September 19, 2024 • 32 mins
With Single Cat Ladies all over the news, Will and Mango revisit a classic cat episode: from why cats 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 will?
Speaker 2 (00:00):
What's that? Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:01):
So, I was looking online and I found this description
for a job that's definitely not for us, professional cat cuddler.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. And first of all,
why is that a job?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
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. 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 enough? Right? Does
catitude come to you naturally? I wouldn't say we have
(00:38):
high catatude levels? No, have you counted kittens before you
go to sleep? Do you feed stray cats in your locality?
Does pett and cats make you warm and fuzzy?
Speaker 3 (00:48):
I mean, I gotta be honest, Mango, I can't say
that any of those sound like me.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
So I can't think of a job you're less suited for.
And the job basically involves calming down skittish cats and
mister me them into a zen like space so the
vets can see them but one of the biggest 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
(01:15):
a cat intervention, or a cat invention. 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
I will be begging for that cat cuddling job.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Well I'm not sure I see that happening, but let's
dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius.
(01:56):
I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my
good friend Mangesh how 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 letti Grey
Acoustic Kitty, and I didn't see the album cover for this,
but I swear is that Garfield's smooth Jazz I hear
(02:18):
playing in the background.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
It is so Tristan was showing me this earlier it's
all Garfield inspired music, but my favorite is fat is
where It's at, you know, because Garfield eats a lot.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Right, Thanks for explaining that that guy has the best
taste in novelty albums, and that of course is our
friend and producer Tristan McNeil nw Mango. 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.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
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 of my life where I've
dreamed of the becase vet. And also, for the record,
we had cats on a bunch of covers of Mental
Flos Plus. The first story I wrote on mentalfloss dot
com was about a cat piano, so I had no
(03:10):
idea when he came across this anti cat.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
That's right, you wrote.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
About what was it called the cats and Clavier. It
was this musical instrument that I think it was invented
to cheer up a prince or something.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Is that right.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
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
meyow 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
video of this on YouTube, but all that meowing isn't
(03:44):
exactly music, but it's also not not music either.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
When I was growing up.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
I was across the street from Triplet Boys. 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, 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
(04:22):
little jokes about cats on the show. These I guess
we think of them as like throwaway comments, 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 we apparently are not alone
in this polarizing world of cats. I actually found this
quote by the American writer Carl Van Vectim, and he
(04:42):
wrote a book called Tiger in the House, which is
really all about house cats. And 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 indifference in some matters, you know, elephants, cockatoos,
hg well Sweden, roast beef, pouccini, even Mormonism. But in
(05:04):
the matter of cats, it seems necessary to take a
firm stand. The cat himself insists upon this. He invariably
inspires strong feelings. He is indeed the only animal who
does well.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
It is true that cats definitely inspire strong feelings. And
when we've joked on the show about not being cat lovers,
people have ridden in and said, you know who also
hated cats? Hitler and also Napoleon, and Mussolini, and I
looked this up. It's true they were cat hitters. I mean,
I'm sure all three of them also hated like broccoli
(05:38):
and homework, so it doesn't really mean that much, like
a lot of people dislike a lot of things. But
I was intrigued by the comments, so I looked up
other famous cat haters in history, and it's not a
good look for us to be perceived this way. So
in addition to Napoleon and Mussolini, you've got Genghis Khan
Stalin also hated cats. Caesar Alexander the Great, Eisenhower, for
(06:02):
some reason, is on the list, but frankly, I'm a
little surprised that Pollpond and Ediemine aren't on there as well.
To around out, the list.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Has a lot of terrible people.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
I mean, aside from Eisenhower, who we love for building
highways and infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Of course love infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I love infrastructure.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
But yeah, 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, Nikola, Tesla,
Saint Francis of ASSISI, Mark Twain, Florence Nightingale, Catherine the Great,
(06:41):
Charles Mingus, and all of the Brontes.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
All the Brontes, even Branwell Bronte.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
I checked up on this mango. They got Branwell.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Well. Obviously, of those two sample sets, I'd rather be
associated with the cat lovers than the cat haters. But
I was 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
(07:14):
can't get used to the idea that cats won't submit
to them.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
So is the idea that cats are just too independent
minded for dictators or what exactly?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
And truthfully, that's also a big part of what cat
people like about cats, their 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 off topic, but one of the
cat origin stories I read, and this is an Islamic
(07:45):
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 in jeopardies. So he prayed for a solution,
and God answered his wishes by having a lion sneeze,
and out of both nostrils from that sneeze emerged two cats,
(08:10):
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
yous they are, or no one needed a ruthless killing
machine on a ship and God provided cats.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
I think I might lean toward the ladder, but 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?
