Part 7 (2/2)

Ultimately, the future of cats lies in the hands of those who breed them-not those whose eye is primarily on success in the show ring, but those who can be persuaded that an improved temperament, not good looks, should be the goal. The genetic material is available, although more science is needed to devise the temperament tests that will locate which individual cats carry it; many cats that appear well-adapted to life with people will have received an optimal upbringing, rather than being anything special genetically. The relevant genes are probably scattered all over the globe, so ideally we need collaboration between cat enthusiasts in different parts of the world.

Such human-friendly cats, however cute, are unlikely ever to command much of a price. Expectations that non-pedigree kittens should be free, or nearly so, will take a long time to die out. Commercial breeding of non-pedigree cats may never be viable. Well-adjusted kittens need a wealth of early experience that even some pedigree breeders struggle to provide. Providing this level of care is cost-effective only if kittens are bred in people's homes, the very type of environment into which they will move when they become pets.

Meanwhile, the way that cats are socialized has much room for improvement. Both breeders and owners can play a part in this, since kittens adapt to their surroundings throughout their second and third months of life. In this context, the continuing policy of some cat breeders' a.s.sociations to prohibit homing until a kitten is twelve weeks of age demands careful scrutiny: it may provide extra socialization with littermates, but often at the cost of learning about different kinds of people, and the development of a robust strategy for dealing with the unfamiliar. For adult cats, training, both in the general sense of providing the right learning experiences as well as teaching them how to behave calmly in specific situations, could improve each cat's lot considerably, if only its value was more widely appreciated.

Finally, we must continue to research why some cats are strongly motivated to hunt, while the majority are content to doze in their beds. Science has not yet revealed to what extent such differences are due to early experience, and how much to genetics, but ultimately it should be possible to breed cats that are unlikely to feel the need to become predators, now that we can easily provide them with all the nutrition they need.

Cats need our understanding-both as individual animals that need our help to adjust to our ever-increasing demands, and also as a species that is still in transition between the wild and the truly domestic. If we can agree to support them in both these ways, cats will be a.s.sured a future in which they are not only popular and populous, but are also more relaxed, and affectionate, than they are today.

Further Reading

Most of my source material for this book has consisted of papers in academic journals, which are often difficult to access for those without a university affiliation. I've included references to the most important of these in the notes, with Web links if they appear to be in the public domain. For those readers who wish to take their study of cats further without first requiring a degree in biology, I can recommend the following books, most of them written by knowledgeable academics but with a more general audience in mind.

The Domestic Cat: the Biology of Its Behaviour, edited by Professors Dennis Turner and Patrick Bateson, is now available in three editions; all are published by Cambridge University Press, the most recent in 2013. These books consist of chapters written by experts in different aspects of cat behavior.

My own The Behaviour of the Domestic Cat, 2nd edition (Wallingford, UK: CAB International, 2012), coauth.o.r.ed by Drs. Sarah L. Brown and Rachel Casey, provides an integrated introduction to the science of cat behavior, aimed at an advanced undergraduate audience. Feline Behavior: A Guide for Veterinarians by Bonnie V. Beaver (St. Louis, MO: Saunders, 2003) is, as its t.i.tle indicates, aimed at veterinary surgeons and veterinary students.

For the various stages in the history of the cat's life with humankind, Jaromir Malek's The Cat in Ancient Egypt (London: British Museum Press, 2006), Donald Engel's Cla.s.sical Cats (London: Routledge, 1999), and Carl Van Vechten's The Tiger in the House (New York: New York Review of Books, 2006) provide specialist accounts.

Carrots and Sticks: Principles of Animal Training (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) by Professors Paul McGreevy and Bob Boakes from the University of Sydney, Australia, is a fascinating book of two halves: the first explains learning theory in accessible language, and the second contains fifty case histories of animals (including cats) trained for specific purposes, ranging from film work to bomb detection, each ill.u.s.trated with color photographs of the animals and how they were trained.

For cat owners seeking guidance on a problem cat, there is often no subst.i.tute for a one-to-one consultation with a genuine expert, but these can be hard to find. The advice given in books by Sarah Heath, Vicky Halls, or Pam Johnson-Bennett may be helpful. Celia Haddon's books may also provide some light relief.

