March 14, 2018 • 32 mins
Everyone knows herding cats is impossible. But is it because we never fully domesticated them? Will and Mango dig into a history of cats-- from why they were unfairly blamed for so many divorces, to how a bag of clay forever changed their prospects, to what a lion's sneeze tells us about their instincts. Plus-- the number one country you HAVE to travel to (if you want a cat to massage your back.)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what. Well, what's that, Mango? So I was looking
online and I found this description for a job that's
definitely not for us. Professional cat cutler. Yeah, I'd have
to agree with that. And first of all, why is
that a job? So? I have no idea. And this
posting is from late January this year and it was
put up by a cat's only veterinary clinic in Ireland.
(00:21):
But here's a list of some of the questions you'd
have to answer to see if this job is right
for you, and these are all real. Are you a
crazy cat person and love cats already? I'm thinking that's
all right. Does catitude come to you naturally? So I
wouldn't say we have high cattitude levels? Have you counted
kittens before you go to sleep? Do you feed stray
(00:43):
cats in your locality? Does pett and cats make you
warm and fuzzy? I mean, I gotta be honest, Mango,
I can't say that any of those sound like me.
So I can't think of a job you're less suited for.
And the job basically involves calming down skittish cats and
Mr me doggying them into a zen like space so
the vets can see them. But one of the biggest
(01:04):
criticisms of our show has been that we're not kind
enough to cats on the program. You are, of course
scared of them, and I have let's call it a
healthy respect for them. So I thought it was time
for a cat intervention, or a cattervention. We're gonna increase
our empathy of cats and try to understand them a
little better and maybe even call out some of their achievements,
and perhaps by the end of this all you and
(01:26):
I will be begging for that cat cuddling job. Well
I'm not sure I see that happening, but let's dive in.
(01:53):
Heay their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
friend Man Guesho Ticketer and sitting behind that soundproof glass
surrounded by cat themed music albums, and there are far
more of these than I expected from him. But he's
got cat power. Cat Stevens, I think Latigre Acoustic Kitty
and I didn't see the album cover for this, but
(02:15):
I swear is that Garfields smooth Jazz I hear playing
in the background. It is so Tristan was showing me
this earlier. It's all Garfield inspired music, but my favorite
is that is where it's at, you know, because Garfield
needs a lot, right Thanks for explaining that that guy
has the best taste and novelty albums, and that of
course is our friend and producer Tristan McNeil, now Mango.
(02:38):
As you know, we've gotten some criticism about not being
cat friendly enough on the show, and I have to
be honest, it's a little bit surprising how much we've
heard from listeners about this. Yeah, I mean it was
really shocking to me too, and I actually love all animals,
or at least most furry animals. And you know this,
but maybe some listeners don't. There was a long period
(02:58):
of my life where I've dreamed had become a vet.
And also, for the record, we had cats on a
bunch of covers of Metal Flass. Plus the first story
I wrote on metal fast dot com was about a
cat piano, so I had no idea where he came
across this anti cat's right, you wrote about what was
it called the cats and Clavier. It was this musical
instrument that I think it was. It was inmitted to
(03:20):
cheer up a prince or something. Is that right. Yeah,
So it was like a piano, but instead of strings,
you just put kittens in a box behind each key
and it was supposed to gently prod the kitten to
yaw in tune. And there was this modern version of
it that was made with toy cats all tuned to
different notes with this dude playing over the rainbow on
them by squeezing them in order. I mean, there's a
(03:41):
video this on YouTube, but all that mewing isn't exactly music,
but it's also not not music either. I have definitely
seen that video a few times and it's pretty great.
And you know, it is interesting how polarizing cats are.
And for the record, I should say I don't hate cats.
I just happened to be terrified of cats. When I
was growing up. I was across the street from Triplet Boys.
(04:04):
They had a family cat, and not intentionally but just
by being Triplet Boys, they tortured this cat, and the
cat decided to take out all of its anger on
me for some reason and attacked me every time I
came over there. So I just wanted to put that
out there. But it has been really weird as we
just make these little jokes about cats on the show.
These I guess we think of them as like throwaway comments,
(04:27):
and then the angry letters that we hear from people
about I don't know if I can listen to this
show because you guys hate cats. But this we, we
apparently are not alone in this polarizing world of cats.
I actually found this quote by the American writer Carl
van Vechten, and he wrote a book called Tiger in
the House, which is really all about house cats. And
(04:47):
here's how he talks about people's strong feelings about cats.
And I actually really like this quote. So he says,
one is permitted to assume an attitude of placid and
difference in some matters elephants, cockatoo's h g well Sweden,
roast beef, puccini, even Mormonism. But in the matter of cats,
it seems necessary to take a firm stand. The cat
(05:08):
himself insists upon this. He invariably inspires strong feelings. He
is indeed the only animal who does well. It is
true that cats definitely inspire strong feelings. And when we've
joked on the show about not being cat lovers, people
have written in and said, uh, you know who also
hated cats? Hitler and also Napoleon and Mussolini, and I
(05:32):
looked this up. It's true they were cat hitters. Like
I mean, I'm sure all three of them also hated
like broccoli and homework, So it doesn't really mean that
much like a lot of people, just like a lot
of things. But I was intrigued by the comments, so
I looked up other famous cat hitters in history. And
it's not a good look for us to be perceived
this way. And so in addition to Napoleon and Mussolini,
(05:55):
you've got Genghis Khan Stalin also hated cats. Caesar Alexander
the Great, Eisenhower, for some reason, is on the list,
but frankly, I'm a little surprised at Polpon and Daman
aren't on there as well. To round out the limbs,
a lot of terrible people, I mean, aside aside from Eisenhower,
who we love for building highways and infrastructure, of infrastructure.
(06:18):
I love infrastructure. But you know, I think what's worse
than the list of horrible people is when cat fans
tell you about all the great people who were obsessed
with cats. You've got Abe Lincoln, who was notorious for
his love of cats, and his wife Mary Todd once
said that cats were his only hobby. Also, they've got
the prophet Mohammed, Nicola Tesla, St. Francis of ASSISI, Mark Twain,
(06:39):
Florence Nightingale, Catherine the Great, Charles Mingus, and all of
the Brontes, all the Brontes, even Brandwell Bronte I checked
up on this mango. They got Brandwell Well. Obviously, of
those two sample sets, i'd I'd rather be associated with
the cat lovers and the cat hitters. But I was
(07:00):
trying to figure out why it is that dictators and
world conquerors don't like cats. And here's one theory about
it that I found that's popular on cat sites, and
it goes like this quote. It might just be that
cat people who have dreams of dominating the world can't
get used to the idea that cats won't submit to them.
So is the idea that like, cats are just too
(07:21):
independent minded for dictators or what exactly? And truthfully, that's
also a big part of what cat people like about cats.
They're total independence, right, Like people are always saying cats
have more personality than dogs and that they're less needy
and they're like a little more badass and rock and
roll or something. And in fact, this is a little
(07:41):
off topic, but one of the cat origin stories I read,
and this is an Islamic tale I believe, is that
Noah was on his arc and during the storm, he
became really afraid that the mice on board would eat
all the food, or even worse, that they'd nibble through
the floors and create these holes in the arc, kind
of just like putting all the other animals and jeopardies.