Speaker 1 (08:44):
I know, well, I mean, the truth is cats are
incredible hunting machines. And I read this crazy story in
the New York Times from five years ago, and that's
when the Smithsonians 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 created
(09:05):
this new math model, and basically they were stunned by
the results. So listen to this between feral and domestic cats.
The domestic ones, you know, are the ones that get
to roam out doors 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. Wow,
and most of those things like shrews and chipmunks and
(09:28):
bowls along with mice.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
I kind of want to know how they 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.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
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've read this thing about how there are all these
cat islands in Japan that are super popular as tourist destinations,
just places where there are all these feral cats, And
initially I was thinking, like, who wants to go to
(10:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
To bother you.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
They just don't care about you. But you know, if
you went to a wild dog island and there were
just wild packs of you know, feral dogs there, you'd
be terrified. Like, yeah, you'd 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.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
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 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 yeah, you started talking about cat origins and killer cats,
and you were talking about how cat lovers tend to
love the animals independence, And actually I had a story
(10:52):
that I wanted to share just real quick. You know, so,
while free thinking critters might be great for pet owners,
they're not great for filmmakers. I was reading this inner
with the Cohen brothers about filming Inside Lewyn 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
(11:13):
because they don't care about anything. They don't want to
do what you want them to do. As the animal
trainer said 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.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
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 lowin Davis and I loved it.
But how do they get all those shots eventually? Like,
I'm guessing they didn't use CGI.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Well, 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.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Them on hand.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
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, 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
(12:09):
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 and true grit. They said the vulture
was awful, and they said that was even by vulture standards,
(12:29):
And even though the experience was really frustrating, they'd take
filming a vulture scene over a cat scene any day.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
So that is ridiculous, and I do love that story.
But here's the thing, and maybe it's something that'll increase
our own empathy for cats, But I don't actually think
it's a cat's fault that they're so independent.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
And why is that?
Speaker 1 (12:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, and we're talking cats. So, Mango,
I know you were going to tell us about cats
and domestication, but before we talk about a cat in
a household, let's talk about cats breaking up households. And
you know that totally unfair reputation they got for causing
divorces in America.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
So I obviously know people are attached to their animals,
but I had never heard about this trend. So what's
the scoop?
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Well, this comes from Natalie Zareli 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 irreconcilables. So a big
strategy from the nineteen tens going forward were couples that
(14:04):
they just started blaming their cats. That's pretty crazy. I'd
never heard of that, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
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 courtse But you know,
just blaming a cat would have been so much easier.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Yeah, I would say that would have been a lot easier.
There's actually a story from this piece in nineteen oh
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'd 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.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
So that feels so dramatic.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Well, he really had to sell it to the judge.
And you know, if the judge asked why the husband
and didn't just get rid of the cats. Often there'd
be some story about his wife being involved in like
the ASPCA, which I guess felt virtuous or something.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
So, I mean there were lots of these stories.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Oh, there's tons of these stories. There's actually also a
Civil War veteran who claims he could never sit in
his easy chair because a 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 humiliation of being beamed by the family cat.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Just unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
There was also another dude who was upset that his
wife kept fifty cats around the house and gave them
more attention than him.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Well, I mean fifty cats would need a lot of attention.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
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 interested in splitting up. And you know,
most of these stories were either made up or just
greatly exaggerated.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
So how long did this cat blaming go on for?
Speaker 3 (16:02):
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 the cat blaming disappeared from the newspaper stories.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Which is pretty insane. And you know, you feel sorry
for the cats.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
I know 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.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Yeah, so, you know, aside from that lion sneezing theory
about cats, researchers have actually found cat bones near human
bones for a while. There's a New Yorker piece on this,
but in China, by analyzing the bones and teeth of
cat 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,
(16:51):
Like they realized that rodents were plentiful around these farmers'
stores of grain, so they ingratiated themselves, and people were
opportunistic realized 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
(17:12):
on their natural instincts. It was totally symbiotic. But you know,
cats were never bred for traits the way dogs or
cattle were. Like, you know, you look at a dogsund
and 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 noodleized shape. And you know,
(17:33):
cat breeding is a relatively recent phenomenon by comparison.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
So I mean, are there ways to prove out this
theory that cats are only semi domesticated?
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, there definitely are So there's this geneticist that Washington
University in Saint 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 wildcat and than dogs have from wolves.
