Cats and boxes

Boxes… boxes… I love boxes!

Do you?

Advertisement

Read Full Post »

Cats and humans: a mutually beneficial exchange, by any other name

We’ve been loved and worshiped at times, as well as feared and hated at others.

Humans are strange creatures. Despite their supposed superiority to us due, in part, to their capacity to think rationally (although there might be another reason), they sometimes are quite irrational.

Take this recent article for example. What If All the Cats in the World Suddenly Died?

Why would humans ask the question in the first place? Aren’t we cute little furiends to them, bringing gifts home whenever possible, and making sure their beds and bodies are kept warm?

But most of all, I think it is profoundly unfair from them to think that we are simply sleeping all day (18 hours doesn’t make a whole day!). Playing, with or without our humans, is important to us. And for us outdoor cats, we don’t get only to eat what our humans are kind enough to offer us:

“They are a significant predator of small animals, and can survive as almost solitary animals when the prey is scarce, while thriving in high density when the prey is abundant,” [Alan] Beck [professor of veterinary medicine and director of the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue University] told Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.

And that’s just why we’d miss them. By killing mice and rats in barns and grain storage areas, cats are vital for keeping those pests in check. In India, Beck said, cats are believed to play a significant role in lessening the amount of grain loss caused by consumption or contamination by rodents. In other words, it may be true that humans feed cats, but without cats, humans would have less food in the first place.

And we are also useful to humans, thankyouverymuch!

As mentioned in a previous post, my human is independent and so am I. We both are very conscious that we live our lives independently. Yet living together is beneficial to both of us and we both agree it is so: my human by adopting me, feeding me and taking care of me and not giving up on me when she moved all the way from France to the United States, spending money and accepting the problems to have me fly with her, in the cabin, of her Paris-NY flight. In exchange, I’m her faithful furiend, which means purring, cuddling, playing and not attacking my half brothers too often.

Of course we are a part of nature and we have a role to play, but more than that, I believe humans and cats have both to gain in a mutually agreed relationship, if only for the friendship.

Read Full Post »