However, in a new cat and cathedral story, the cat faired a lot worse. As told by a former school boy of Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland, a mummified cat was found in the organ pipes. A mummified rat was also found.
Many years ago a cat had chased a rat into the organ and into the pipes and become stuck in perpetuity. It must have been a terrible death for both. I feel for their distress and slow death from starvation and no water.
The mummified cat and rat were mentioned in James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake according to Anthony Mc Gibney writing to the Times.
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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.
There are a lot of theories about if and why male domestic and stray cats (tomcats - unneutered) kill kittens. There are different points of view about this. I've seen all those points of view and it's confusing. That is the disturbing truth! It appears to me that we are unsure about the reason and how rare it is.
I've just watched a video with the same title as this article and I don't think the person who presents that video is accurate (see video at base of page). Essentially, they say that male adult domestic cats kill kittens because they are threatening and they threaten to upset their territorial objectives. I don't believe that. I don't think kittens are threatening to adult male cats. I can't see how that can happen. So, I believe there is a lot of information on the Internet on this topic which is misleading.
Image: MikeB
A person I admire and respect, Sarah Hartwell, tells us that a tomcat will normally establish a territory which contains a number of female cats. I agree that. She then goes on to say that "it is in his own interest to repel other males and to destroy kittens which may have been fathered by another male and which contain the genetic complement of his rival".
She goes on to explain that a tomcat will be able to recognise his kittens through their smell and their appearance. She is more or less reciting what people say about lions in the African Savannah when they kill kittens produced by other male lions within a pride as part of the process of taking over that pride.
I'm not sure that she is correct to be perfectly honest. I tend to prefer the thoughts of another person I admire, Dr. Desmond Morris (a great zoologist and author). He states in his book Catlore that the male domestic cat has been looked upon as a sex maniac for centuries. He disagrees that tomcats (unneutered male cats) destroy the litters of kittens in order to get the females back on heat again more quickly. This, once again as a reference to how male lions behave when taking over a lion pride. He says the story has lasted "well during the past two millennia and many people still believe it".
He doesn't see any "possible biological advantage of such a reaction on the part of tomcats". He, too, appears to have got that wrong because male lions do this in order to father their own kittens in order to further their breeding line. But do unneutered domestic cats do this?
Dr. Morris likes to refer to observations of the European wildcat. He is referring to the ancestor of the domestic cat which is actually the North African wildcat but there is no difference between that subspecies and the European subspecies in terms of behaviour.
He says when you observe the behaviour of the wildcats you will see that "far from being kitten-killers, the males sometimes actively participate in rearing the young."
He adds that:
"One tom was seen to carry his own food to the entrance of the den in which a female had given birth and placed it there for her. Another tom did the same thing, supplying the female with food while she was unable to leave the nest during the first days after producing her litter."
And this tomcat became very defensive and threatened human visitors in a way that he had not done before the kittens were born. These observations took place in a zoo where he says it would be more likely to see tomcat aggression towards their young.
In the wild, cats have very large territories. The chances of a tomcat coming across a female in her den with kittens is remote. This means there is little possibility of a male cat providing parental care or parental infanticide. In a zoo which is crowded and in which the cats are in closer proximity there will be an increased likelihood of tomcat/kitten encounters where four types of reactions might occur:
The male cat simply ignores the kittens.
The male cat behaves paternally towards them as mentioned.
The female attacks the male soon as he approaches her nest and drives him away before he can do anything concerning the kittens.
The male cat kills the kittens.
The fourth reaction is the traditional one that we read about a loss on the internet. But it is, in reality, extremely rare.
Dr. Desmond Morris states that a female cat sometimes experiences a false heat a few weeks after she has given birth. This may excite a nearby tomcat. The female normally fights him off and drives him away.
The male cat is in a great state of sexual arousal at this point. He is frustrated. If he meets a small kitten at this time, he may try to mount it and mate with it.
This may be enhanced by the low crouch to posture of the kitten which is similar to the sexually responsive posture of an adult female cat.
The kitten is unable to move away quickly when the male cat mounts it which acts as a sexual signal to the overexcited male cat. This, Dr. Morris says "seals the fate of the unfortunate kitten".
The male cat does not deliberately attack the kitten but when mounting the tiny offspring he performs the normal neck bite that he employs when mating with a female in order to keep her passive. For a kitten, this feels like their mother maternally grabbing the kitten when moving them to a new den. The kitten does not struggle. Indeed, it responds by keeping perfectly still. This is the sexual signal from the adult female that tells the male that she is ready to mate.