(18:02):
You know, you can kind of see this in the wild, right,
Like house cats are better hunters than dogs, they can
also fend for themselves in the wild, and according to
the Peace 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 is that the modern cat isn't fully domesticated.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
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
were keeping them shelter and putting scratching posts in our
houses and allow them to go to the bathroom indoors.
But the biggest argument for them having trained us is
that they've conditioned humans to feed them on demand with
(18:53):
something called solicitation purring. So this comes from the journal
Current Biology. But scientist Karen McComb from the University of
Sussex analyze the acoustic structure of cat purs and she
actually realized that cats dramatically exaggerate their purrs all to
elicit this emotional response from humans. Apparently it's the same
frequency that babies cry. And it isn't all cats that
(19:16):
do this, it's just cats that have one on one
relationships with humans.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
That is pretty manipulative. I mean it's impressive, but it's
pretty manipulative.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yeah, 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 say it as feline's clever control over humans,
and that's that we actually taste test their food for.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Them, you know, I know, we talked about humans taste
testing dog food before, but I can't remember it, Like,
why do they do that again?
Speaker 1 (19:49):
So this comes from a Brocky 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
to test can cat food. Apparently, the paper lists of
(20:12):
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. So, you know,
if we're going to keep keeping our feline masters happy,
more people are gonna have to get into the cat
food tasting business.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Well, I definitely have.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Come away with some understanding of why cats act the
way they do, and maybe even a little admiration for
how they manipulate this. But why don't we talk about
how cats became so popular in the first place. Let's
take a quick break first, back to part time Genius
(21:01):
where 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 bubb ruling
the Internet for a while, and all that I can
has cheeseburger memes being such a big thing.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
For a while.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
But actually, looking back, Time Magazine kind of predicted this
trend way back in nineteen eighty one, right.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
That's right, and you and I found an old Time
magazine cover story from nineteen eighty one that declared that
cats were the hot new thing. But I'd almost argue
that the thing that truly brought cats to the level
of popularity and endearment they're at now isn't the Internet
or Morris or even Garfield.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Comics, which are some of the things that are in
this Time article, and I do think we should talk about.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Them, definitely. But one of 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 nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
So what were people doing before then?
Speaker 1 (21:55):
So I had the same question, And basically they had
sandboxes outside, or they'd let their cats go in the
yard Anyway, the story's pretty interesting and Ford wrote this
up 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 ed Low. He had been working for his dad's
(22:15):
mill at the time, and when she described what she
wanted for her cat, he gave her an alternative. He
had this kiln dried granulated clay that they just started
using for grease bills at the mill, and when she
came back for more, he started labeling it 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
(22:38):
for two hundred 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?
Speaker 2 (22:49):
That is crazy?
Speaker 3 (22:50):
So basically kitty letter changed how we interacted with cats.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Yeah, so, like all cats were indoor, outdoor cats until
the advent of kitty litter, and then slow more and
more cats became housebound. But it's also starting to think
about how much kitty litter we use. So according to
Ford's research, about twenty companies Strip mine about four billion
pounds in the necessary clay each year, four billion pounds.
And by comparison, Ford sites the Great Pyramid of Giza
(23:18):
only weighs thirteen billion pounds.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
I like that, that's the comparison to use.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
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 because it is pretty.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Fun blind for it. So this piece basically argued that
the nineteen eighties were this time that really primed the
world to love cats, right.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Yeah, And here are 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 odor proof and kickproof, and that made
keeping a box where your cat poops in the house
far more appealing than it previously was. There were also
three different Garfield books on the bestseller list, which means
cat humor had truly arrived.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
I'm not sure what.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
It says about the taste of people in the nineteen eighties,
that three of them were on the bestseller list, and the
California suddenly there were a cat everything. You could find,
a cat resort at, a cat department store, a cat
rest home, a rent a cat agency, a cat dating service.
I have no idea what that is, but it was
one of the things. Cats psychics, cat acting coaches, and
(24:24):
of course a special annual contest to judge cats mea house.
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
to the article, thirty four million cats had worked their
way into homes, which was a fifty five percent increase
(24:46):
over the last decade. If you look at those numbers now,
some reports have cats that closer to ninety five million
cats and homes, you know, plus the thirty or forty
million feral community cats that you know, they're the ones
that keep rodents at bay.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yeah, I guess for all.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
I mean, I'm not sure I'm there just yet, but
maybe after a few amazing facts.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
So let's start the fact off.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Did you know that jazz musician Charles Mingus 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.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
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 QI, Dante desperately tried teaching
his cat to hold a candle for him so he
could write at night, but to no avail, I.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Mean, stupid Dante, Like, why wouldn't you just get a
candle holder?