So he prayed for a solution, and God answered his
(08:03):
wishes by having a lion sneeze, and out of both
nostrils from that sneeze emerged two cats, which is I
guess how cats came to be. And I mean, it's
kind of a sweet origin story in terms of myths,
But I feel like you can interpret the story in
two ways, right, Like cats are either God's gift to humanity,
like what adorable little God bless you they are, or
(08:26):
no one needed a ruthless killing machine on the ship
and God provided cats. I think I'm might lane towards
the latter of it. I'm gonna be careful. I don't
need any more hate mail about this, but I have
a different question here. Mago like, how useless is every
other animal on the arc, Like why couldn't any of
the owls on board pitch in for this effort? I know, well,
I mean, the truth is cats are incredible hunting machines.
(08:48):
And I read this crazy story in the New York
Times from five years ago, and that's when the Smithsonian's
Conservation Biology Institute teamed up with the US Fish and
Wildlife Service to do some research on cats, and they
wanted to identify how much wildlife these cats were killing
every year, so they used cameras and create this new
math model, and basically they were stunned by the results.
(09:09):
So listen to this between feral and domestic cats. The
domestic ones, you know, are the ones that get to
roam outdoors while sleeping indoors. Together, they kill about two
point four billion birds every year. And also they killed
twelve point three billion mammals a year, and most of
those those things like shrews and chipmunks and bowls, along
with mice. I kind of want to know how they
(09:31):
came up with that estimate of twelve point three billion mammals,
but either way, it's insane and terrifying. So I don't
understand like, why would this make me like cats? More
so we've talked about this on the program before, but
those mousers are also keeping places like Disney parks and
houses and also city streets more free of vermin. And also,
I I've read this thing about how they're all these
(09:53):
cat islands in Japan that are super popular as tourist destinations,
just places where they're all these feral cats, And initially
I was thinking, like, who wants to go to these islands?
But one of the arguments I was reading online that
I had actually never thought about was most people can
go to a cat island and not be terrified because
these small feral cats aren't going to bother you. They
(10:14):
just don't care about you. But you know, if you
went to a wild dog island and they were just
wild packs of you know, feral dogs there, you'd be terrified,
like you want to call animal control because roaming packs
of wild dogs aren't fun. But you know, the cats
don't have that herd mentality. I mean, that's an interesting point.
But to be fair, if you put the word feral
in front of any animal, like, I don't want to
(10:36):
be near those and I have no desire to hang
out with I don't know, like Australia's feral camel population
or any of these other animals, but you know, you
started talking about cat origins and and killer cats, and
you were talking about how cat lovers tend to love
the animals independence And actually I had a story that
I wanted to share just real quick. So while freethinking
critters might be great for pet owners, they're not great
(10:57):
for filmmakers. I was reading this interer you with the
Cohen brothers about filming inside Lewin Davis, and they were
talking about how hard it was to shoot the cat
in the movie. So here's a quote from an NPR
interview that Ethan Cohen did, and he says, the whole
exercise of shooting a cat is pretty nightmarish because they
don't care about anything. They don't want to do what
you want them to do. As the animal trainer said
(11:18):
to us, a dog wants to please you. A cat
only wants to please itself. It was just this long, painstaking,
frustrating day shooting the cat, which to me is a
little refreshing. You know that cats don't want to be
seen as film stars, but you know, I've seen Lewin Davison.
I loved it, But how do they get all those
shots eventually? Like, I'm guessing they didn't use c g I. Well,
(11:39):
first of all, they used a lot of cats, and
a cat trainer told them specifically to use a marmalade
orange tabby because it's easier to get a lot of
them on hand. So they had three or four cats
ready for each scene, and essentially they had to find
cats that had a predisposition for doing whatever it was
that they were looking for. So, like, if you needed
a fidgety cat to jump out of someone's hand ends,
(12:00):
you have to find a cat that tends to do
that all the time and hates to be held. So
you get that type of cat for one angle. But
then you know, if you want them to rub against
the table or run down a fire escape, you need
to find the cat that wants to do that naturally.
And even then when they had those cats on hand,
the cats rarely did what they wanted. The Cohen Brothers
actually compared the experience to having to film a vulture
(12:22):
in True Grit. They said the vulture was awful, and
they said that was even by vulture standards, And even
though the experience was really frustrating. They'd take filming a
vulture scene over a cat scene any day, so that
that is ridiculous. And I do love that story. But
here's the thing, and maybe it's something that will increase
our own empathy for cats, But I don't actually think
(12:45):
it's a cat's fault that they're so independent. And why
is that? Because there's a theory that cats aren't actually
domesticated animals. They've never had to be domesticated. But even
more than that, the theory goes, these clever, adorable beasts
have over a thousands of years, actually domesticated us. But
before we talk about that, let's take a little break.
(13:18):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, and we're talking cats.
So a mango. I know you're going to tell us
about cats and domestication, but before we talk about a
cat in the household, let's talk about cats breaking up households.
And you know that totally unfair reputation they got for
causing divorces in America. So I obviously know people are
attached to their animals, but I've never heard about this trend.
(13:40):
So what's the scoop? Well, this comes from Natalie Zarelli
at Atlas Obscura, and she reports that once the Married
Women's Property Act took hold in America, there was actually
an uptick in the number of divorces, and essentially unhappy
couples weren't doomed to stay together, but you still had
to have someone at fault and it had to be irreconcilable.
So a big strategy from the nineteen tens going forward
(14:03):
where couples that they just started blaming their cats. That's
pretty crazy. I've never heard of that, you know. I
actually remember one of our friends from college had a
grandmother who got divorced, and he told me that the
couple staged her walking in on him with another woman,
and it was purely so that they had a traumatic
story to tell. The New York Chorus. But you know,
just blaming a cat would have been so much easier. Yeah,
(14:25):
I would say that would have been a lot easier.
There's actually a story from this piece in nineteen o
three where a man told the judge this horror story.
He says, a cat met him at every turn with
an angry and a chorus of blood curdling mews. Apparently
he find cats in his bed sheets and when he
tried to escape them. He was too scared to leave
the bed, you know, lest he should expose his bare
(14:47):
feet to the claws of numerous pussies and provoke a
melody that would ring in his ears for the rest
of the day. So that feels so dramatic. Well, he
really had to sell it to the judge. And you know,
if the judge asked why the husband didn't just get
rid of the cats, often there'd be some story about
his wife being involved in like the A s p c. A,
which I guess felt virtuous or something. So, I mean,
(15:09):
there were lots of these stories. Oh, there's tons of
these stories that There's actually also a Civil War veteran
who claims he could never sit in his easy chair
because the cat was always there hissing at him. There
was another there was a wife that said she didn't
mind her husband's profanity, but it was too much when
he heaved the family cat at her. And looking at
that case, apparently she wanted twelve hundred dollars for the
(15:31):
humiliation of being beamed by the family cat. Just unbelievable.