This compounds the misunderstanding which causes disaster when the "mounted tomcat discovers that the kitten is too small for mating. He cannot manoeuvre himself into the correct position. His response to this problem is to grip the kitten's neck tighter and tighter as if he is dealing with an awkward adult mate. In the process he accidentally crunches the tiny kitten's delicate head and it dies.
Once the kitten has been killed it may trigger off a new reaction in the tomcat. Dead kittens are often devoured by their parents as a way of keeping the nest clean. As a consequence, the male cat's sexual frustrations may now lead to the kitten being eaten as a further anomaly in the feline mating sequence.
These are rare instances but they led to stories of tomcat cannibalism painting the male cat as a savage monster intent on slaughtering and eating their offspring.
Dr. Morris goes on to say that often rare events when they become established become the "norm". They become part of folklore. But they are exaggerated and over-egged stories based upon, as mentioned, extremely rare and unusual instances.
That, in a nutshell, is what Dr. Desmond Morris states about tomcat killing and eating kittens. It does happen. I will leave it to you to decide what you think is the right answer. There is one certainty; it's a rare event and people should not think that it is normal male cat behaviour.
The exact words of the cat's owner asking for help on Reddit.com are as follows:
My cat has been acting weird. All day she’s been standing on her rear toes with her butt in the air always pointing it at me. She’s never done this before what does it mean?
I shortened them for the title. The picture accompanying the words immediately tell us what is going on.
My cat is acting weird. She’s standing on her rear toes with her butt in the air. What does it mean?. Female (queen) in heat prepared to mate. Image: u/OMGJay on Reddit.
Their female cat is in oestrus (heat) and is seeking a mate and ready to copulate. She raises her bottom slightly and places her tail to one side. The classic pose of a female cat waiting to be mated. Before doing this, she would have provided other signals to males to indicate that she was ready to mate such as rolling around flirtatiously.
Clearly, the owner has adopted this cat and unusually not had her spayed (sterilised). He/she may have rescued her informally (found her). The vast majority of people in the West i.e. Europe and America, spay and neuter their female and male cats.
If there is a lesson here it is to check if an informally adopted female cat has been spayed. It can hard to find the scare from the operation. You might like to ask a vet.
The veterinarians say that female cats are happier when they been spayed and it helps to remove the possibility of certain diseases affecting female cats. So, it is highly recommended.
The spraying operation is more severe than the neutering operation for male cats but I argue that male cats' appearance changes when they are neutered. They become more feminised whereas for female cats there is no change in appearance. I prefer the non-neutered male cat appearance.
In the spraying surgery, the uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries are removed. The operation prevents the queen (unsterilized female cat) from coming into oestrus and eliminates the problems of cystic ovaries, neutering infections, false pregnancies, irregular heat cycles and confinement during the mating season.
And it also reduces the frequency of breast tumours. Spaying reduces the chances of a female cat developing mammary tumours by 90%.
Spaying does not make a cat fat and lazy. It might slow their metabolism and this can be countered by a fresh diet and some more exercise.
The best time to spay a female is at 5-7 months of age before she goes into her first heat.
Veterinarians believe that a spayed female makes an outstanding pet and she is able to devote herself exclusively to her human family.
Plus, you don't have the risk of acquiring a bunch of kittens to care for and find homes for.
This is all about feeling secure and having fun. And that's interesting because it hints at the possibility (fact?) that domestic cats often feel a little insecure and need more entertainment. Why? Because they are barely domesticated and live in a human environment which is inherently unnatural despite their great ability to adapt.
We see domestic cats jump into boxes, large and small. And we see them wriggle and squirm into glass vases as in the video on this page.
The underlying motivation is the same: a feeling of security. Plus, there must be an element of self-entertainment.
The Twitter video below may stop working. If that has happened, I am sorry but I can't control it.
Domestic cats need mental stimulation as many live indoors full-time. Humans are often too busy or pre-occupied to entertain their cat companions. They have to find ways to entertain themselves.
Cats are also naturally and instinctively inquisitive. It is part of their hunting skill set. When hunting they have to investigate all the time to check out the availability of possible prey animals.
That's inquisitiveness in action for survival. But in the human home it is for a substitute: entertainment.
Hello Magazine tells us that Michelle Pfeiffer was stunned to discover that her cat drinks water using her paw. Specifically her right paw. It is as if the earth has moved off its orbit. The online newspaper paints the event as if it is the most shocking thing that has happened in history of humankind. But it's just something that is very normal. We see a lot of it.
