.e. sugars. Sugars and salt are addictive to humans.

Ironically, the only reason why domestic cats can be obese (and there are too many obese domestic cats thanks to poor human caregiving) is because of the high carbohydrate content in the unnatural dry cat food that they are given so often. Humans have passed on their obesity to the domestic cat.

Grooming exaggeration

Then Your Tango begins to get things wrong. They add that "cats spend up to half their lives grooming themselves". Wrong! Completely wrong! Cats are fastidious groomers but they don't spend half their lives grooming themselves.

Sleeping exaggeration

And they say that cats spend 70% of their lives sleeping. This is incorrect as well because cats, particularly full-time indoor cats, spend a lot of their time perhaps even more than 70% sometimes of their lives not sleeping but snoozing. That's because they've nothing to do thanks to full-time indoor living and a sterile environment. They are not sleeping in the proper sense. We know this because they leap into action at the slightest activity near them.

DNA

The journalist also adds that domestic cats shed 95.6% of their DNA with tigers. That's probably correct and there is also nothing weird about it at all. It's what you would expect because thanks to millions of years of evolution both the tiger and the domestic cat stem from the same ancient cat-like animal. 

Their evolutionary paths split millions of years ago but their ancient origins are the same. Nothing strange about that. It is all nature, evolution and scientific.

I won't bother to go on because I'm wasting my time. I've made my point. Online journalists need to be more careful and stop using click bait words and tactics. I've seen too much of it; too much stupidity and carelessness.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.