There was also another dude who was upset that his
wife kept fifty cats around the house and gave them
more attention than him. Well, I mean, fifty cats would
need a lot of attention. Well, in court, she testified
that she only had fifteen cats. But you know, since
her husband didn't come home most nights, they were both
(15:52):
interested in splitting up. And you know, most of these
stories were either made up or just greatly exaggerated. So
how long did this cat blaming go on for? According
to the article, cats were scapegoats for really about a century,
and it wasn't until nineteen sixty nine, when no fault
divorce laws started becoming adopted by states that suddenly all
(16:12):
the cat blaming disappeared from the newspaper stories, which is
pretty insane. And uh, you know you feel sorry for
the cats. I know it's it's true. It's weird to
say that, but I actually do feel a little sorry
for them. But you were going to talk a little
bit about this idea that cats aren't really domesticated. Yeah, so,
you know, aside from that lion sneezing theory about cats,
researchers have actually found cat bones near human bones for
(16:35):
a while. There's a New Yorker piece on this, but
in China, by analyzing the bones and teeth of cats
skeletons from about five thousand years ago. Scientists can actually
show that cats were eating rodents and grains as well
as leftovers from human meals. And basically cats were opportunistic, right, Like,
they realized that rodents were plentiful around these farmers stores
(16:55):
of grain, so they ingratiated themselves. And people were opportunistic.
They were us that cats would kill off the disease
carrying vermin for them, and it was relatively little investment,
Like they didn't actually have to train the cats. All
they had to do was give them some shelter and
like a little extra food to eat, and then just
lean on their natural instincts. It was totally symbiotic. But
(17:16):
you know, cats were never bred for traits the way
dogs or cattle were. Like, you know, you look at
a docs and then you see how that dog was
bred to go after badgers, right, it was supposed to
chase badgers down badger holes and it's fearless, but it's
also shape for that, with that sort of long noodle
like shape. And uh, you know, cat reading is a
relatively recent phenomenon by the comparison, So I mean, are
(17:37):
there ways to prove out this theory that cats are
only semi in domesticated. Yeah, there definitely are. So there's
this geneticist at Washington University in St. Louis named Wesley Warren,
and apparently he and his colleagues looked at DNA from
wildcats and breeds of domestic cats. And this is from
the New Yorker again. The research showed that genetically cats
have actually diverged far less from their wildcats ants sisters
(18:00):
than dogs have from wolves. You know, you can kind
of see this in the wild, right, Like house cats
are better hunters than dogs. They can they can also
fend for themselves in the wild. And according to the piece,
feral cats have even routinely bred with their wildcat cousins.
And according to Warren quote it's not the true differentiation
you see between wolf and dog by comparison. His belief
(18:21):
is that the modern cat isn't fully domesticated. That is
pretty interesting, and to be honest, it kind of explains
why I don't fully trust them and I do still
almost feel sorry for them, though, well you shouldn't feel
too sorry for them, because some people like to joke
that these wildcats have actually domesticated us, and you know,
they've obviously stayed aloof while we keeping them shelter and
(18:43):
putting scratching posts in our houses and allow them to
go to the bathroom indoors. But the biggest argument for
them having trained does is that they have conditioned humans
to feed them on demand with something called solicitation purring.
So this comes from the journal Current Biology. But scientists
Karen McComb from the University of Sussex analyze the acoustic
(19:03):
structure of cat purs and she actually realized that cats
dramatically exaggerate their purs all to elicit this emotional response
from humans. Apparently it's the same frequency that babies cry at.
And it isn't all cats that do this, it's just
cats that have one on one relationships with humans. That
is pretty manipulative. I mean it's impressive, but it's pretty manipulative. Yeah,
(19:25):
I mean, they've got us on a tight leash. And
also they have a behavior where they rub up against
our legs. As you know, we pull a can out
to get their food, and that's supposedly rewarding us for
being good to them. But there's one more thing that
people site as felines clever control over humans, and that's
that we actually taste test their food for them. You know,
I know we talked about humans taste testing dog food before,
(19:47):
but I can't remember, like, why do they do that again?
So this comes from a Brock University study from Canada.
But basically, the pet food industry has noticed over the
years that cats are fussy eaters and they're quote unreliable
expensive test subjects in the pursuit of more appealing cat
food flavors, and the study basically showed that human taste
panels are you know, a much more cost effective way
(20:09):
to test can cat food. Apparently, the paper lists of
methodology for human testers to quote profile the flavor and
texture of a range of cat food products, including evaluating
meat chunk and gravy to gel constituents gross you know. So,
you know, if we're gonna keep keeping our feline masters happy,
more people are going to have to get into the
(20:31):
cat food tasting business. Well. I definitely have come away
with some understanding of why cats act the way they do,
and and maybe even a little admiration for how they
manipulate it. But why don't we talk about how cats
became so popular in the first place. Let's take a
quick break first, welcome back to Part Time Genius where
(21:01):
we're talking cats. All right, Mango. So obviously we know
that the Internet has done a lot for cat appreciation,
and you know, you had grumpy cat Little Bob ruling
the internet for a while, and all that I can
has cheeseburger memes being such a big thing for a while.
But but actually, looking back, Time Magazine kind of predicted
this trend way back in nineteen eighty one, right, that's right,
(21:22):
And you and I found an old Time magazine cover
story from nineteen eight one that declared that cats were
the hot new thing. But uh, I'd almost argued that
the thing that truly brought cats to the level of
popularity and endearment there at now isn't the Internet or
Morris or even Garfield comics, which are some of the
things that are in this Time article, and I do
think we should talk about them, definitely. But one of
(21:43):
the things I saw that writer Paul Ford points to
is the rise of kitty litter, which is actually a
relatively recent invention. I didn't realize this. It only came
about in ninete so what were people doing before then?
So I had the same question, and basically they had
sandboxes outside they'd let their cats go in the yard. Anyway,
the story is pretty interesting and Ford wrote this up
(22:04):
for Medium. But basically, this woman's sandbox for a cat
was frozen, so she came to buy some sawdust from
a local mill in Michigan. And the guy's name was
at Low. He had been working for his dad's mill
at the time, and when she described what she wanted
for her cat, he gave her an alternative. He had
this kil and dried granulated clay that they just started
using for grease spills at the mill, And when she
(22:27):
came back for more, he started labeling a kitty litter
and tried marketing it. But what's amazing is what a
business it became. So, according to his obit in the
New York Times, he sold the product to Ralston Purina
for two d million dollars. And listen to this, he
owned twenty two homes, a private railroad, a stable of quarterhouses,
and an entire Michigan town. Isn't that incredible? So so
(22:50):
basically kitty letter changed how we interacted with cats. Yeah, so,
like all cats were indoor outdoor cats until the advent
of kitty litter and then slowed more and more cats
game house bound. But it's also starting to think about
how much kitty litter we use. So according to Ford's research,
about twenty companies strip mind about four billion pounds of
the necessary clay each year, four billion pounds. And and
(23:14):
by comparison, Ford sites the Great Pyramid of Giza only
ways thirteen billion pounds. I like that, that's the comparison
to you. So all right, so then you're saying, with
three or four years of work, you could actually build
this impressive pyramid of kitty letter then, which is amazing.
But all right, well let's talk about this time article
that because it is pretty fun blind for it. So
(23:35):
this piece basically argued that the nine eighties were this
time that really primed the world to love cats, right, yeah,
And here's just a few of the indicators they show
that cats were on the rise. So the point you
made earlier, these cat litter boxes in the eighties were
now oder proof and kick proof, and that made keeping
a box where your cat poops in the house far
more appealing than it previously was. There were also three
(23:56):
different Garfield books on the best seller list which cat
humor had truly arrived. I'm not sure what it says
about the taste of people in the nineteen eighties that
three of them were on the bestseller list. And then
California suddenly there were a cat everything's. You could find
a cat resort at, a cat department store, a cat
rest home, a rent a cat agency, a cat dating service.
