Curious about the intricate interplay between instinct and intelligence in your cat’s behavior? Celia Haddon’s captivating new book, “Being Your Cat,” uncovers the intriguing inner workings of your feline companion’s mind.
Does your cat think? Does my cat, Mr Spangles, think before he decides to nip me when I touch his tummy? Has he worked out in his mind when he interrupts at the computer, that he might persuade me to go to the kitchen to give him more food? Or is he and all other much-loved cats just a furry bundle of instincts, just doing everything mindlessly?
Of course, cats think, you say. Every cat owner knows that cats can successfully train their humans into feeding them on demand, manipulate them out of the warmest part of the bed, or even bully them into waking up in order to get an earlier feline breakfast! All this shows cat intelligence, most of us cat lovers would say. Yet it is only in the last twenty or so years, that scientific researchers have begun to take an interest in cat brain power. Their results are intriguing.
Until the beginning of this century, a majority of scientists and others usually maintained that the minds of cats and other animals were of no interest. Animals acted out of instinct and their behaviour was not modified by intelligent thought. Some researchers even argued that animals neither had thoughts nor felt emotions. They were more or less furry automatons. Yet in researching for my book, Being Your Cat, a book that takes you into the inner feelings and experiences of your much-loved feline, it became clear that this old-fashioned attitude to cats and other animals was changing.
Who were these scientists and others who thought animals were unable to think? Well, they go back as far back as St Augustine, who 1,600 or so years ago said that animals were not rational, therefore it was OK for us rational beings to eat them. He ignored the fact that a lot of the time humans, themselves, react in a way that is less than fully rational! Car drivers, for instance, will quickly swerve to avoid an accident, well before their rational brain has time to kick in.
CATS GET BORED
Even only a generation or two ago, scientists still agreed with him. They decided that cats (and indeed most other animals) didn’t think much, if at all. They set up experiments which “proved” they didn’t think! These often involved getting a cat to keep pres
