Cat Sense

by Malcolm Riordan

Cat Sense, (2013) is a book by John Bradshaw published 2013 and was on the New York Times best-seller list. He is an anthrozoologist at the University of Bristol in England and has studied interactions between people and animals, animal behavior and cats in particular for the last 30 years.

In Cat Sense, Dr. Bradshaw breaks some new ground in our understandings of the feline enigma.

Below are informative extracts from book reviews of Cat Sense and from an NPR interview of the author, although quotes are only used to indicate the author's words from the book or in interview.

"I think cats are much less demonstrative animals than dogs are, they evolved from a solitary animal that has never had the need for a sophisticated social repertoire in the way that the dog — having evolved from the wolf — had that ready-made. So their faces are just not terribly expressive, and some people read into that, that they're kind of cynical and aloof.”

Cats have stayed much the same, with any evolutionary trend toward domestication constrained by frequent interbreeding with wild cats. The result is that when those 85% of cats interact with people, they have to rely almost entirely on their natural social behaviors, which are not highly developed.

"The relationship between cat and owner is fundamentally affectionate, surpassed in its richness and complexity only by the bond between dog and master."

As for cats' attitudes toward their owners, Dr. Bradshaw thinks they regard them not only as kittens but as a combination of mother-substitutes and larger, non-hostile cats. The strongest of cats' social bonds is between a mother and her kittens.

They see only two colours – blue and yellow – while red and green “probably look grayish.” Cats' eyes don't focus any closer than a foot away, but they can place their whiskers forward to provide a 3-D picture of close objects.

As for cats' notorious cruelty – batting a vole around apparently for fun and then not even having the decency to eat it – Bradshaw explains it as a product of a hunting instinct that is entirely separate from hunger, so the cats we feed will still hunt without the drive of hunger.

"The research that we've done suggests that it's almost indistinguishable, that everything that a cat does when it's playing seems to be a part of its normal hunting behavior."You kind of see dogs do this a little bit, but a lot of dog play and a lot of play between dogs and people is a much more social thing. The dog is using a toy as a way of interacting with a person and the toy in some sense is irrelevant — it's just a piece of equipment that the dog uses.

"In the case of a cat, we've never really found any particular significance to the human being. If you're holding a piece of string with a mouse on the end, the cat isn't so much interested in you (which the dog probably would be), but interested in the mouse on the end. …And cats play more intensely when they get hungry."

"There are so many cats around the world that are kept for their mousing abilities, their abilities to keep farmyards free of mice and rats. And then, suddenly, in the last 50 or 60 years or so ... we've started having our own methods of keeping mice and rats out of cities. We don't need the cat to do it anymore.

“Cats use signals like the purr. Because it is a signal, it's giving out a message and it's trying to get you to do something. What we think cats are doing here is just trying to reassure their person — or another cat who is hearing the purr that they are no threat, and ideally they'd like them to stand still and help them do something. So it starts off with kittens purring to get their mother to lie still while they're suckling, and it goes on into adulthood. ... It's a signal to the animals, and the people around them to pay attention and try to help them.

"The friendliest, most docile cats are nowadays neutered before leaving any descendants, while the wildest, meanest ferals are likely to escape the attention of cat rescuers and breed at will, thus pushing the cat's evolution away from, rather than toward, better integration with human society.

"So we need to, somehow, tone that down a little bit. But ultimately I suspect that the cat will only be ensured a future in an increasingly crowded planet if we can generate an animal that really doesn't feel the need to hunt.

"In a way, we almost have to start again. We have to think about the cat in the 21st century. What do we want cats for? What kind of cats do we want?"

Book Reviews

Cat Sense by John Bradshaw

Cat Sense - the Feline Enigma Revealed by John Bradshaw

Cat Sense by John Bradshaw: An Attempt to Dispel the Mystery Surrounding an Animal Never Fully Domesticated

Cat Sense Explains What They're Really Thinking by John Bradshaw

NPR Interview Recording - Teri Gross and John Bradshaw

What's Mittens Thinking? Make 'Sense' of Your Cat's Behavior by John Bradshaw