(24:18):
I have no idea what that is, but it was
one of the things. Cats psychics, cat acting coaches, and
of course a special annual contest to judge cat's meouse.
And then at that time you had Mars, the cat
who was officially declared a celebrity cat, you know, essentially
the feline Burt Reynolds, if you will. And then, as
the story reported, cats were quickly gaining on dogs. According
(24:40):
to the article, thirty four million cats had worked their
way into homes, which was a fifty increase over the
last decade. Now if you look at those numbers, now
some reports have cats that closer to nine billion cats
in homes, you know, plus the thirty or forty million
feral community cats that you know, they're the ones that
keep rodents at bay. Yeah, yeah, I guess for all
(25:00):
the jokes about this cat trend like, cats have really
grown on us as a culture. And while you and
I might not be cat people yet, I do think
we have to grudgingly admit that they're pretty amazing creatures.
I mean, I'm not sure I'm there just yet, but
maybe after a few amazing facts. So let's start the
fact off. Do you know that jazz musician Charles Mingus
(25:28):
trained his cat Nightlife to go on the toilet. In fact,
he even wrote a step by step manuel called the
Charles Mingus Catalog for Toilet Training your cat. Well, there
is at least one thing you cannot train a cat
to do, and that's hold a candle for you. According
to the folks at Qui, Dante desperately tried teaching his
cat to hold a candle for him so he could
(25:48):
write at night, but to no avail, I mean, stupid Dante, Like,
why wouldn't you just get a candle holder? Doesn't make
it never occurred to him for some reason. So you know,
I I know if you will always talk about cats
incredible ability to land on their feet, but did you
know that cats can survive falls from sixty feet? Now,
obviously this isn't a suggestion for listeners to go test
(26:10):
this out on their cat. Far from it. But uh,
in a study on cats that had fallen from tall buildings,
apparently of them survived, though they did have injuries. And
this comes from our old pal bill domain. But the
study found that cats that fell from heights of seven
to thirty two stories were less likely to die than
those that fell from two to six stories, which makes
(26:31):
no sense. So the scientists know why this is. So
there's actually a lot of theories and and there's been
a lot of research into it. And part of it
might be that because cats bodies act as a bit
of a parachute, and part of it might be that
cats relax once they've fallen a certain distance. And you know,
the reason babies and stuff men often survive accidents is
that they bounced because they don't tense up their muscles.
(26:53):
I mean, I always love that buttered cat paradox, you know,
because cats always land on their feet and butter bread
always lands face down. So like if you tie a
piece of buttered bread to a cat's back and then
drop it, well the cat just like hover above the floor.
I love that. So here's a quick one about cats
making the world a better place. So in two thousand
(27:14):
seven the New York Times. Before that, Thailand was shaming
wayward cops. You know, these were the officers who were littering,
or parking in the wrong place, or even showing little
abuses of power. And they did this with an unusual method.
They started making them wear pink Hello Kitty arm bands. And,
as a police chief told The Times after the policy
came out, police were scared, it will be very embarrassing
(27:36):
to walk around with Hello Kitty on your arm. What's strange, though,
is that this is actually the second variation on this
arm band technique. So there was a previous iteration where
they gave bad cops plaid arm bands. But unfortunately the
they were seen as like gestures of pride or something,
and they started taking them home and treating them like metals.
All right, well, here's a strange bit of science. According
(27:58):
to News, scientists, cats don't understand the cause and effect
of tugging on a string. You'll have to explain what
do you mean by this. Well, there was a study
at Canterbury christ Church University in the UK and there
was a team of researchers and what they did was
they attached fish or biscuit trees to the end of
one string, and then they put another string with no
treat attached. And according to the researchers, the cats couldn't
(28:19):
see the cause and effect. The story states, chimps, parrots, ravens,
they all understand that tugging on one end of a
string will bring a treat closer. But cats don't, and
there aren't alone. So pigeons and human infants also don't
pick up on this, and for the record, neither do dogs.
So speaking of cats and dogs, did you know that
if your dogs overweight, there's actually a good chance you'll
(28:41):
be overweight too? And in two thousand and ten, the
journal Public Health Nutrition published a study from Amsterdam that
showed that there's a significant relationship between overweight dogs and
the b m I of their owners. But if your
cat is overweight, it's not a good predictor of whether
you'll be overweight. It's because you and your cat are
just you know, on your own, living your best lives.
(29:01):
Is that what it is? Okay? All right, Well here's
a strange one. So Japan is obsessed with cats, right,
and that's that's no surprise. Obviously, it's the land of
waving porcelain cats that sit in stores and responsible for
Hello Kitty, and I think it's where cat cafes started.
But but now also they have cat bars and cat
cafe train cars, so they are definitely cat obsessed. There's
(29:22):
even a hand lotion that's now cat paw scented, so
your hands can smell more like the bottom of your cats.
I don't know why people want this, but it is
available now. But you know how cats make biscuits in
the morning, right, Yeah, that's when they kind of like
wake you up and gently need on owners chests in
the morning for attention. So the craziest story I read
is that there's a spa in Japan where they offer
(29:43):
these cat treatments as back massages. You can actually pay
to have a cat need your back. It was really
hard for me to even just say that. Stapid so
ter It's both amazing and terrifying to me. So do
you know that hats aren't actually the only creatures they
get hairballs? Cows and rabbits get them too. That's weird alright.
(30:05):
So here's one about Mark Twain, the notorious cat lover,
as we mentioned earlier. Now, one thing he truly enjoyed
was giving his cats strange names. So here are a
few of them. He had Appollinaris, Beasel, bub blather, Skite, Buffalo, Bill, Satan, Sourmash,
Soapy Sell, Pestilence, and Bambino. And actually I have one
more fact about Twain. Apparently Bambino escaped one day and
(30:28):
Twain was so worried that he did what any cat
lover would do, and he put an ad in the
New York newspapers and offered a five dollar reward for this.
It was a large and intensely black cat. Now, Bambino
showed up on his own in a few days, but
putting an ad in the paper was a huge mistake.
Years later, people were still using it as an excuse
(30:48):
to try to meet Mark Twain. They would just show
up at his door with like random cat that they claimed,
we're definitely Bambino. Well, you know, I thought I had
you with my Hello Pitti fact, but I think you
best to meet with that Mark Twain one too, So
I'm actually gonna give you the Cat Fact Trophy today. Wow,
it is truly an honor, And listeners, I hope you've
(31:09):
enjoyed today's list of facts about cats. If we have
forgotten any great fact, please send those to us. We'd
love to hear from you. Part Time Genius and How
Stuff Works dot com. You can also call our fact
hot line one eight four four pt Genius or hit
us up on Facebook or Twitter. I hope we have
redeemed ourselves a little bit with all the cat lovers
out there with today's little vote. I have a bit
(31:30):
more respect for cats now. But thank you guys for listening.
Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production
of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without several
(31:52):
brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even
begin to understand. CHRISTA McNeil does the editing thing. Noel
Brown made the theme song and does mixy mixy sound thing.
Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing. Gave Louesier is
our lead researcher, with support from the research Army including
Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve Jeff
Cook gets the show to your ears. Good job, Eves.
(32:12):
If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe.
And if you really really like what you've heard maybe
you could leave a good review for us. Do we
do we forget Jason? Jason who
Guess what. Well, what's that, Mango? So I was looking
online and I found this description for a job that's
definitely not for us. Professional cat cutler. Yeah, I'd have
to agree with that. And first of all, why is
that a job? So? I have no idea. And this
posting is from late January this year and it was
put up by a cat's only veterinary clinic in Ireland.
(00:21):
But here's a list of some of the questions you'd
have to answer to see if this job is right
for you, and these are all real. Are you a
crazy cat person and love cats already? I'm thinking that's
all right. Does catitude come to you naturally? So I
wouldn't say we have high cattitude levels? Have you counted
kittens before you go to sleep? Do you feed stray
(00:43):
cats in your locality? Does pett and cats make you
warm and fuzzy? I mean, I gotta be honest, Mango,
I can't say that any of those sound like me.
So I can't think of a job you're less suited for.
And the job basically involves calming down skittish cats and
Mr me doggying them into a zen like space so
the vets can see them. But one of the biggest
(01:04):
criticisms of our show has been that we're not kind
enough to cats on the program. You are, of course
scared of them, and I have let's call it a
healthy respect for them. So I thought it was time
for a cat intervention, or a cattervention. We're gonna increase
our empathy of cats and try to understand them a
little better and maybe even call out some of their achievements,
and perhaps by the end of this all you and
(01:26):
I will be begging for that cat cuddling job. Well
I'm not sure I see that happening, but let's dive in.
(01:53):
Heay their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
friend Man Guesho Ticketer and sitting behind that soundproof glass
surrounded by cat themed music albums, and there are far
more of these than I expected from him. But he's
got cat power. Cat Stevens, I think Latigre Acoustic Kitty
and I didn't see the album cover for this, but
(02:15):
I swear is that Garfields smooth Jazz I hear playing
in the background. It is so Tristan was showing me
this earlier. It's all Garfield inspired music, but my favorite
is that is where it's at, you know, because Garfield
needs a lot, right Thanks for explaining that that guy
has the best taste and novelty albums, and that of
course is our friend and producer Tristan McNeil, now Mango.
(02:38):
As you know, we've gotten some criticism about not being
cat friendly enough on the show, and I have to
be honest, it's a little bit surprising how much we've
heard from listeners about this. Yeah, I mean it was
really shocking to me too, and I actually love all animals,
or at least most furry animals. And you know this,
but maybe some listeners don't. There was a long period
(02:58):
of my life where I've dreamed had become a vet.
And also, for the record, we had cats on a
bunch of covers of Metal Flass. Plus the first story
I wrote on metal fast dot com was about a
cat piano, so I had no idea where he came
across this anti cat's right, you wrote about what was
it called the cats and Clavier. It was this musical
instrument that I think it was. It was inmitted to
(03:20):
cheer up a prince or something. Is that right. Yeah,
So it was like a piano, but instead of strings,
you just put kittens in a box behind each key
and it was supposed to gently prod the kitten to
yaw in tune. And there was this modern version of
it that was made with toy cats all tuned to
different notes with this dude playing over the rainbow on
them by squeezing them in order. I mean, there's a
(03:41):
video this on YouTube, but all that mewing isn't exactly music,
but it's also not not music either. I have definitely
seen that video a few times and it's pretty great.
And you know, it is interesting how polarizing cats are.
And for the record, I should say I don't hate cats.
I just happened to be terrified of cats. When I
was growing up. I was across the street from Triplet Boys.
(04:04):
They had a family cat, and not intentionally but just
by being Triplet Boys, they tortured this cat, and the
cat decided to take out all of its anger on
me for some reason and attacked me every time I
came over there. So I just wanted to put that
out there. But it has been really weird as we
just make these little jokes about cats on the show.
These I guess we think of them as like throwaway comments,
(04:27):
and then the angry letters that we hear from people
about I don't know if I can listen to this
show because you guys hate cats. But this we, we
apparently are not alone in this polarizing world of cats.
I actually found this quote by the American writer Carl
van Vechten, and he wrote a book called Tiger in
the House, which is really all about house cats. And
(04:47):
here's how he talks about people's strong feelings about cats.
And I actually really like this quote. So he says,
one is permitted to assume an attitude of placid and
difference in some matters elephants, cockatoo's h g well Sweden,
roast beef, puccini, even Mormonism. But in the matter of cats,
it seems necessary to take a firm stand. The cat
(05:08):
himself insists upon this. He invariably inspires strong feelings. He
is indeed the only animal who does well. It is
true that cats definitely inspire strong feelings. And when we've
joked on the show about not being cat lovers, people
have written in and said, uh, you know who also
hated cats? Hitler and also Napoleon and Mussolini, and I
(05:32):
looked this up. It's true they were cat hitters. Like
I mean, I'm sure all three of them also hated
like broccoli and homework, So it doesn't really mean that
much like a lot of people, just like a lot
of things. But I was intrigued by the comments, so
I looked up other famous cat hitters in history. And
it's not a good look for us to be perceived
this way. And so in addition to Napoleon and Mussolini,
(05:55):
you've got Genghis Khan Stalin also hated cats. Caesar Alexander
the Great, Eisenhower, for some reason, is on the list,
but frankly, I'm a little surprised at Polpon and Daman
aren't on there as well. To round out the limbs,
a lot of terrible people, I mean, aside aside from Eisenhower,
who we love for building highways and infrastructure, of infrastructure.
(06:18):
I love infrastructure. But you know, I think what's worse
than the list of horrible people is when cat fans
tell you about all the great people who were obsessed
with cats. You've got Abe Lincoln, who was notorious for
his love of cats, and his wife Mary Todd once
said that cats were his only hobby. Also, they've got
the prophet Mohammed, Nicola Tesla, St. Francis of ASSISI, Mark Twain,
(06:39):
Florence Nightingale, Catherine the Great, Charles Mingus, and all of
the Brontes, all the Brontes, even Brandwell Bronte I checked
up on this mango. They got Brandwell Well. Obviously, of
those two sample sets, i'd I'd rather be associated with
the cat lovers and the cat hitters. But I was
(07:00):
trying to figure out why it is that dictators and
world conquerors don't like cats. And here's one theory about
it that I found that's popular on cat sites, and
it goes like this quote. It might just be that
cat people who have dreams of dominating the world can't
get used to the idea that cats won't submit to them.
So is the idea that like, cats are just too
(07:21):
independent minded for dictators or what exactly? And truthfully, that's
also a big part of what cat people like about cats.
They're total independence, right, Like people are always saying cats
have more personality than dogs and that they're less needy
and they're like a little more badass and rock and
roll or something. And in fact, this is a little
(07:41):
off topic, but one of the cat origin stories I read,
and this is an Islamic tale I believe, is that
Noah was on his arc and during the storm, he
became really afraid that the mice on board would eat
all the food, or even worse, that they'd nibble through
the floors and create these holes in the arc, kind
of just like putting all the other animals and jeopardies.
