Book review: Cat Sense, by John Bradshaw
Cats are rather cleverer than commonly assumed, as biologist and animal-behaviour expert John Bradshaw shows in his sleek new book.
Cats are rather cleverer than commonly assumed, as biologist and animal-behaviour expert John Bradshaw shows in his sleek new book. It's true that they are not much good with tools but then, as Bradshaw wisely speculates, perhaps humans, who tend to design tests for human-style intelligence, haven't yet figured out laboratory scenarios that would allow feline brainpower to flourish.
Bradshaw's book mixes pellets of cat lore with accounts of feline evolution, anatomy, genetics and development from newborn kitten to adulthood, plus descriptions of cat-psychology experiments in the laboratory, many of which he has conducted himself. Some of the most interesting parts indicate holes in our current scientific knowledge. "Many mother cats try to move their litters at least once before they wean them," he says, "but science has yet to find out why."(It might, he suggests, help to avoid fleas.)
No one knows why cats go crazy for catnip, nor why they are able "to classify shapes according to whether they are closed or open".
Bradshaw says cats experience strong emotions, and sometimes might be suffering in silence. They aren't particularly sociable, and cats who are housed with others who weren't litter-mates can become chronically stressed.
Luckily, then, cats probably aren't aware that today they are once again hate figures, the target of ecologists who, armed with dodgy statistics, accuse cats of "murdering" songbirds. It's more complicated than that, Bradshaw says. (Rats also kill songbirds, and cats keep the rodent numbers down. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds says the disappearance of habitat is a far more important factor in the decline of songbird populations than predator numbers.)