DID YOU KNOW?

DO YOU KNOW WHY CATS........

..always fall on their feet? Cats have an automatic 'righting reflex', which comes into effect as soon as the animal starts to fall. Starting with the head, the cat's whole body twists in mid-air until upright, then the legs are stretched out and the back is arched just before impact to soften the landing. (This doesn't stop them being severely injured or killed if falling from height) ..trample on your lap? Cats like to settle on their owner's lap and trample with alternate paws, often purring away happily, until the prick of the claws prompts the cat's removal. The trampling action derives from kittenhood, when the kitten would knead at the mother's breast to stimulate milk supply. The adult cat is telling you that it wants to be pampered.

..wash themselves so much? Cats always wash themselves in the same order, either when cleaning up after a meal or cooling down after exercise. Face and head are washed first, using paws, then shoulders, front legs, sides, back legs and finally the tail. They will also vigorously lick one shoulder following a humiliating episode, for example, after landing awkwardly.

..greet you by rubbing against your leg? Cats have scent glands on their head and root of their tail. When they rub their head and body against you, and wrap their tail round you, they are effectively marking you with their scent. They then lick the fur that has been rubbed to 'taste' your scent. For a cat this is like shaking hands or exchanging a friendly kiss.

..have eyes that glow in the dark? Cats have a mirror like layer at the back of their eyes, which make use of minute amounts of light. It intensifies any image by reflecting it back to the retina. This means the cat can detect movements in semi-darkness that are invisible to us. In complete darkness cats can 'see' by sound, smell and their ultra sensitive whiskers.

..love to scratch? Cats need to scratch to get rid of old nails so that new ones can grow. Claws are used for kneading and also to anchor the cat when it is stretching. So, to benefit your cat and spare your furniture, provide a sturdy scratching post - or if your cat prefers a horizontal scratch, some corrugated cardboard in a topless box.

..cry to be let out then wag their tails on the doorstep? Your cat's body language is trying to tell you that your cat can't make up its mind! This 'balancing' movement is weighing up the pros and cons of a particular action. For example, on a cold winter's night is it better to go out exploring or to follow the equally strong impulse to stay at home in front of a nice, warm fire!

..groom themselves after being petted? Cats have a highly sophisticated sense of smell and, although they enjoy being cuddled, they need to smooth their ruffled fur and lick away traces of human scent from it. Tugging at the fur also stimulates glands, which help waterproof the cat's coat.

..stalk their prey in slow motion? A legacy of surviving in the wild is the ability of cats to negotiate potentially hostile terrain. They have remarkable strength and muscle control, which is particularly evident when a cat is sneaking up on its prey; every muscle is attuned for the final pounce.

..purr when they are stroked? When a cat is stroked and held close by its owner, it mimics the relationship between a kitten and its mother. Gentle, repetitive stroking resembles the mother cat's grooming action and makes the cat - whatever age - feel secure and content. Like the cat's mother, its human 'parent' also provides food! In the Middle Ages In the Middle Ages people thought that cats and dogs were invested with supernatural powers. Cats were blamed for storms at sea and dogs were held responsible for high winds. Thus it was 'raining cats and dogs' during a wet and windy storm!

CANCER AND CATS

Until fairly recently the diagnosis of cancer in a cat usually resulted in euthanasia. However a selection of treatments are now available which may control cancer for considerable periods of time and in a few instances lead to a cure.

The term 'cancer' may be used to describe any sort of tumour that is a growth in the body. It usually denotes that the tumour is malignant and will grow rapidly, invade local tissues and may spread to other distant sites around the body. Other tumours, however, are benign and characterised by slower growth, less infiltration of surrounding tissues and with no tendency to spread.

A tumour develops when abnormal changes inside a cell cause it to divide uncontrollably and replicate itself millions of times. This produces a solid mass (tumour) wherever the original cell was present. Although this process can happen spontaneously with increasing age, environmental factors such as viruses, chemicals and toxins may also stimulate cells to divide in this way and form certain types of tumour.

Cancer may develop in any organ or body tissue and many different types can occur, such as skin cancer, lung cancer and liver cancer. In cats the main cancers are leukaemia and lymphoma, which affect the white cells of the blood and bone marrow. This relates to the presence of a virus, Feline Leukaemia Virus, which infects cats.

The second most common cancer is skin cancer. White cats, in particular, are very susceptible to the harmful rays of the sun and should be kept out of it as much as possible especially during the hours when it is most damaging. Sun block (factor 25+) can be used on areas of pink skin. The earflaps and strip of thin haired skin between the ears and eyes are particularly vulnerable to sunburn and skin cancers.