So he prayed for a solution, and God answered his
(08:03):
wishes by having a lion sneeze, and out of both
nostrils from that sneeze emerged two cats, which is I
guess how cats came to be. And I mean, it's
kind of a sweet origin story in terms of myths,
But I feel like you can interpret the story in
two ways, right, Like cats are either God's gift to humanity,
like what adorable little God bless you they are, or
(08:26):
no one needed a ruthless killing machine on the ship
and God provided cats. I think I'm might lane towards
the latter of it. I'm gonna be careful. I don't
need any more hate mail about this, but I have
a different question here. Mago like, how useless is every
other animal on the arc, Like why couldn't any of
the owls on board pitch in for this effort? I know, well,
I mean, the truth is cats are incredible hunting machines.
(08:48):
And I read this crazy story in the New York
Times from five years ago, and that's when the Smithsonian's
Conservation Biology Institute teamed up with the US Fish and
Wildlife Service to do some research on cats, and they
wanted to identify how much wildlife these cats were killing
every year, so they used cameras and create this new
math model, and basically they were stunned by the results.
(09:09):
So listen to this between feral and domestic cats. The
domestic ones, you know, are the ones that get to
roam outdoors while sleeping indoors. Together, they kill about two
point four billion birds every year. And also they killed
twelve point three billion mammals a year, and most of
those those things like shrews and chipmunks and bowls, along
with mice. I kind of want to know how they
(09:31):
came up with that estimate of twelve point three billion mammals,
but either way, it's insane and terrifying. So I don't
understand like, why would this make me like cats? More
so we've talked about this on the program before, but
those mousers are also keeping places like Disney parks and
houses and also city streets more free of vermin. And also,
I I've read this thing about how they're all these
(09:53):
cat islands in Japan that are super popular as tourist destinations,
just places where they're all these feral cats, And initially
I was thinking, like, who wants to go to these islands?
But one of the arguments I was reading online that
I had actually never thought about was most people can
go to a cat island and not be terrified because
these small feral cats aren't going to bother you. They
(10:14):
just don't care about you. But you know, if you
went to a wild dog island and they were just
wild packs of you know, feral dogs there, you'd be terrified,
like you want to call animal control because roaming packs
of wild dogs aren't fun. But you know, the cats
don't have that herd mentality. I mean, that's an interesting point.
But to be fair, if you put the word feral
in front of any animal, like, I don't want to
(10:36):
be near those and I have no desire to hang
out with I don't know, like Australia's feral camel population
or any of these other animals, but you know, you
started talking about cat origins and and killer cats, and
you were talking about how cat lovers tend to love
the animals independence And actually I had a story that
I wanted to share just real quick. So while freethinking
critters might be great for pet owners, they're not great
(10:57):
for filmmakers. I was reading this interer you with the
Cohen brothers about filming inside Lewin Davis, and they were
talking about how hard it was to shoot the cat
in the movie. So here's a quote from an NPR
interview that Ethan Cohen did, and he says, the whole
exercise of shooting a cat is pretty nightmarish because they
don't care about anything. They don't want to do what
you want them to do. As the animal trainer said
(11:18):
to us, a dog wants to please you. A cat
only wants to please itself. It was just this long, painstaking,
frustrating day shooting the cat, which to me is a
little refreshing. You know that cats don't want to be
seen as film stars, but you know, I've seen Lewin Davison.
I loved it, But how do they get all those
shots eventually? Like, I'm guessing they didn't use c g I. Well,
(11:39):
first of all, they used a lot of cats, and
a cat trainer told them specifically to use a marmalade
orange tabby because it's easier to get a lot of
them on hand. So they had three or four cats
ready for each scene, and essentially they had to find
cats that had a predisposition for doing whatever it was
that they were looking for. So, like, if you needed
a fidgety cat to jump out of someone's hand ends,
(12:00):
you have to find a cat that tends to do
that all the time and hates to be held. So
you get that type of cat for one angle. But
then you know, if you want them to rub against
the table or run down a fire escape, you need
to find the cat that wants to do that naturally.
And even then when they had those cats on hand,
the cats rarely did what they wanted. The Cohen Brothers
actually compared the experience to having to film a vulture
(12:22):
in True Grit. They said the vulture was awful, and
they said that was even by vulture standards, And even
though the experience was really frustrating. They'd take filming a
vulture scene over a cat scene any day, so that
that is ridiculous. And I do love that story. But
here's the thing, and maybe it's something that will increase
our own empathy for cats, But I don't actually think
(12:45):
it's a cat's fault that they're so independent. And why
is that? Because there's a theory that cats aren't actually
domesticated animals. They've never had to be domesticated. But even
more than that, the theory goes, these clever, adorable beasts
have over a thousands of years, actually domesticated us. But
before we talk about that, let's take a little break.
(13:18):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, and we're talking cats.
So a mango. I know you're going to tell us
about cats and domestication, but before we talk about a
cat in the household, let's talk about cats breaking up households.
And you know that totally unfair reputation they got for
causing divorces in America. So I obviously know people are
attached to their animals, but I've never heard about this trend.
(13:40):
So what's the scoop? Well, this comes from Natalie Zarelli
at Atlas Obscura, and she reports that once the Married
Women's Property Act took hold in America, there was actually
an uptick in the number of divorces, and essentially unhappy
couples weren't doomed to stay together, but you still had
to have someone at fault and it had to be irreconcilable.
So a big strategy from the nineteen tens going forward
(14:03):
where couples that they just started blaming their cats. That's
pretty crazy. I've never heard of that, you know. I
actually remember one of our friends from college had a
grandmother who got divorced, and he told me that the
couple staged her walking in on him with another woman,
and it was purely so that they had a traumatic
story to tell. The New York Chorus. But you know,
just blaming a cat would have been so much easier. Yeah,
(14:25):
I would say that would have been a lot easier.
There's actually a story from this piece in nineteen o
three where a man told the judge this horror story.
He says, a cat met him at every turn with
an angry and a chorus of blood curdling mews. Apparently
he find cats in his bed sheets and when he
tried to escape them. He was too scared to leave
the bed, you know, lest he should expose his bare
(14:47):
feet to the claws of numerous pussies and provoke a
melody that would ring in his ears for the rest
of the day. So that feels so dramatic. Well, he
really had to sell it to the judge. And you know,
if the judge asked why the husband didn't just get
rid of the cats, often there'd be some story about
his wife being involved in like the A s p c. A,
which I guess felt virtuous or something. So, I mean,
(15:09):
there were lots of these stories. Oh, there's tons of
these stories that There's actually also a Civil War veteran
who claims he could never sit in his easy chair
because the cat was always there hissing at him. There
was another there was a wife that said she didn't
mind her husband's profanity, but it was too much when
he heaved the family cat at her. And looking at
that case, apparently she wanted twelve hundred dollars for the
(15:31):
humiliation of being beamed by the family cat. Just unbelievable.