Speaker 2 (25:54):
It doesn't make It never occurred to him for some reason.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
So you know, I know 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
this out on their cat, far from it, But in
a nineteen eighty seven study on cats that had fallen
from tall buildings. Apparently ninety percent of them survived, though
(26:19):
they did have injuries. And this comes from an 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.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Makes no sense. So do scientists know why this is?
Speaker 1 (26:35):
So there's actually a lot of theories, and there's been
a lot of research into it. And part of it
might be that because cat's bodies act as a bit
of a parachute, and part of it might be that
cats relax once they've fallen in a certain distance. And
you know, the reason babies and stumpmen often survive accidents
is that they bounce because they don't tense up their muscles.
Speaker 3 (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 faced. So like, if you tie a piece
of buttered bread to a cat's back and then drop it,
will the cat just like hover above the floor.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
I love that. So here's a quick one about cats
making the world a better place. So in two thousand
and seven, the New York Times board 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 armbands, and, as a police chief told The Times
(27:33):
after the policy came out, police were scared, it will
be very embarrassing to walk around with Hello Kitty on
your arm. What's strange, though, is that this is actually
the second variation on this armband technique. So there was
a previous iteration where they gave bad cops plaid armbands,
but unfortunately they were seen as like gestures of pride
or something, and they started taking them home and treating
(27:54):
them like metals.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
All right, well, here's a strange bit of science. According
to new scientists, cats don't understand the cause and effect
of tugging on a string.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
You'll have to explain what do you mean by this.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Well, there was a.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Study at Canterbury christ Church University in the UK, and
there was a team of researchers and what they did
was they attach 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 see the cause and effect. The story states, chimps, parrots, ravens,
they all understand that tugging on one end of a
(28:26):
string will bring a treat closer. But cats don't, and
they aren't alone. So pigeons and human infants also don't
pick up on this, and for the record, neither do dogs.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
So speaking of cats and dogs, do you know that
if your dog is overweight, there's actually a good chance
you'll be overweight too? And in twenty ten, the Journal
of Public Health Nutrition published a study from Ansterdam that
showed that there's a significant relationship between overweight dogs and
the BMI of their owners. But if your cat is overweight,
it's not a good predictor of whether you'll be overweight.
(28:57):
It's because you and your cat are just you know,
on your own, living your best lives.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Is that what it is? Okay? All right, Well here's
a strange one.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
So Japan is obsessed with cats, right, and that's no
surprise obviously. It's the land of waving porcelain cats that
sit in stores and responsible for Hello Kitty. I think
it's where cat cafes started. But now also they have
cat bars and cat cafe train cars, so they are
definitely cat obsessed. There's even a hand lotion that's now
cat paw scented, so your hands can smell more like
(29:27):
the bottom of your cats.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
I don't know why.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
People want this, but it is available now. But you
know how cats make biscuits in the morning, right.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Yeah, that's when they kind of like wake you up
and gently need on owner's chests in the morning for attention.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
So the craziest story I read is that there's a
spa in Japan where they offer 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 statement.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
So terrible.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
It's both amazing and terrifying to me. So do you
know that cats aren't actually the only creatures they get
hair balls? Cows and rabbits get them too.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Oh that's weird, all right. So here's one about Mark Twain,
the notorious cat lover. As we mentioned earlier. Now, one
thing he truly enjoyed was giving his cat strange names.
So here are a few of them. He had Apollinaris, Beeesel,
bub blatherskite, buffalo bill, Satan, sour mash, soapy sal pestilence,
and Bambino. And actually add one more fact about Twain.
(30:26):
Apparently Bambino escaped one day and 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 dollars 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
(30:46):
were still using it as an excuse to try to
meet Mark Twain. They would just show op at his
door with like random cat that they claimed, we're definitely Bambino.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Well, you know, I thought I had you with my
Hello Candy fact. I think you best to be with
that Mark Twain one to two. So I'm actually gonna
give you the Cat Fact Trophy today.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Wow, it is truly an honor.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
And listeners, I hope you've 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 HowStuffWorks dot com. You can also
call our fact hotline one eight four four pt Genius
or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
I hope we have redeemed.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Ourselves a little bit with all the cat lovers out
there with today's episode. I have a bit more respect
for cats now. But thank you guys for listening. Thanks
(31:48):
again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of
How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant
people who do the important things we couldn't even begin
to understand.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Christa McNeil does the editing thing.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy
mixy sound thing. Jerry Roland does the exact producer thing.
Gabeluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the research
army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and Eves.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears. Good job, Eves.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe,
And if you really really like what you've heard.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Maybe you could leave a good review for us. Do
we forget Jason Jason who
Guess what will?