Cancers of the mammary glands are the third most common type and only occur in female cats.

The clinical signs of cancer vary enormously depending on the tumour type. Tumour cells may gradually replace the normal cells in an organ such as a kidney or liver and thus prevent it from functioning properly, the cat would then start to show signs of kidney or liver failure.

Alternatively the tumour might grow in a confined space and compress surrounding organs by external pressure, for example the lungs in the chest cavity, which might be indicated by irregular breathing, coughing or the inability to exercise properly. A tumour within the skull might result in epileptic fits or severe depression.

Investigation of any underlying tumour may require blood samples, X rays, ultra-sound scans or exploratory surgery to obtain a biopsy. Treatments include surgery where the aim is to remove all tumour cells to prevent re-growth. This is fairly straightforward with a benign growth but a malignant tumour will require a much wider removal of tissue around it. The first attempt at surgery is the most successful.

Radiotherapy is usually restricted to localised tumours which are superficial and affect the extremities i.e. mouth, nose, limbs and paws. This is because of the strong possibility of excessive side effects.

Chemotherapy using a similar range of drugs to those used on humans can be used to treat animals. Blood and bone marrow tumours respond best to therapy although bone tumours may also be helped. A typical regime involves a combination of injections administered by the vet and tablets given by the cat's owner.

If prompt diagnosis is made and appropriate treatment started, the outcome can be extremely favourable. In other cases no treatment may be feasible because of the type of cancer or its size - in this case euthanasia may be the kindest option. The main consideration for any caring owner when making a decision about treatment is about the future 'quality of life' of their much-loved cat.

The Senses

Our world is horizontal but the cat's world is both horizontal and vertical. Cats have a repertoire of jumps, impromptu jumps, vertical and horizontal jumps and the jump of the hunter, the pounce. They jump magnificently and can clear five times their own height. In order to jump a cat needs a superb system of balance and co-ordination and this it has in its vestibular apparatus, the organ of balance deep in the ears. Its skeleton and muscles are also perfectly adapted for the skills needed by a lithe hunter. Within the cat's brain, once more in its cerebellum, is a co-ordinating centre that is responsible for receiving movement and balance information from all the senses and for directing further movements. The nerve messages to and from this centre move exceptionally quickly, enabling the cat literally to walk tightropes.

Cats have a reputation for superhuman balance and co-ordination - superhuman in that it is superior to our own, but that doesn't mean that cats never make mistakes. Every year, just as sure as clockwork, on the first warm weekend in spring when windows in houses and flats are left open for the first time, cats take to the air, not because they have planned to do so but because they have miscalculated their footing. At the local veterinary clinic it is not uncommon to treat two or three in one day.

Flying-cat syndrome is an urban phenomenon, a consequence of the combination of our increasingly keeping cats as indoor pets and our living in high-rise accommodation. The injuries cats suffer as a result of these falls seems to have a peculiar pattern with unusual explanation. If a cat falls one or two floors, its injuries are usually mild and there is a physical explanation for this based on its musculature and skeleton, both of which are adapted for lightning bursts of speed. In order to run swiftly, the front legs are liberated from the shoulders by not having a bony attachment through the collarbone. The cat's collarbone (or clavicle) is either non-existent or shows on x-ray as an insignificant sliver of bone. Combined with a narrow chest, this means that cats have free movement of the forelimbs and when they walk they place their feet nearly in front of each other, which is why they can walk along the tops of fences with such agility or, as is the case with some cats, insinuate their way through the china and glass on the mantelpiece without knocking anything off.

Cats also have a mobile backbone in which each bone is attached to the next in a rather loose manner. This allows them to bend themselves in half, a facility that can be witnessed when trying to examine a fearful or feral cat. The consequence is that when a cat falls a short distance, two abilities are exercised. The first is to use the front legs as pistons or springs. When the cat lands on its legs, they absorb the shock and prevent more serious injuries to internal organs. But in order to land on its legs the cat has to right itself in the first place and to do so quickly. This need is handled by its superbly refined vestibular apparatus, the organ of balance.