There was also another dude who was upset that his
wife kept fifty cats around the house and gave them
more attention than him. Well, I mean, fifty cats would
need a lot of attention. Well, in court, she testified
that she only had fifteen cats. But you know, since
her husband didn't come home most nights, they were both
(15:52):
interested in splitting up. And you know, most of these
stories were either made up or just greatly exaggerated. So
how long did this cat blaming go on for? According
to the article, cats were scapegoats for really about a century,
and it wasn't until nineteen sixty nine, when no fault
divorce laws started becoming adopted by states that suddenly all
(16:12):
the cat blaming disappeared from the newspaper stories, which is
pretty insane. And uh, you know you feel sorry for
the cats. I know it's it's true. It's weird to
say that, but I actually do feel a little sorry
for them. But you were going to talk a little
bit about this idea that cats aren't really domesticated. Yeah, so,
you know, aside from that lion sneezing theory about cats,
researchers have actually found cat bones near human bones for
(16:35):
a while. There's a New Yorker piece on this, but
in China, by analyzing the bones and teeth of cats
skeletons from about five thousand years ago. Scientists can actually
show that cats were eating rodents and grains as well
as leftovers from human meals. And basically cats were opportunistic, right, Like,
they realized that rodents were plentiful around these farmers stores
(16:55):
of grain, so they ingratiated themselves. And people were opportunistic.
They were us that cats would kill off the disease
carrying vermin for them, and it was relatively little investment,
Like they didn't actually have to train the cats. All
they had to do was give them some shelter and
like a little extra food to eat, and then just
lean on their natural instincts. It was totally symbiotic. But
(17:16):
you know, cats were never bred for traits the way
dogs or cattle were. Like, you know, you look at
a docs and then you see how that dog was
bred to go after badgers, right, it was supposed to
chase badgers down badger holes and it's fearless, but it's
also shape for that, with that sort of long noodle
like shape. And uh, you know, cat reading is a
relatively recent phenomenon by the comparison, So I mean, are
(17:37):
there ways to prove out this theory that cats are
only semi in domesticated. Yeah, there definitely are. So there's
this geneticist at Washington University in St. Louis named Wesley Warren,
and apparently he and his colleagues looked at DNA from
wildcats and breeds of domestic cats. And this is from
the New Yorker again. The research showed that genetically cats
have actually diverged far less from their wildcats ants sisters
(18:00):
than dogs have from wolves. You know, you can kind
of see this in the wild, right, Like house cats
are better hunters than dogs. They can they can also
fend for themselves in the wild. And according to the piece,
feral cats have even routinely bred with their wildcat cousins.
And according to Warren quote it's not the true differentiation
you see between wolf and dog by comparison. His belief
(18:21):
is that the modern cat isn't fully domesticated. That is
pretty interesting, and to be honest, it kind of explains
why I don't fully trust them and I do still
almost feel sorry for them, though, well you shouldn't feel
too sorry for them, because some people like to joke
that these wildcats have actually domesticated us, and you know,
they've obviously stayed aloof while we keeping them shelter and
(18:43):
putting scratching posts in our houses and allow them to
go to the bathroom indoors. But the biggest argument for
them having trained does is that they have conditioned humans
to feed them on demand with something called solicitation purring.
So this comes from the journal Current Biology. But scientists
Karen McComb from the University of Sussex analyze the acoustic
(19:03):
structure of cat purs and she actually realized that cats
dramatically exaggerate their purs all to elicit this emotional response
from humans. Apparently it's the same frequency that babies cry at.
And it isn't all cats that do this, it's just
cats that have one on one relationships with humans. That
is pretty manipulative. I mean it's impressive, but it's pretty manipulative. Yeah,
(19:25):
I mean, they've got us on a tight leash. And
also they have a behavior where they rub up against
our legs. As you know, we pull a can out
to get their food, and that's supposedly rewarding us for
being good to them. But there's one more thing that
people site as felines clever control over humans, and that's
that we actually taste test their food for them. You know,
I know we talked about humans taste testing dog food before,
(19:47):
but I can't remember, like, why do they do that again?
So this comes from a Brock University study from Canada.
But basically, the pet food industry has noticed over the
years that cats are fussy eaters and they're quote unreliable
expensive test subjects in the pursuit of more appealing cat
food flavors, and the study basically showed that human taste
panels are you know, a much more cost effective way
(20:09):
to test can cat food. Apparently, the paper lists of
methodology for human testers to quote profile the flavor and
texture of a range of cat food products, including evaluating
meat chunk and gravy to gel constituents gross you know. So,
you know, if we're gonna keep keeping our feline masters happy,
more people are going to have to get into the
(20:31):
cat food tasting business. Well. I definitely have come away
with some understanding of why cats act the way they do,
and and maybe even a little admiration for how they
manipulate it. But why don't we talk about how cats
became so popular in the first place. Let's take a
quick break first, welcome back to Part Time Genius where
(21:01):
we're talking cats. All right, Mango. So obviously we know
that the Internet has done a lot for cat appreciation,
and you know, you had grumpy cat Little Bob ruling
the internet for a while, and all that I can
has cheeseburger memes being such a big thing for a while.
But but actually, looking back, Time Magazine kind of predicted
this trend way back in nineteen eighty one, right, that's right,
(21:22):
And you and I found an old Time magazine cover
story from nineteen eight one that declared that cats were
the hot new thing. But uh, I'd almost argued that
the thing that truly brought cats to the level of
popularity and endearment there at now isn't the Internet or
Morris or even Garfield comics, which are some of the
things that are in this Time article, and I do
think we should talk about them, definitely. But one of
(21:43):
the things I saw that writer Paul Ford points to
is the rise of kitty litter, which is actually a
relatively recent invention. I didn't realize this. It only came
about in ninete so what were people doing before then?
So I had the same question, and basically they had
sandboxes outside they'd let their cats go in the yard. Anyway,
the story is pretty interesting and Ford wrote this up
(22:04):
for Medium. But basically, this woman's sandbox for a cat
was frozen, so she came to buy some sawdust from
a local mill in Michigan. And the guy's name was
at Low. He had been working for his dad's mill
at the time, and when she described what she wanted
for her cat, he gave her an alternative. He had
this kil and dried granulated clay that they just started
using for grease spills at the mill, And when she
(22:27):
came back for more, he started labeling a kitty litter
and tried marketing it. But what's amazing is what a
business it became. So, according to his obit in the
New York Times, he sold the product to Ralston Purina
for two d million dollars. And listen to this, he
owned twenty two homes, a private railroad, a stable of quarterhouses,
and an entire Michigan town. Isn't that incredible? So so
(22:50):
basically kitty letter changed how we interacted with cats. Yeah, so,
like all cats were indoor outdoor cats until the advent
of kitty litter and then slowed more and more cats
game house bound. But it's also starting to think about
how much kitty litter we use. So according to Ford's research,
about twenty companies strip mind about four billion pounds of
the necessary clay each year, four billion pounds. And and
(23:14):
by comparison, Ford sites the Great Pyramid of Giza only
ways thirteen billion pounds. I like that, that's the comparison
to you. So all right, so then you're saying, with
three or four years of work, you could actually build
this impressive pyramid of kitty letter then, which is amazing.
But all right, well let's talk about this time article
that because it is pretty fun blind for it. So
(23:35):
this piece basically argued that the nine eighties were this
time that really primed the world to love cats, right, yeah,
And here's just a few of the indicators they show
that cats were on the rise. So the point you
made earlier, these cat litter boxes in the eighties were
now oder proof and kick proof, and that made keeping
a box where your cat poops in the house far
more appealing than it previously was. There were also three
(23:56):
different Garfield books on the best seller list which cat
humor had truly arrived. I'm not sure what it says
about the taste of people in the nineteen eighties that
three of them were on the bestseller list. And then
California suddenly there were a cat everything's. You could find
a cat resort at, a cat department store, a cat
rest home, a rent a cat agency, a cat dating service.