Michelle Pfeiffer has just noticed that her cat uses her paws to drink water. This is her cute cat. She looks like a Ragdoll, perhaps. Her name is Bella .Screenshot from video by Michell Pfeiffer.
And a lot of people have thrown their hat into the ring to try and figure out why domestic cats like to do this. They want to give her their valuable advice. They say that Maine Coons in particular enjoy drinking water with their paw.
I am not sure that that is correct. Individual cats because of their character might use their paw from time to time when drinking water from a bowl. The habit is not necessary breed-specific.
Enjoy doing it - inquisitive
There might be a specific reason but often times I believe that they do it because they simply prefer to drink water that way. And why not? Humans do it. When humans drink from a stream they use their hands. Admittedly humans don't have feline tongues. The tongue of a cat is designed to "pick" water up using surface tension and inertia. They don't actually scoop up the water with their cupped tongue but employ some fancy physics to get it into their mouths.
When I've seen cats drink water with their paw, I've seen a cat that is entirely healthy and normal. There is no apparent reason why they're doing it. In that case, I would say they do it because they simply want to do it. It's a variation on the usual method. This may be borne out of boredom. It makes drinking water a bit more interesting.
Other reasons
You could theorise on a range of possibilities such as the domestic cat's wildcat ancestor occasionally drinks water this way in order to test it or to be cautious about a potential predator under the water. I've heard that said before.
The classic reason is that the bowl is too small and cats don't like their whiskers brushing against the side of the bowl because they are super-sensitive. Therefore they are forced to use their paw instead. This may, indeed, be a reason.
Another thing that you might notice when you see a cat using their paw like this is that they look at the water falling off it. They look at what is going on inquisitively. They seem to be interested in the way the water falls off their paw. There may be something in that. It may provide us with a hint as to what is going on in their mind.
To me, it hints at a need for stimulation. They are injecting something different into their lives and trying to stimulate their brains. They make the world more interesting around them. This is the reason why cats knock an item off a mantelpiece or a table. This is not vandalism 😉. I think drinking water with their paw has the same underlying reason as knocking objects of tables and mantelpieces.
When they knock something of a mantelpiece they watch as the item falls to the floor and bounces. They are creating something which is animated and therefore interests them. I'm driven to conclude once again that this activity originates in boredom and a lack of stimulation.
Play
My message to Michelle Pfeiffer is to test out that theory by playing with her cat more if she has the time; to see whether her cat stops drinking water with her right paw.
Cats are vertical movers. And cat caregivers know that domestic cats like to rest in high places to feel more secure. Also, domestic cats like to be in nature if at all possible. It is a natural place for them. I understand if it is not possible for safety reasons. A good catio with a fake tree would be a nice substitute.
Gabs in a tree looking happy and relaxed. Pic: MikeB
But if your cat can go into a garden and if there is a tree in the garden which can be climbed you can make him a little hammock out of plastic netting strung between branches as I have. He'll climb into it with happiness in his heart and spend many enjoyable hours there in the summer days. Broad leaf trees are perhaps the best as they provide natural shade.
I believe that it is these small things that can make all the difference to a cat's life. It is tapping into the raw cat withing as Jackson Galaxy would say. It is about recognising the wild cat inside the domestic cat and firing it up - cat mojo. That's how you make a domestic cat happy.
I would hope and expect that 99.9% of the world's population know that felines are carnivores. They are meat eaters. It is stronger than that. They have to eat meat because they are what are called 'obligate carnivores'. They are obliged to eat the flesh of animals due to their evolution. They are specialists as genetic mutations have lead them to becoming dependent on the flesh of animals.
But it is not as straightforward as that. Although evolution dictates that they have to eat the flesh of animals they do also eat the stomach contents of the animals that they kill. The stomach contents will be vegetation because they prey upon animals that feed on vegetation i.e. herbivores. So felines also eat vegetation.
A lot of commercially prepared cat food is based on polluted carcasses of animals and therefore arguably plant based foods + added nutrients is better in quality. Image: MikeB.
Also, we know that domestic cats sometimes eat grass. That is a plant and the plant is not an animal! And therefore felines are not exclusively carnivores. They eat grass, it is believed, because grass contains folic acid which is missing in their diet. Folic acid plays a role in the production of haemoglobin, the oxygen carrying protein found in red blood cells. Although there are many theories about why cats eat grass.
