Yes, dear readers, I have another trio of cat stories for this fine Saturday.
The first is an article from the Washington Post about the flooding in Colorado, and the heroism of Jezebel the Cat:
ESTES PARK, Colo. — As people came down from the flooded foothills of the Colorado Rockies, they brought tales of dramatic rescues, heartbreaking loss and neighbors coming together to protect their families and homes. Here are a few of their stories:
Jezebel the cat jumped on a sleeping Jon Johnson, batted his face and yowled until he woke up to find the Big Thompson River spilling into the cottages he and his wife Deyn rented to Estes Park visitors.
They ran from cottage to cottage, knocking on doors and shouting to the sleeping occupants, “Purse! Keys! Medicine! Go!”
The water rose from Deyn Johnson’s shin to her knee in less than a minute. Everybody was safely evacuated before the river swept three of the cottages away and knocked three more on their sides.
She lamented the loss of the Whispering Pines cottages, which they have run since 1993, but praised Jezebel for her swift action.
“We had no warning other than the cat,” Johnson said. “She is going to be treated like a queen for the rest of her life.”
Well, I’m sure readers will respond that the cat was simply freaked out and ran to its owners, and I probably subscribe to that interpretation as well. Still, the owners would be dead without Jezebel, giving them just one more excuse to treat their cat like a queen (as all cats would like to be treated).
Sadly, I can’t find pictures of Jezebel, but if any readers do, send them along.
***
Many of us know that celebrities often take “selfies” (photographs of yourself snapped with your cellphone) and post them on Twitter as publicity. But did you know that cats do it, too? Wil Wheaton’s Tumblr site gives some really funny examples of cats who have photographed themselves. Some examples:
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Finally, did you ever wonder what Hili looked like as a kitten? Well, she was ineffably cute (she’s a bit more than a year old now). Here are two photographs of Baby Hili taken by reader Sarah Lawson:
And here’s one I just took in Dobrzyn showing that Hli still favors her perch on the kitchen window:
I’ve often wished that cats would remain kittens forever: “bonsai kittens,” as some call them. I even wrote an essay in junior high school about this desire, which I called “The Perpetual Kitten.” I wonder if any readers share that wish?
The Jezebel story is interesting. It may not have been a selfless act of heroism, but rather than just running off on its own to save itself, at the very least it seems this cat understood in some way its dependence on its owners, that something was not right and it was important for them to wake up or to take some action. That seems to be the purpose of fear and alarm in mammals.
I think a lot of parents wish their children would stay young and cute for longer. They grow so fast. I once heard a father joke with his son saying “you used to be cute, but now you grew-some”.
But here’s a question: why do cat breeds not vary in size as much as dog breeds? Why no kitty Chihuahua or kitty Great Dane?
A: Because they are just right.
THere are tea-cup cats, but they are very rare and expensive. Google Tea Cup kitties. 🙂
See my post with links below. 🙂
Presumably because no human breeder has (yet) taken the effort to isolate, cross-breed and cull appropriately to produce such artificially-selected variety. Within the very-close relatives of the domesticated (hah!) cat, there is considerable size variation from wildcats (Scottish or otherwise) down to over-cooked semi-desert dwelling mogs. So within the feline gene pool there’s scope for quite a bit of potential to work with.
You have to ask, what would be the “Unique Selling Point” of a mega-cat ; or a mini-cat? Actually, the latter is pretty easily answered – given a moderate amount of retention of juvenile characters into the adult, you’d have perma-kittens (-ish).
Why bother when we’ve already got jaguars? 😉
Well, there is the huge Maine Coon:
http://tinyurl.com/cfxlkah
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Maine_coon_red_tabby_white_of_10_kg.jpg
The almost as huge as the Maine Coon, the Norwegian Forest cat:
http://knitnut.net/wp-content/onfc.jpg
And there are “teacup cats” too:
http://dollfacepersiankittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/The-smallest-cat-in-the-world.jpg
The Singapura is a very small breed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapura_%28cat%29
http://www.catsaroundtheglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/singapura_smallest_cat.jpg
And the poor Munchkin cats which have been bred to look like Daschunds and who apparently have huge health problems stemming from their horribly short legs:
http://www.toptensoup.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/The_Munchkin2.jpg
(source of above picture: http://www.toptensoup.com/?p=350
Thanks for this. I wasn’t aware of these breeds.
