Welcome back to 6 Degrees of Cats, the world’s #1 (& only) cat-themed culture, history and science podcast!
In this 40-ish minute odyssey of the mind, we head back to the Fertile Crescent with the help of Zahra Hankir, author of New York Times Book Review Editors pick, Eyeliner: A Cultural History, to explore why the aesthetics of the “cat eye” belie the deep symbolic and protective properties this design invokes - and how eyeliner connects us to our ancestors and cultures across the world! We then travel to other realms to see what else those mesmerizing, chatoyant eyes may be picking up - carbon monoxide? Mice in the walls? GHOSTS? - with clairvoyant animal communicator Alicia Halloran of Healing Habitat. Then, with the help of Dr. Steve Hanes of the Veterinary Eye Center of NYC, we train our gaze directly into the physical eyeballs of our feline friends to observe the biomechanics and optical oddities that might help explain at least some of that infamous creepy cat stare phenomena. (Why is there no X-File on this yet?)
By the end of this episode, you’ll feel especially reverent of the extra-sensory vigilance our house guardians possess!
Support the podcast at https://ko-fi.com/6degreesofcats for as little as $1 / month for stickers, early access to new episodes and behind the scenes audio. View the show notes and more on The Captain’s Log, the companion podcast newsletter here: linktr.ee/6degreesofcats.
And check out these supplementary episodes:
- The Golden Age of Cats: The Medieval Middle East, Muezza and the Mark of Muhammad (or Mary)
- Curiosity Didn’t Kill the Cat, Part 1: Research and Righting Reflexes
- Curiosity Didn’t Kill the Cat, Part 2: Exploring Science Fairs, Schrodinger’s Cat, and the Fascinating Concept of Cats as Liquids
About the experts:
- Alicia Halloran is a trained animal communicator and holistic coach who specializes in spiritual behaviorism and clairvoyant healing. Since 2005, she has helped animals and their people through her business, Healing Habitat. Learn more about Alicia’s work at aliciahalloran.com or follow her on Instagram at @odieseyes.
- Zahra Hankir, M.A., M.S., is the author of Eyeliner: A Cultural History (Penguin Random House), a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Pick. She is a Columbia University–trained journalist with an academic background in Middle Eastern Studies, Islamic movements and international politics. Visit www.zahrahankir.com for more information on her work and upcoming publications.
- Steve Hanes, V.M.D., M.S., D.A.C.V.O. is a board certified veterinary ophthalmologist at the Veterinary Eye Center of NYC. Dr. Hanes received his veterinary studies degree at the University of Pennsylvania and interned in small animal medicine and surgery at the University of Florida, later completing his comparative ophthalmology residency at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech. Please visit https://www.vecnyc.com/doctors/steve-hanes to learn more about Steve and the Veterinary Eye Center of NYC.
Producer, writer, editor, sound designer, host, basically everything*
- Captain Kitty (Amanda B.)
* with co-executive producers Binky & Snuggles and new associate Peanut
Animal voices include:
- Binky, Snuggles and Peanut _^..^_
Music:
- Leathered: "Look Alive" © 2025
- Additional sound effects from Pixabay.com
Logo design:
- Edward Anthony © 2025 (Instagram: itsmyunzii)
Research used:
- Abbasi, S. M. (2017). A study of the evil eye phenomenon and how it is translated ... Indian Journal of Scientific Research. https://www.ijsr.in/upload/108373904925.pdf
- Cat’s Eyes. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. (n.d.).
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
What was that?
(00:03):
Snuggles?
What do you see?
What are you doing?
Why are you still in bed?
It's 2pm!
Welcome back to 6 Degrees of Cats.
The world's number one and only cat-themed culture, history and science podcast in which
(00:23):
I, Captain Kitty, aka Amanda B, and my feline co-executive producers Binky, Snuggles,
and Peanut navigate the weird, wild world from the past to the present with the help of
an exceptional array of guest experts.
All aboard!
(00:48):
There are millions of reasons that we homo sapiens have been simultaneously bemused and confused
and enchanted by cats.
Obviously I wasn't there, but I'd wager that
Truly it was love at first sight.
Or rather, scrutiny.
Who among ye has escaped the alternatingly or simultaneously curious, searing, judgmental,
(01:13):
or loving gaze of a feline in your vicinity?