Speaker 2 (00:00):
What's that? Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:01):
So, I was looking online and I found this description
for a job that's definitely not for us, professional cat cuddler.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. And first of all,
why is that a job?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
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. 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 enough? Right? Does
catitude come to you naturally? I wouldn't say we have
(00:38):
high catatude levels? No, have you counted kittens before you
go to sleep? Do you feed stray cats in your locality?
Does pett and cats make you warm and fuzzy?
Speaker 3 (00:48):
I mean, I gotta be honest, Mango, I can't say
that any of those sound like me.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
So I can't think of a job you're less suited for.
And the job basically involves calming down skittish cats and
mister me them into a zen like space so the
vets can see them but one of the biggest 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
(01:15):
a cat intervention, or a cat invention. 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
I will be begging for that cat cuddling job.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Well I'm not sure I see that happening, but let's
dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius.
(01:56):
I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my
good friend Mangesh how 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 letti Grey
Acoustic Kitty, and I didn't see the album cover for this,
but I swear is that Garfield's smooth Jazz I hear
(02:18):
playing in the background.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
It is so Tristan was showing me this earlier it's
all Garfield inspired music, but my favorite is fat is
where It's at, you know, because Garfield eats a lot.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Right, Thanks for explaining that that guy has the best
taste in novelty albums, and that of course is our
friend and producer Tristan McNeil nw Mango. 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.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
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 of my life where I've
dreamed of the becase vet. And also, for the record,
we had cats on a bunch of covers of Mental
Flos Plus. The first story I wrote on mentalfloss dot
com was about a cat piano, so I had no
(03:10):
idea when he came across this anti cat.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
That's right, you wrote.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
About what was it called the cats and Clavier. It
was this musical instrument that I think it was invented
to cheer up a prince or something.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Is that right.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
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
meyow 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
video of this on YouTube, but all that meowing isn't
(03:44):
exactly music, but it's also not not music either.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
When I was growing up.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
I was across the street from Triplet Boys. 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, 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
(04:22):
little jokes about cats on the show. These I guess
we think of them as like throwaway comments, 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 we apparently are not alone
in this polarizing world of cats. I actually found this
quote by the American writer Carl Van Vectim, and he
(04:42):
wrote a book called Tiger in the House, which is
really all about house cats. And 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 indifference in some matters, you know, elephants, cockatoos,
hg well Sweden, roast beef, pouccini, even Mormonism. But in
(05:04):
the matter of cats, it seems necessary to take a
firm stand. The cat himself insists upon this. He invariably
inspires strong feelings. He is indeed the only animal who
does well.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
It is true that cats definitely inspire strong feelings. And
when we've joked on the show about not being cat lovers,
people have ridden in and said, you know who also
hated cats? Hitler and also Napoleon, and Mussolini, and I
looked this up. It's true they were cat hitters. I mean,
I'm sure all three of them also hated like broccoli
(05:38):
and homework, so it doesn't really mean that much, like
a lot of people dislike a lot of things. But
I was intrigued by the comments, so I looked up
other famous cat haters in history, and it's not a
good look for us to be perceived this way. So
in addition to Napoleon and Mussolini, you've got Genghis Khan
Stalin also hated cats. Caesar Alexander the Great, Eisenhower, for
(06:02):
some reason, is on the list, but frankly, I'm a
little surprised that Pollpond and Ediemine aren't on there as well.
To around out, the list.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Has a lot of terrible people.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
I mean, aside from Eisenhower, who we love for building
highways and infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Of course love infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I love infrastructure.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
But yeah, 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, Nikola, Tesla,
Saint Francis of ASSISI, Mark Twain, Florence Nightingale, Catherine the Great,
(06:41):
Charles Mingus, and all of the Brontes.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
All the Brontes, even Branwell Bronte.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
I checked up on this mango. They got Branwell.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Well. Obviously, of those two sample sets, I'd rather be
associated with the cat lovers than the cat haters. But
I was 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
(07:14):
can't get used to the idea that cats won't submit
to them.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
So is the idea that cats are just too independent
minded for dictators or what exactly?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
And truthfully, that's also a big part of what cat
people like about cats, their 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 off topic, but one of the
cat origin stories I read, and this is an Islamic
(07:45):
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 in jeopardies. So he prayed for a solution,
and God answered his wishes by having a lion sneeze,
and out of both nostrils from that sneeze emerged two cats,
(08:10):
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
yous they are, or no one needed a ruthless killing
machine on a ship and God provided cats.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
I think I might lean toward the ladder, but 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?