Obviously there are large cats in the wild. So that, together with these unusual breeds, it seems to be some good evidence that there are no genetic barriers.
There must be human cultural reasons, coupled with the different natures of dogs and cats, as gravelinspector more or less argued above.
According to Wikipedia, archeological evidence suggests that dogs have been domesticated 1.5 to 3 times longer than cats (~10,000 years vs 15,000 to 30,000 years). This may account for the willingness of dogs to engage in service of humans, such as work, hunting, herding, guarding, and rescue. This could also be related to the more extensive social nature of dogs (I’m supposing that larger dog packs have more complex social hierarchies than smaller prides, but could be wrong about this).
Or you could just say dogs have no self-respect, like cats do. Shameless servile beasts vs. individuals of integrity and high self-esteem. Perhaps there’s a reason it’s called a “pride” of cats. 😉
Only lions have prides, all other big cats are solitary animals. The domestic cat by nature (and when feral in nature) are also basically solitary animals. They do however accept to live with other cats or share territory with other cats if fed by one person and/or when living indoors.
F. silvestris catus regularly forms colonies with a dozen or more members, with the queens communally nursing any kitten and the hunters similarly sharing the catch. They really are quite a social species — and that’s before considering how readily they form very intimate bonds with humans, including pair bonds like what Baihu and I have as well as the archetypal suburban family with 2.43 children and a dog and a cat or two.
I’m not sure where this myth of cats being solitary or cold or unfeeling comes from. Every cat I’ve ever personally known has been quite sociable — though, of course, not all of them are readily trusting of out-group individuals.
Cheers,
b&
Also there is teh “Munchkin” variety of cats. THey kind of creep me out, though: Like cats who have been declawed, they seem a little crippled.
See my post with links above. 🙂
Tongue-kitteh is the best selfie 🙂
Hili was an exceptionally cute kitten.
“Many of us know that celebrities often take “selfies” (photographs of yourself snapped with your cellphone) and post them on Twitter as publicity.”
I consider you a celebrity, Jerry. You do have a cellphone, right?
Jerry has posted a variety of self portraits from all around the world that make some creative use of his own image (usually) reflected in a mirror. Try searching the site for “self portrait” – you’ll get quite a few.
I’m sure you know this poem too:
The trouble with a kitten is that eventually it becomes a cat.
Ogden Nash
“bonsai kittens” is possibly an unfortunate phrase…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonsai_Kitten
That’s what I was thinking. I admit when I first saw Bonsai Kitten more than 10 years ago, it cracked me up. (mostly at how silly and unreal the whole thing obviously was) That was followed by amazement at the FBI investigation and furor.
The story of Jezebel is yet another reminder why it is important to have a cat, and to do its bidding.
If you prefer kittens to cats live near a busy highway.
My dog made me post this. Honest.
About the right temperature but, it is odd isn’t it? How my servants never fix the food so that it jumps out of my bowl to be eated up here on my perch.
Aww!
And kitten and coffee, my best treats all in one perch.
Don’t we all wish cats would stay kittens? Baby animals are so cute….even human ones. 😀
Pardon my biological ignorance, but I had the impression that there was a genetic piece that made us want to protect those with big eyes relative to the rest of the body? That said, kittens are delightful,their funny, affectionate, inquisitive,and clumsy behaviour is adorable.
Kittens are awesome, of course — and Hili sure was cute as one! But cats are awesome as well in a different way.
I think we actually get the best of both worlds by having the kittens slowly transition into cats. There’s a little cat in every kitten, and a little kitten in every cat, after all!