As Ergo Josh said in our baby slande- "Cat Art" episode, across the animal kingdom,
eyes communicate and Express a lot.
Among other things they do for us, of course, such as focusing visual sensory information
into a specifically engineered liquid orb and starring in Louis Bounouel art films.
(01:37):
And well, I have played a huge part of my identity, specifically as a Korean American cat
fanatic.
It's my specific eye shape that has a racial connotation.
One that sort of also connects me to cats.
(01:57):
A stellar example of this, that one time this runny kid in 8th grade English class overheard
me talking about my cats.
He turned his little rat face towards me and said, "You look like my mom's cross-eyed
sight of me's cat."
Apparently the shape of cats eyes and eyes like mine is sometimes referred to as "almond-shaped."
(02:23):
And of course, exotic.
However, back-handed racism aside, I'd rather have my eyes described as "feline" than say,
"piggy-eyed, cow-eyed, bug-eyed, cock-eyed, beady-eyed, or evendoe or puppy-dog-eyed."
(02:47):
Cat eyes rule, and every time I'm blessed by their watchful gaze, I feel so seen, bewitched,
and even protected.
And that, my friends, is what we came here to discuss.
In this episode of "Six Degrees of Cats," join me as we take a closer look into the all-seeing
(03:09):
eyes of these demanding house gods with the help of history, ophthalmology, and clairvoyance.
If you rank facial features in order of expressiveness, let's say that eyes are number one, and that's
a design feature, not a bug, it seems.
(03:33):
According to brain researchers, specific regions in the brain activate, depending on the type
of eye contact we encounter, which reinforces the important role of eye contact in communication.
One of the tests used to locate where one falls on the autism spectrum is a scale that
invites people to assess a person's feelings based on only the expression of the eyes.
(04:00):
This priority in communication isn't just for humans, of course, which animal behaviorists
and zoologists have well-documented through studies on intra and interspecies eye contact.
Without the animal kingdom, I think there's something especially otherworldly, magical event
about cat's eyes, though.
(04:27):
Their eye color ranges from sky blue to iridescent green to golden yellow and everything in between.
So distinctive that gemologists refer to the cat's eye gems "Shatoyancy," or the degree
to which it displays the look of an actual cat's eye.
(04:49):
And their shape, which is apparently similar to my ex-ratface.
We can't talk about the magic and mystery of cat's eyes without getting into the most bladdering
look any person of any age, face, shape, culture, or gender can rock.
(05:16):
That would be the cat eye.
Anybody can wear eyeliner.
I think what's important is how you wear it.
Now the title of cat eye, the concept of cat eye, just derives how the eye is framed.
I can think of no better expert on this than my next guest, who literally wrote the book
(05:41):
on the cat eye.
So my name is Zahra Hankir.
I'm a Brooklyn-based author and journalist and I'm the author of eyeliner, a cultural
history.
I started off as a journalist so I was writing about finance, which wasn't really my thing.
I did it for a few years and then started doing a lot of writing about culture, which
(06:06):
is my real passion.
And I would actually say that the pinnacle of that is the book eyeliner, which obviously
is a very culturally driven book.
I'm Lebanese with some Egyptian heritage and I grew up in the UK.
My parents had left to the war.
(06:27):
They'd fled Lebanon.
It's funny when people ask me where I from, I often say I'm Arab.
I was always fascinated by the Middle East and the Arab world and I always knew that I was
going to be writing about it in some capacity.
And like me, Zahra has a very personal connection to this topic.
(06:54):
To look at it simply as makeup is very productive.
My introduction to eyeliner was actually through my mother when we were living in the UK and
she had six kids and she was very worried about her family back home.
She would still make time every morning to apply her eyeliner and she would do it very
ritualistically.
(07:16):
I would look at her and all because I was a little girl just thinking, oh look how pretty
mom looks.
But I also understood even then that this object was sort of connecting her to something
bigger than herself through her culture and when I do put it on I feel like in the same
way my mother was connecting to her culture.
I'm connecting to my culture as well from a different place.
(07:38):
I feel like I'm adorning my face with my heritage.
There are different ways of referring to it.
The cat eye, sometimes you might say it's winged liner, the way to achieve the cat eye.
It would be the tracing of the eye, the stenciling of the eye with sort of a dark line and
(08:05):
the lines would then meet at the corners of the eye and create something of a flick.