Speaker 1 (08:44):
I know, well, I mean, the truth is cats are
incredible hunting machines. And I read this crazy story in
the New York Times from five years ago, and that's
when the Smithsonians 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 created
(09:05):
this new math model, and basically they were stunned by
the results. So listen to this between feral and domestic cats.
The domestic ones, you know, are the ones that get
to roam out doors 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. Wow,
and most of those things like shrews and chipmunks and
(09:28):
bowls along with mice.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
I kind of want to know how they 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.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
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've read this thing about how there are all these
cat islands in Japan that are super popular as tourist destinations,
just places where there are all these feral cats, And
initially I was thinking, like, who wants to go to
(10:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
To bother you.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
They just don't care about you. But you know, if
you went to a wild dog island and there were
just wild packs of you know, feral dogs there, you'd
be terrified. Like, yeah, you'd 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.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
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 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 yeah, you started talking about cat origins and killer cats,
and you were talking about how cat lovers tend to
love the animals independence, And actually I had a story
(10:52):
that I wanted to share just real quick. You know, so,
while free thinking critters might be great for pet owners,
they're not great for filmmakers. I was reading this inner
with the Cohen brothers about filming Inside Lewyn 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
(11:13):
because they don't care about anything. They don't want to
do what you want them to do. As the animal
trainer said 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.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
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 lowin Davis and I loved it.
But how do they get all those shots eventually? Like,
I'm guessing they didn't use CGI.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Well, 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.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Them on hand.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
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, 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
(12:09):
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 and true grit. They said the vulture
was awful, and they said that was even by vulture standards,
(12:29):
And even though the experience was really frustrating, they'd take
filming a vulture scene over a cat scene any day.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
So that is ridiculous, and I do love that story.
But here's the thing, and maybe it's something that'll increase
our own empathy for cats, But I don't actually think
it's a cat's fault that they're so independent.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
And why is that?
Speaker 1 (12:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, and we're talking cats. So, Mango,
I know you were going to tell us about cats
and domestication, but before we talk about a cat in
a household, let's talk about cats breaking up households. And
you know that totally unfair reputation they got for causing
divorces in America.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
So I obviously know people are attached to their animals,
but I had never heard about this trend. So what's
the scoop?
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Well, this comes from Natalie Zareli 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 irreconcilables. So a big
strategy from the nineteen tens going forward were couples that
(14:04):
they just started blaming their cats. That's pretty crazy. I'd
never heard of that, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
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 courtse But you know,
just blaming a cat would have been so much easier.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Yeah, I would say that would have been a lot easier.
There's actually a story from this piece in nineteen oh
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'd 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.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
So that feels so dramatic.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Well, he really had to sell it to the judge.
And you know, if the judge asked why the husband
and didn't just get rid of the cats. Often there'd
be some story about his wife being involved in like
the ASPCA, which I guess felt virtuous or something.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
So, I mean there were lots of these stories.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Oh, there's tons of these stories. There's actually also a
Civil War veteran who claims he could never sit in
his easy chair because a 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 humiliation of being beamed by the family cat.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Just unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
There was also another dude who was upset that his
wife kept fifty cats around the house and gave them
more attention than him.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Well, I mean fifty cats would need a lot of attention.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
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 interested in splitting up. And you know,
most of these stories were either made up or just
greatly exaggerated.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
So how long did this cat blaming go on for?
Speaker 3 (16:02):
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 the cat blaming disappeared from the newspaper stories.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Which is pretty insane. And you know, you feel sorry
for the cats.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
I know 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.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Yeah, so, you know, aside from that lion sneezing theory
about cats, researchers have actually found cat bones near human
bones for a while. There's a New Yorker piece on this,
but in China, by analyzing the bones and teeth of
cat 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,
(16:51):
Like they realized that rodents were plentiful around these farmers'
stores of grain, so they ingratiated themselves, and people were
opportunistic realized 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
(17:12):
on their natural instincts. It was totally symbiotic. But you know,
cats were never bred for traits the way dogs or
cattle were. Like, you know, you look at a dogsund
and 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 noodleized shape. And you know,
(17:33):
cat breeding is a relatively recent phenomenon by comparison.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
So I mean, are there ways to prove out this
theory that cats are only semi domesticated?
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, there definitely are So there's this geneticist that Washington
University in Saint 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 wildcat and than dogs have from wolves.
(18:02):
You know, you can kind of see this in the wild, right,
Like house cats are better hunters than dogs, they can
also fend for themselves in the wild, and according to
the Peace 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 is that the modern cat isn't fully domesticated.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
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
were keeping them shelter and putting scratching posts in our
houses and allow them to go to the bathroom indoors.