Notes.

All Web addresses mentioned in the Notes are active as of April 2013.

Introduction.

1. This ratio takes many millions of unowned animals into account, and also incorporates a guess as to the numbers in Muslim countries where dogs are rare.

2. The Prophet Muhammad is said to have loved his cat Muezza so much that ”he would do without his cloak rather than disturb one that was sleeping on it.” Minou Reeves, Muhammad in Europe (New York: NYU Press, 2000), 52.

3. Rose M. Perrine and Hannah L. Osbourne, ”Personality Characteristics of Dog and Cat Persons.” Anthrozos: A Multidisciplinary Journal of the Interactions of People & Animals 11 (1998): 3340.

4. A recognized medical condition, referred to as ”ailurophobia.”

5. David A. Jessup, ”The Welfare of Feral Cats and Wildlife.” Journal of the American Veterinary Medical a.s.sociation 225 (2004): 137783; available online at /b4jgzjk. Dogs scored a little better for social and physical environments (71 percent) but worse for behavior (55 percent).

7. The situation for pedigree dogs in the UK has been summarized in several expert reports, including those commissioned by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (/2010/01/final-dog-inquiry-120110.pdf).

Chapter 1.

1. Darcy F. Morey, Dogs: Domestication and the Development of a Social Bond (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

2. Quoted in C. A. W. Guggisberg, Wild Cats of the World (New York: Taplinger, 1975), 3334.

3. These cats are now extinct on Cyprus, displaced by the red fox, another introduction, which is now the only land-based carnivorous mammal on the island.

4. For a more detailed account of these migrations, see Stephen O'Brien and Warren Johnson's ”The Evolution of Cats,” Scientific American 297 (2007): 6875.

5. The spelling lybica should more correctly be libyca, ”from Libya,” but most modern accounts use the original (incorrect) version.

6. These ”lake dwellers” built villages on sites that now lie beneath the margins of lakes, but were probably fertile dry land at the time.

7. Frances Pitt (see note 9 below) claimed that the Scottish wildcat would have joined its English and Welsh counterparts in extinction, had it not been for the call-up of the younger gamekeepers to fight in the Great War.

8. Carlos A. Driscoll, Juliet Clutton-Brock, Andrew C. Kitchener, and Stephen J. O'Brien, ”The Taming of the Cat,” Scientific American 300 (2009): 6875; available online at tinyurl.com/akxyn9c.

9. From The Romance of Nature: Wild Life of the British Isles in Picture and Story, vol. 2, ed. Frances Pitt (London: Country Life Press, 1936). Pitt (18881964) was a pioneering wildlife photographer who lived near Bridgnorth in Shrops.h.i.+re.

10. Mike Tomkies, My Wilderness Wildcats (London: Macdonald and Jane's, 1977).

11. This and the following two quotations are from Reay H. N. Smithers's ”Cat of the Pharaohs: The African Wild Cat from Past to Present,” Animal Kingdom 61 (1968): 1623.

12. Charlotte Cameron-Beaumont, Sarah E. Lowe, and John W. S. Bradshaw, ”Evidence Suggesting Preadaptation to Domestication throughout the Small Felidae,” Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 75 (2002): 36166; available online at es from Carlos Driscoll of the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity at the National Cancer Inst.i.tute in Frederick, Maryland, who is currently working to pinpoint where these genes lie on the cat's chromosomes, and how they may work.

16. See note 13 above.

17. O. Bar-Yosef, ”Pleistocene Connexions between Africa and Southwest Asia: An Archaeological Perspective,” The African Archaeological Review 5 (1987), 2938.

18. Carlos Driscoll and his colleagues have discovered five distinct types of mitochondrial DNA in today's domestic cats; mitochondrial DNA is inherited only through the maternal line. The common maternal ancestor of these five cats lived about 130,000 years ago; over the next 120,000 years, her descendants gradually moved around the Middle East and North Africa, their mitochondrial DNA mutating slightly from time, before a few of them happened to become the ancestors of today's pet cats.

Chapter 2.

1. J.-D. Vigne, J. Guilane, K. Debue, L. Haye, and P. Gerard, ”Early Taming of the Cat in Cyprus,” Science 304 (2004): 259.

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