But really it's this idea of going beyond the natural sort of lining of the eye and creating
that flick at the corner of the eye.
I have to say here that as it is used in the global south is made from natural materials.
(08:28):
The kohl as it is referred to is it can be prepared at home.
So it isn't what you would find at like CVS or Walgreens or whatever.
It's actually made from materials that you might be able to find in the backyard or in
a garden or through nuts or through just so many different types of natural materials.
(08:49):
So that to me sets kohl apart from just how we uninterpret what eyeliner is.
Kohl, it's spelled K-O-H-L.
Coal originated in ancient Egypt so that is the longest chapter in my book is actually
about ancient Egypt.
(09:11):
And it was used as I mentioned for purposes that go far beyond the aesthetic.
And it was also worn by both women and men which I think is a really important point.
This idea of makeup and beautification is so often tied to women.
Whereas kohl and many other forms of adornment actually would be used by both men and women
(09:35):
throughout the centuries and across cultures.
And the utility of the cat eye is not just skin deep.
The materials used had a medicinal benefit.
Part of the reason also according to many studies is that some of the materials used would
(09:55):
provoke an immune response in the eye so that that could then treat any ailments such
as conjunctivitis or bacterial infections and could also protect against things like the
sands or the glare of the sun and things like that.
I would say for sure that the way that kohl was produced in ancient Egypt has persisted
over the centuries.
(10:15):
So similarly people would burn materials today in different parts of the global south and
create kohl from the soot of that burned material.
Now really it depends on the materials used in terms of sort of how medicinal useful the
eyeliner can be on the eye.
(10:39):
But as I said there have been studies that have shown that it can provoke an immune response
that then benefits the eye.
And also it's one of the reasons that the Prophet Muhammad in Islam was said to have
worn the purist form of eyeliner himself made from antimony.
He used it also to treat his eyes medicinal and that's why many Muslims today continue
(11:01):
to wear eyeliner both men and women.
Zara's research of cultures that embraced the cat eye look winged us out from north
Africa.
Oh yeah you know the place.
For the chapter on ancient Egypt I write extensively on Nefertiti who as we all know is
(11:25):
just sort of one of the most adored ancient Egyptian queens primary for her beauty.
And her beauty as we understand it today is depicted in her bust the bust of Nefertiti
which has been on display in a museum in Berlin for a hundred years her bust was found
(11:48):
in the deserts of Egypt and then quote and quote taken out of Egypt and into Germany.
Unfortunately she has not found her way home to Egypt.
Her eyes are lined very distinctly with kohl over the course of a hundred years her image
has been used to evoke this idea of the quote unquote exotic look.
(12:21):
Eyeliner was ubiquitous in ancient Egypt so it was worn by people of all classes and different
genders.
So Cleopatra very likely wore kohl as did Nefertiti there were different cultural fascinations
with different figures from ancient Egypt and obviously cure patria was one of them
and that happened in the nineteen sixties with the release of the film in which Elizabeth
(12:44):
Taylor played.
Cleopatra.
Depictions of Cleopatra in the film Cleopatra are not entirely historically accurate.
The color of the eyeliner would most likely not have been blue it would have been closer
to.
greys or blacks or greens keeping the materials used which were malachite or galena.
(13:06):
She did not meet the conventional beauty standards at the time in the way that people assume
that she did.
I think actually it's more about the power she wielded and that we have to assign conventional
standards of beauty to her irrespective of all those narratives swirling around her.
Yes, she would have worn eyeliner.
That is really the origin of the cat eye as we know it in the western world because white
(13:31):
western women started clamoring to try to emulate that look.
As with all things we discuss here on 6 Degrees of Cats, there's so much more to the cat
(13:53):
eyes than what meets the eye.
I don't deny that it's makeup or cosmetic but I would look at it more as a cultural artifact.
I traveled to six locations from my book, Chad, Jordan, Los Angeles actually to write about
the Mexican-American Chola community to Berlin to visit Nefertiti to India and then also
(14:17):
to Japan.
So that to me was really interesting just to see how culturally different these places were
but still had this idea of protecting the eye.
And that's why we had the ancients literally mimicking cat's eyes to harness their powers,
right?
I forgive me for saying this because I hate using puns but I'm not drawing like a very
(14:42):
clear line in between the two.