But the biggest argument for them having trained us is
that they've conditioned humans to feed them on demand with
(18:53):
something called solicitation purring. So this comes from the journal
Current Biology. But scientist Karen McComb from the University of
Sussex analyze the acoustic structure of cat purs and she
actually realized that cats dramatically exaggerate their purrs all to
elicit this emotional response from humans. Apparently it's the same
frequency that babies cry. And it isn't all cats that
(19:16):
do this, it's just cats that have one on one
relationships with humans.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
That is pretty manipulative. I mean it's impressive, but it's
pretty manipulative.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yeah, 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 say it as feline's clever control over humans,
and that's that we actually taste test their food for.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Them, you know, I know, we talked about humans taste
testing dog food before, but I can't remember it, Like,
why do they do that again?
Speaker 1 (19:49):
So this comes from a Brocky 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
to test can cat food. Apparently, the paper lists of
(20:12):
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. So, you know,
if we're going to keep keeping our feline masters happy,
more people are gonna have to get into the cat
food tasting business.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Well, I definitely have.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Come away with some understanding of why cats act the
way they do, and maybe even a little admiration for
how they manipulate this. But why don't we talk about
how cats became so popular in the first place. Let's
take a quick break first, back to part time Genius
(21:01):
where 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 bubb ruling
the Internet for a while, and all that I can
has cheeseburger memes being such a big thing.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
For a while.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
But actually, looking back, Time Magazine kind of predicted this
trend way back in nineteen eighty one, right.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
That's right, and you and I found an old Time
magazine cover story from nineteen eighty one that declared that
cats were the hot new thing. But I'd almost argue
that the thing that truly brought cats to the level
of popularity and endearment they're at now isn't the Internet
or Morris or even Garfield.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Comics, which are some of the things that are in
this Time article, and I do think we should talk about.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Them, definitely. But one of 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 nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
So what were people doing before then?
Speaker 1 (21:55):
So I had the same question, And basically they had
sandboxes outside, or they'd let their cats go in the
yard Anyway, the story's pretty interesting and Ford wrote this
up 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 ed Low. He had been working for his dad's
(22:15):
mill at the time, and when she described what she
wanted for her cat, he gave her an alternative. He
had this kiln dried granulated clay that they just started
using for grease bills at the mill, and when she
came back for more, he started labeling it 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
(22:38):
for two hundred 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?
Speaker 2 (22:49):
That is crazy?
Speaker 3 (22:50):
So basically kitty letter changed how we interacted with cats.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Yeah, so, like all cats were indoor, outdoor cats until
the advent of kitty litter, and then slow more and
more cats became housebound. But it's also starting to think
about how much kitty litter we use. So according to
Ford's research, about twenty companies Strip mine about four billion
pounds in the necessary clay each year, four billion pounds.
And by comparison, Ford sites the Great Pyramid of Giza
(23:18):
only weighs thirteen billion pounds.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
I like that, that's the comparison to use.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
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 because it is pretty.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Fun blind for it. So this piece basically argued that
the nineteen eighties were this time that really primed the
world to love cats, right.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Yeah, And here are 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 odor proof and kickproof, and that made
keeping a box where your cat poops in the house
far more appealing than it previously was. There were also
three different Garfield books on the bestseller list, which means
cat humor had truly arrived.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
I'm not sure what.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
It says about the taste of people in the nineteen eighties,
that three of them were on the bestseller list, and the
California suddenly there were a cat everything. You could find,
a cat resort at, a cat department store, a cat
rest home, a rent a cat agency, a cat dating service.
I have no idea what that is, but it was
one of the things. Cats psychics, cat acting coaches, and
(24:24):
of course a special annual contest to judge cats mea house.
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
to the article, thirty four million cats had worked their
way into homes, which was a fifty five percent increase
(24:46):
over the last decade. If you look at those numbers now,
some reports have cats that closer to ninety five million
cats and homes, you know, plus the thirty or forty
million feral community cats that you know, they're the ones
that keep rodents at bay.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yeah, I guess for all.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
I mean, I'm not sure I'm there just yet, but
maybe after a few amazing facts.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
So let's start the fact off.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Did you know that jazz musician Charles Mingus 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.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
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 QI, Dante desperately tried teaching
his cat to hold a candle for him so he
could write at night, but to no avail, I.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Mean, stupid Dante, Like, why wouldn't you just get a
candle holder?