Cheers,
b&
Re: heroic cats. My mother always kept her bedroom door closed at night. One morning, her cat was scratching at it and howling. When Mom opened the door, she could smell gas. The pilot light on the stove had gone out. So, 2 lives saved.
One of my cats was running back and forth between me and the basement door. She was upset about something downstairs. I went down and discovered a water pipe had broken. There were several inches of water covering most of the floor. The plumber came right away and fixed things.
Guess these could be called Lassie stories.
Yes, I’ve often wanted to stop my pets from growing up, although I like both kittens and cats. As a teenager I wondered if one could damage the pituitary gland in such a way that puberty wouldn’t occur (but everything else would be normal).
I don’t know about the pituitary, but we routinely remove the ovaries and testes of our pets to keep them from maturing sexually.
Since sex hormones are implicated in other aspects of development, we are in some sense putting our cats in a state of perpetual kittenhood by neutering them at a young age. It’s my impression that such cats retain more kittenlike behavior and facial features, for instance, compared to cats allowed to grow to adulthood before neutering.
While I was writing my piece, I was reminded of the ‘castrati’, boys who were castrated before puberty to keep their singing voices. While this did stop some of them from having deeper voices as they aged, it didn’t stop them from growing up, so the castrati had high voices like women, but apparently the vocal strength of males.
Since the pituitary was the master gland (HGH, etc.), I thought as a teenager that that would be the target to prevent maturation, not just puberty.
Did you know that Castrati and Eunuchs in general retain their ability to have erections and sex, as well as retain libido to a large extent?
The purpose of having Eunuchs to guard harems was not to prevent them from having sex with the women – they in fact taught the newcomers how to give good sex to their owners as well as keep the women satisfied and not frustrated – but to ensure that any offspring in the harems could only be fathered by the harems’ owners.
My castrated males would still respond to my unsterilized females when they were on heat and have sex with them, even years after they had their testicles removed.
I always had my male cats sterilized when they had reached full maturity and size. As for my female cats, I would only have them spayed after they had given birth to two litters and were also fully mature and at full size.
Reblogged this on JerBear's Queer World News, Views & More From The City Different – Santa Fe, NM and commented:
Something cute, (and inspiring in the case of Jezebel up in Colorado.)
I found Summer-the-little-stripey-ct when she was about a week old – ears down, eyes still closed. I bottle fed her for about 6 weeks and then she sort of weaned herself and started being a real kitten. She was almost too cute but if she’d stayed a kitten I wouldn’t have got to see her grow up, learn things from other cats, figure things out for herself, become increasingly confident of her physical abilities and develop a really close bond with her. Now she’s an adult and a joy to have around.
http://www.wimp.com/catforgot/
Had to post this for a couple of reasons. 1) It’s funny. 2) What a beautiful Russian Blue!
I grew up in the Southern United States in a house built in 1854. We were very poor and had to heat our house with coal. The fireplaces were shallow, and really meant for coal. When the Federal government yet again in its central planning wisdom intervened in the economy, coal became too expensive, so we switched to less- efficient and dirtier-burning wood.
Well, I had a farm-found tabby cat named Cheshire (very smart feline, could unlock doors) and a shorthair city-rescue named Mr. Blackcat, for obvious reasons (and who rarely made a sound).
Now, our dining room had a fireplace; while our floors were made of old heart pine, they were flammable because of the old finishes that had been on there for over 100 years. My mom was in another room with the doors closed and I was upstairs.
Suddenly Mom heard her door being jimmied and jiggled and heard Blackcat crying loudly at her door! She opened it to find him there, and like the old TV Hero-dog Lassie, he led her upstairs to my room, since she ran up there to get me before doing anything else. Black led us back down, with us concerned about his behavior. I opened the door to the dining room, and there lay Cheshire, stretched to his full length luxuriating at the warmth from the new fire in the floor. There’s cat-smarts (opening doors and locks to get what ya want) and people-smarts (knowing when there is danger).
“Dogs think they are people; but Cats know they are God.” They are for me, anyway.