I think it's spurious but also it could just not be very deep like it could just be that
at some point somebody said oh yeah but these look like the lines that would line a cat's
eyes you know.
So no connection to cats at all, Egypt, bust that.
(15:03):
Really who knows.
I do think that there is some overlap there between how cats were revered as a symbol
of protection because eyeliner was also viewed as a symbol of protection and they also symbolized
sort of grace and poise and that kind of thing.
So some of those themes can be seen in the use of eyeliner too, like sort of the idea of
(15:24):
it being protective, the idea of it being associated with rebirth or fertility.
So I definitely see an overlap there.
Although I will say it's not clearly known why ancient Egyptians felt that they had to
line their eyes to in some way protect them.
(15:45):
It's just interesting to see again that there is that unique through line across all the
cultures is that this idea protecting against evil or evil spirits is sort of manifested
by drawing a line around your eyes.
Well I guess the line drawn between the cat eye and literal cat eyes is a more modern thing
(16:09):
though the very spiritual protective connection to Egypt between eyes and cats.
This is clearly there so this will be our last stop in Cairo this season but up next we're
off to other realms after the break.
(16:41):
For the break thanks to Zahra the connection between eyes, cats and protection came into focus
regarding which our next guest has a very unique perspective.
In a very broad sense I think of dogs as being kind of the keepers of people and cats being
(17:04):
the keepers of the space that they live in.
That was an actual expert in these kinds of things.
My name is Alicia Halloran and I'm the founder of Healing Habitat.
It was cats that brought me into all of the healing work that I've done.
(17:24):
I started working in Healing Touch for animals so Healing Touch is a certified healing technique.
Many nurses do Healing Touch so if you're ever in the hospital you can ask for a Healing
Touch practitioner just as a side note.
Through Healing Touch I had met a woman who did Healing Touch for animals and then animal
communication as well.
(17:46):
I enrolled in a clairvoyant training program and so that's where working with energy and
working with animals came together.
Right now I do animal communication working with people and their pets and I also do holistic
coaching working with people and I'll tell you that 95% of my clients come from their animals.
(18:10):
Animals come in and they're like we need more help and so I work with the pet parents.
About clairvoyance.
That falls into a category of what some might consider asotarica or as Dr. Ali Alomean
season 2 helped us understand the occult, the hidden.
(18:38):
In the 21st century the most reliable standardized methods of measuring and reporting on the
physical world in which we live requires a foundation of scientific knowledge and the
assumptions that have already been established.
I don't dispute this and you know I also think hey it can't hurt to keep it in the
(19:00):
open mind.
Now don't worry, I won't be handing over my life savings based on what one person claiming
to be psychic says.
That's not even what Alicia's work is all about.
I'm not a medium, a medium is a totally different form of energy work, it involves channeling
(19:22):
and I don't channel.
If you're like me, most of your understanding of extra sensory perception or ESP comes
from the 1990s white collar crime thriller ghost starring Whoopie Goldberg and Patrick
Swayze.
So let's break down some of the language here real quick then we'll get back to Alicia.
(19:45):
The word medium aptly describes a person who uses their body to facilitate the receipt
and relay of messages from those other dimensions.
Maybe they place like heaven or hell or purgatory or other places in the universe or even the
same place but at a different time like the past or the future.
(20:07):
Famous purported mediums and psychics have included Nostradamus, Edgar Casey and my personal
favorite Miss Cleo.
There's like a whole documentary on her.
Anyway, now that we've gotten that out of the way at least for this episode, hint hint.
Let's get back to Alicia's domain of expertise.
(20:27):
Clairvoyance.
Clairvoyance literally it translates as clear seeing so it's the ability to see clearly.
It's working with energy on a visual sense so a picture based sense.
(20:50):
There are other types of sensitivities or psychic abilities you could say such as clair-
audience which is the ability to hear.
So hearing guidance, hearing voices, things like that or clairesentience that you're able
to feel the energy.
So as a clairvoyant I work I would say visually with my eyes closed I can see pictures.
(21:13):
So when people ask me questions about their animals, it's just kind of seeing the energy
of it.
So in colors there's shapes, there's textures, there's just all of those different visual
cues that then I've learned to interpret.