The vestibular apparatus, situated inside the ears, is responsible for balance and orientation and it works in a fascinating way. The apparatus itself consists of a number of gyro-like fluid-filled chambers, each lined with millions of tiny hairs. When these hairs move, signals are sent with amazing rapidity to the cerebrum, to the balance co-ordination centre. The larger chambers of the vestibular apparatus, the utricle and saccule, also have tiny crystals of calcium carbonate in the fluid. With a gravitational effect these settle on whichever hairs are at the bottom and trigger signals to the co-ordination centre on up/down orientation. Meanwhile, in the semicircular canals of the apparatus, the sensitive microscopic hairs project into equally microscopic flaps of tissue which wave and move whenever the fluid inside the canals sloshes around. The three canals are arranged at right angles to each other, and can signal the cat's direction of movement and also its acceleration.

This superbly evolved organ of balance, together with the plasticity of the cat's vertebral attachments, is what gives the animal its fascinating righting reflex.

The Senses - Hearing

To succeed as a hunter, the cat possesses sharp hearing. It is a sense that has evolved to help it hear the faintest squeaks and rustlings of its' prey. Hearing in cats has been studied for almost forty years and it was already known that cats could hear sounds two octaves higher than we can. Sound consists of vibrations and these reach the ears as pressure waves of air. Once these vibrations reach the cat's ear, they trigger nerve cells in the hearing apparatus, the cochlea, which send messages to the brain where the sounds are analysed.

To help gather sound the cat's ears are equipped with a dozen special muscles to assist them in rotating through 180 degrees and to cock the ears towards the source of the sound. Each ear catches the tiniest of vibrations and funnels them down to the ear canal to the eardrum.

Within their range of sound sensitivity, cats can discriminate one tenth of a tone. They can tell the difference between two sounds coming from sources that are only 5 degrees apart - that's 3 inches (8 cm) apart, at a distance of 1 yard (1 metre)! Turning the ears in different directions helps the cat to pick up the faintest of sounds.

Just as in the case of human beings, cat's ability to hear high notes diminishes with age, although they might be able to compensate by becoming extra sensitive to touch vibrations felt through their feet. Cats readily and easily learn to recognise certain sounds - a knock at the door, the squeak of a fridge door opening, the noise of a can opener, their owner's car, and, of course, the names we give them! These sounds are a sort of language to the cat.

The Senses - Vision

Mice and rats don't come in a multitude of colours all tasting different, so their predator, the cat, has little need for colour vision. Cats are diurnal animals so they hunt mainly at dawn and dusk. That's another reason why colour vision isn't important. On the other hand, twilight and night vision and a facility to see very slight movement at a short, sharp gallop or pounce away, are both advantages for the stealthy hunter. Cats have a highly specialized sense of sight, one that allows them to concentrate and focus on their prey while leaving the rest of their visual field in a blur. Their eyes are set well forward, giving them excellent binocular vision - much better than dogs' - though not as good as ours.

Cats' eyes are dramatically large for the size of their heads, one of the reasons that make them so attractive. Can you imagine what we would think of cats if they had little rat's eyes? The surface of the eye, the cornea, is highly curved and bulges out rather dramatically. This gives a wider angle of view and also allows much more light to get in; about five times as much as gets into our eyes. Inside is a very large lens but the muscles that control it are rather weak and insignificant. The consequences of this anatomical arrangement is that cats are not able to focus well on nearby objects. In fact 30 inches (75 cm) is about the closest they can focus and they see best in a range from 6 to 20 feet (2 to 6 m). In dim light the pupil can open its diameter far more than we can ours - as much as ? inch (1 cm) to allow in the maximum amount of light. When those pupils are 'wild-eyed' and totally dilated during daylight, you can be sure that something exciting is going to happen!

Suckling and Kneading

If a young kitten is adopted before completing a full 12-week suckling period, it will often suckle its owner's skin or clothing in its mother's place and this behaviour is often accompanied by "kneading" with its paws (kittens knead at their mother's teats to increase the flow of milk). This can continue into your cat's adult years.

Should your cat decide to suckle you or your clothing simply say "no" but provide your cat with a safe toy or object of his own towards which he can direct this behaviour.

While it can be painful, remember that kneading is a sign of happiness. It you can't tolerate a little bit of kneading you could put a nice thick blanket in your lap and let your cat knead to his heart's content.

Grass and plants ?

It is believed cats sometimes eat grass to stimulate vomiting in order to get rid of a hairball. In small amounts, grass can be a welcome treat for any house cat.

However, cats have a tendency to ingest vegetation and may experiment with houseplants, which can be poisonous to cats. Be sure all plants in your home are safe in case of ingestion (consult your vet) or place them out of reach. Non-toxic but valued plants can be protected with a small amount of sprayed vinegar or black pepper solution on leaves.

For those cats determined to eat plants, owners can offer treats of (herbicide and pesticide-free) potted grass.