Speaker 2 (25:54):
It doesn't make It never occurred to him for some reason.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
So you know, I know 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
this out on their cat, far from it, But in
a nineteen eighty seven study on cats that had fallen
from tall buildings. Apparently ninety percent of them survived, though
(26:19):
they did have injuries. And this comes from an 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.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Makes no sense. So do scientists know why this is?
Speaker 1 (26:35):
So there's actually a lot of theories, and there's been
a lot of research into it. And part of it
might be that because cat's bodies act as a bit
of a parachute, and part of it might be that
cats relax once they've fallen in a certain distance. And
you know, the reason babies and stumpmen often survive accidents
is that they bounce because they don't tense up their muscles.
Speaker 3 (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 faced. So like, if you tie a piece
of buttered bread to a cat's back and then drop it,
will the cat just like hover above the floor.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
I love that. So here's a quick one about cats
making the world a better place. So in two thousand
and seven, the New York Times board 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 armbands, and, as a police chief told The Times
(27:33):
after the policy came out, police were scared, it will
be very embarrassing to walk around with Hello Kitty on
your arm. What's strange, though, is that this is actually
the second variation on this armband technique. So there was
a previous iteration where they gave bad cops plaid armbands,
but unfortunately they were seen as like gestures of pride
or something, and they started taking them home and treating
(27:54):
them like metals.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
All right, well, here's a strange bit of science. According
to new scientists, cats don't understand the cause and effect
of tugging on a string.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
You'll have to explain what do you mean by this.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Well, there was a.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Study at Canterbury christ Church University in the UK, and
there was a team of researchers and what they did
was they attach 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 see the cause and effect. The story states, chimps, parrots, ravens,
they all understand that tugging on one end of a
(28:26):
string will bring a treat closer. But cats don't, and
they aren't alone. So pigeons and human infants also don't
pick up on this, and for the record, neither do dogs.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
So speaking of cats and dogs, do you know that
if your dog is overweight, there's actually a good chance
you'll be overweight too? And in twenty ten, the Journal
of Public Health Nutrition published a study from Ansterdam that
showed that there's a significant relationship between overweight dogs and
the BMI of their owners. But if your cat is overweight,
it's not a good predictor of whether you'll be overweight.
(28:57):
It's because you and your cat are just you know,
on your own, living your best lives.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Is that what it is? Okay? All right, Well here's
a strange one.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
So Japan is obsessed with cats, right, and that's no
surprise obviously. It's the land of waving porcelain cats that
sit in stores and responsible for Hello Kitty. I think
it's where cat cafes started. But now also they have
cat bars and cat cafe train cars, so they are
definitely cat obsessed. There's even a hand lotion that's now
cat paw scented, so your hands can smell more like
(29:27):
the bottom of your cats.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
I don't know why.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
People want this, but it is available now. But you
know how cats make biscuits in the morning, right.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Yeah, that's when they kind of like wake you up
and gently need on owner's chests in the morning for attention.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
So the craziest story I read is that there's a
spa in Japan where they offer 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 statement.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
So terrible.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
It's both amazing and terrifying to me. So do you
know that cats aren't actually the only creatures they get
hair balls? Cows and rabbits get them too.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Oh that's weird, all right. So here's one about Mark Twain,
the notorious cat lover. As we mentioned earlier. Now, one
thing he truly enjoyed was giving his cat strange names.
So here are a few of them. He had Apollinaris, Beeesel,
bub blatherskite, buffalo bill, Satan, sour mash, soapy sal pestilence,
and Bambino. And actually add one more fact about Twain.
(30:26):
Apparently Bambino escaped one day and 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 dollars 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
(30:46):
were still using it as an excuse to try to
meet Mark Twain. They would just show op at his
door with like random cat that they claimed, we're definitely Bambino.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Well, you know, I thought I had you with my
Hello Candy fact. I think you best to be with
that Mark Twain one to two. So I'm actually gonna
give you the Cat Fact Trophy today.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Wow, it is truly an honor.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
And listeners, I hope you've 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 HowStuffWorks dot com. You can also
call our fact hotline one eight four four pt Genius
or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
I hope we have redeemed.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Ourselves a little bit with all the cat lovers out
there with today's episode. I have a bit more respect
for cats now. But thank you guys for listening. Thanks
(31:48):
again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of
How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant
people who do the important things we couldn't even begin
to understand.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Christa McNeil does the editing thing.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy
mixy sound thing. Jerry Roland does the exact producer thing.
Gabeluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the research
army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and Eves.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears. Good job, Eves.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe,
And if you really really like what you've heard.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Maybe you could leave a good review for us. Do
we forget Jason Jason who
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