(24:18):
I have no idea what that is, but it was
one of the things. Cats psychics, cat acting coaches, and
of course a special annual contest to judge cat's meouse.
And then at that time you had Mars, the cat
who was officially declared a celebrity cat, you know, essentially
the feline Burt Reynolds, if you will. And then, as
the story reported, cats were quickly gaining on dogs. According
(24:40):
to the article, thirty four million cats had worked their
way into homes, which was a fifty increase over the
last decade. Now if you look at those numbers, now
some reports have cats that closer to nine billion cats
in homes, you know, plus the thirty or forty million
feral community cats that you know, they're the ones that
keep rodents at bay. Yeah, yeah, I guess for all
(25:00):
the jokes about this cat trend like, cats have really
grown on us as a culture. And while you and
I might not be cat people yet, I do think
we have to grudgingly admit that they're pretty amazing creatures.
I mean, I'm not sure I'm there just yet, but
maybe after a few amazing facts. So let's start the
fact off. Do you know that jazz musician Charles Mingus
(25:28):
trained his cat Nightlife to go on the toilet. In fact,
he even wrote a step by step manuel called the
Charles Mingus Catalog for Toilet Training your cat. Well, there
is at least one thing you cannot train a cat
to do, and that's hold a candle for you. According
to the folks at Qui, Dante desperately tried teaching his
cat to hold a candle for him so he could
(25:48):
write at night, but to no avail, I mean, stupid Dante, Like,
why wouldn't you just get a candle holder? Doesn't make
it never occurred to him for some reason. So you know,
I I know if you will always talk about cats
incredible ability to land on their feet, but did you
know that cats can survive falls from sixty feet? Now,
obviously this isn't a suggestion for listeners to go test
(26:10):
this out on their cat. Far from it. But uh,
in a study on cats that had fallen from tall buildings,
apparently of them survived, though they did have injuries. And
this comes from our old pal bill domain. But the
study found that cats that fell from heights of seven
to thirty two stories were less likely to die than
those that fell from two to six stories, which makes
(26:31):
no sense. So the scientists know why this is. So
there's actually a lot of theories and and there's been
a lot of research into it. And part of it
might be that because cats bodies act as a bit
of a parachute, and part of it might be that
cats relax once they've fallen a certain distance. And you know,
the reason babies and stuff men often survive accidents is
that they bounced because they don't tense up their muscles.
(26:53):
I mean, I always love that buttered cat paradox, you know,
because cats always land on their feet and butter bread
always lands face down. So like if you tie a
piece of buttered bread to a cat's back and then
drop it, well the cat just like hover above the floor.
I love that. So here's a quick one about cats
making the world a better place. So in two thousand
(27:14):
seven the New York Times. Before that, Thailand was shaming
wayward cops. You know, these were the officers who were littering,
or parking in the wrong place, or even showing little
abuses of power. And they did this with an unusual method.
They started making them wear pink Hello Kitty arm bands. And,
as a police chief told The Times after the policy
came out, police were scared, it will be very embarrassing
(27:36):
to walk around with Hello Kitty on your arm. What's strange, though,
is that this is actually the second variation on this
arm band technique. So there was a previous iteration where
they gave bad cops plaid arm bands. But unfortunately the
they were seen as like gestures of pride or something,
and they started taking them home and treating them like metals.
All right, well, here's a strange bit of science. According
(27:58):
to News, scientists, cats don't understand the cause and effect
of tugging on a string. You'll have to explain what
do you mean by this. Well, there was a study
at Canterbury christ Church University in the UK and there
was a team of researchers and what they did was
they attached fish or biscuit trees to the end of
one string, and then they put another string with no
treat attached. And according to the researchers, the cats couldn't
(28:19):
see the cause and effect. The story states, chimps, parrots, ravens,
they all understand that tugging on one end of a
string will bring a treat closer. But cats don't, and
there aren't alone. So pigeons and human infants also don't
pick up on this, and for the record, neither do dogs.
So speaking of cats and dogs, did you know that
if your dogs overweight, there's actually a good chance you'll
(28:41):
be overweight too? And in two thousand and ten, the
journal Public Health Nutrition published a study from Amsterdam that
showed that there's a significant relationship between overweight dogs and
the b m I of their owners. But if your
cat is overweight, it's not a good predictor of whether
you'll be overweight. It's because you and your cat are
just you know, on your own, living your best lives.
(29:01):
Is that what it is? Okay? All right, Well here's
a strange one. So Japan is obsessed with cats, right,
and that's that's no surprise. Obviously, it's the land of
waving porcelain cats that sit in stores and responsible for
Hello Kitty, and I think it's where cat cafes started.
But but now also they have cat bars and cat
cafe train cars, so they are definitely cat obsessed. There's
(29:22):
even a hand lotion that's now cat paw scented, so
your hands can smell more like the bottom of your cats.
I don't know why people want this, but it is
available now. But you know how cats make biscuits in
the morning, right, Yeah, that's when they kind of like
wake you up and gently need on owners chests in
the morning for attention. So the craziest story I read
is that there's a spa in Japan where they offer
(29:43):
these cat treatments as back massages. You can actually pay
to have a cat need your back. It was really
hard for me to even just say that. Stapid so
ter It's both amazing and terrifying to me. So do
you know that hats aren't actually the only creatures they
get hairballs? Cows and rabbits get them too. That's weird alright.
(30:05):
So here's one about Mark Twain, the notorious cat lover,
as we mentioned earlier. Now, one thing he truly enjoyed
was giving his cats strange names. So here are a
few of them. He had Appollinaris, Beasel, bub blather, Skite, Buffalo, Bill, Satan, Sourmash,
Soapy Sell, Pestilence, and Bambino. And actually I have one
more fact about Twain. Apparently Bambino escaped one day and
(30:28):
Twain was so worried that he did what any cat
lover would do, and he put an ad in the
New York newspapers and offered a five dollar reward for this.
It was a large and intensely black cat. Now, Bambino
showed up on his own in a few days, but
putting an ad in the paper was a huge mistake.
Years later, people were still using it as an excuse
(30:48):
to try to meet Mark Twain. They would just show
up at his door with like random cat that they claimed,
we're definitely Bambino. Well, you know, I thought I had
you with my Hello Pitti fact, but I think you
best to meet with that Mark Twain one too, So
I'm actually gonna give you the Cat Fact Trophy today. Wow,
it is truly an honor, And listeners, I hope you've
(31:09):
enjoyed today's list of facts about cats. If we have
forgotten any great fact, please send those to us. We'd
love to hear from you. Part Time Genius and How
Stuff Works dot com. You can also call our fact
hot line one eight four four pt Genius or hit
us up on Facebook or Twitter. I hope we have
redeemed ourselves a little bit with all the cat lovers
out there with today's little vote. I have a bit
(31:30):
more respect for cats now. But thank you guys for listening.
Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production
of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without several
(31:52):
brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even
begin to understand. CHRISTA McNeil does the editing thing. Noel
Brown made the theme song and does mixy mixy sound thing.
Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing. Gave Louesier is
our lead researcher, with support from the research Army including
Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve Jeff
Cook gets the show to your ears. Good job, Eves.
(32:12):
If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe.
And if you really really like what you've heard maybe
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