The snow leopard specifically eats a certain bush i.e. vegetation and it is my theory that they do this because it increases the amount of oxygen in their bloodstream. It therefore enhances their ability to live at high altitude. I stress that this is my theory because no scientist has studied this. Although I have an article about the snow leopard being partly vegetarian! You can click here to read that article if you wish. Note: In Pakistan more than 22% of faeces of snow leopards inspected contained plant matter and in Ladakh (in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir ) more than 50% contained vegetation including willow and Myricaria bushes (Myricaria germanica)
Another point worth making about felines being carnivores is that there is a trend nowadays towards eating plant protein rather than protein from the muscle of animals. This is to help curb climate change. Therefore manufacturers have started to sell plant-based dry cat food for domestic cats. On the face of it this is not going to work but the manufacturers add the nutrients necessary to make the food balanced for domestic cats. You can make your own mind up about it but I believe that as long as the essential nutrients are present at a microbiological level then the food is nutritious.
There is a caveat to that last statement and that is this. A recent study decided that if you want to curb the hunting of the domestic cat (and a lot of cat owners do) you should feed them with a high quality grain-free entirely meat-based wet cat food. You should find that they hunt less. It appears that "complete and balanced" wet cat food normally available is not quite as complete as it should be and therefore the domestic cat decides to hunt mice in order to supplement what they might consider to be a deficient diet from their perspective.
This is a novel approach to curbing domestic cat hunting. Further work is needed on this. But domestic cat wet cat food and dry cat food can be quite deficient and too far removed from a natural prey animal such as a mouse. Dry cat food is highly artificial for example. It's convenient but there are deficiencies with it. And there's too much plant material to bulk up cat food and to keep the price down. But hundreds of millions of cats fed on this type of cat food and they survive on it but we don't know how much health damage it does to them in the long term.
To return to the question in the title: are felines carnivores? Yes, is the answer because evolution dictates that. They have become highly specialised due to their evolution and dependent upon a meat-based diet. In the wild they satisfy that evolutionary demand by preying on wild animals and sometimes livestock (e.g. the mountain lion). But in the human world, people have found ways to feed the domestic cat with plant protein and dry foods containing grain which is less than ideal.
In the UK, according to the Daily Star, we have an unknown cat expert who wants to become an recognised feline behaviourist with his own television show just like Jackson Galaxy in the USA. His name is Louis Denver, 29, and I have a feeling he has been watching Jackson Galaxy in action on his website.
He calls himself a “cat man" and says that he has built up his skills as a cat psychologist over time. He lives in the north of the country in Lytham St Anne's, Lancashire.
Regrettably, he says things which tell me that he does not know enough about cats to be the UK's version of Jackson Galaxy.
Louis says the main problems facing cat owners are inappropriate elimination, loud meowing at night and spraying around the house. These are not the main problems. Very few domestic cats spray around the house because spraying, as I'm sure Louis knows, is a form of territorial marking but although some rarely do this, 95% of domestic cats don't, especially if they are neutered.
Also, meowing at night is not in my mind a major problem. You can see a list of the reasons for cat relinquishment on this page and they tell us what the major reasons are for a breakdown in the relationship between person and cat.
Louis says if a domestic cat misses the litter tray it is because the cat is territorially insecure and keen to mark his territory. Marking territory through spraying horizontally is not the same as peeing into a litter tray. The reasons behind both actions are completely different and unrelated. You can read about how to stop peeing outside the box on this page.
Louis also states that cats try to be naughty. I would certainly dispute that especially as he implies that it is the reason for not using the litter tray which is completely incorrect in my opinion.
Louis claims to have learned everything he knows about cats from TV programmes and online tutorials. With respect to Louis, you cannot substitute actual cat caretaking over a long period of time with YouTube videos. To learn about cat behaviour solely from the Internet from words written and videos made is not enough.
He does have a good point when he says that cat caretakers need to play with their cats more often. And he doesn't like the mistreatment of cats which obviously tells us that his heart is in the right place.
I am not sure that the actually cares for a cat. That has not been stated in the article in the Daily Star.
If you look at this cat carefully I think you will notice that he is requesting that his owner strokes his head. He makes the request by mimicking what his owner does when he strokes his head. It all happens quite quickly but this is an animated gif so it is on a permanent loop so you can watch it again and again.
I think it's really cute but I may be imagining things. I certainly think though that this little movie is meant to be giving us this message, which is the cat is requesting something through his actions.
Cats are very good at learning by watching and they learn from us and can sometimes mimic us. This ability come from their natural behaviour in the wild when they learn from their mother's actions. There are other examples of this learned behaviour through observation: cats mimicking the sound of baby's cry to get attention, for example. Another is cats opening room doors or fridge doors having watched their human caretaker. There are endless examples actually but some of them are quite subtle.