It comes as pictures like watching a movie and then in the same sense when you watch a movie,
(21:37):
you know, a movie can make you cry, a movie can make you jump, a movie can create a lot
of feelings in your body.
It's not working from the feelings in my body but really of what I'm watching.
So it sounds like it's almost refining sensations or energies if you will input from the environment
and clarifying them into observations that might have been overlooked or written off at
(22:01):
first glance.
Let's gather the facts.
Let's see what's going on, see how we can pull this together and see what's going on with
that, see what's going on with the person, what's going on with the animal and how those
two things relate to each other.
Not as a predictor, but rather absolutely a reporter.
(22:25):
Clairvoyance really works from a space of neutrality.
I don't use empathy at all.
Somebody says, you know, my cat just died and really sad.
An empathy is like, "Oh my god, I remember that happened to me."
We have a lot of feelings and to be able to not match those feelings is one of the most
(22:46):
important parts in working with people and their animals or people themselves.
There's a lot of really heavy energy in that.
So to be able to have neutrality about it is so important to me.
I think we could all stand to cultivate some more clairvoyance in our lives.
(23:07):
Now that we have some clarity around this, let's talk about the cat stare.
You know what I mean.
Is it cat's natural clairvoyance that allows them to be our house guards?
I think that cats have a level of mystery to them, but a lot of their mystery is that they
(23:31):
don't care.
But they're really neutral.
That neutrality helps bust through a lot of the noise obscuring the signals that we humans
are missing.
So cats are very much about where they live.
One of my cats, I was referred to him as the house manager.
(23:55):
He did patrols at the end of the day.
He'd walk around the whole house and then he'd come to bed.
Any workmen that would be in my house, he would be right there next to them like supervising.
So that sense of being in charge of the space.
That's how I have always seen cats that they are very aware of not just the people in the
(24:17):
space, but the energy of the space.
So that's a lot of the, you know, staring up in a corner, just looking.
That's a very cat thing and that that's energy.
So people ask is it ghosts?
Is it entities of any sort?
You could say that, but I really think it's just much more the energy.
(24:42):
Keeping portals, working the energy of the space, keeping it grounded is another part
of what cats do.
They keep the energy in the space connected to the earth and in motion.
Whoa, portals?
(25:03):
I just got more shivers there.
Cats have always been kind of part of that in folklore, the witch's familiar is always
a cat.
They're just ubiquitous in that occult space.
So you know, maybe pay closer attention to the moment at hand.
(25:26):
These feline paranormal investigators may be picking up something that you are not.
Sure.
Could be mice in the walls.
It could be leaking water in your ceiling.
It could be dog poo (which is why we are shoes off household).
Or it could be ghosts.
To align with what most feline behaviorists and researchers have long known, it's not your
(25:50):
home.
It's theirs.
Anyway, Snuggles, I'm sorry I ever doubted you.
Let's add house manager to your CV.
Snuggles?
Snuggles?
Hello?
What are you staring at?
(26:16):
We've established the ways the cat eyes integrated into our aesthetics and how possibly those beautiful
twin channelers of light might bring protection into our homes.
I'm curious though.
What's actually going on with their eyes, physiologically?
Could that help us understand more about the cat's eye view of the visible and hidden world?
(26:39):
Lucky for us.
I have a cat eye expert here to explain what exactly is catching their eye or eyes.
My name is Steve Hanes.
I'm a veterinary ophthalmologist at the Veterinary Eye Center in New York City.
My backstory is that I went to undergrade at Cornell University at that school at the
(27:00):
University of Pennsylvania.
After vet school, I decided to go into advanced specialty training and then landed on the
fact that I wanted to do eyeballs for forever.
An ophthalmologist is basically a person that deals with diseases of the eye and around
the eye, like the medical and surgical aspects of eye disease.
(27:23):
Dr. Hanes obviously sees the obsession for all things cat eye across history.
It's steering us in the face.
I think that the reason that cats eye are so endearing and people are so attached to them
is because they are more prominent than a lot of dogs.
Eyes are...
A lot of that has to do with the fact that their orbit, which is their eye socket, is structured
(27:49):
a little bit differently and just the size of their eyeball is bigger of comparatively
than a dog's would be.
From one cat breed to the next, too.
You have your brachycephalic or smush-faced cat that have round, protruding eyes versus
your standard domestic short hairs that has more almond-y appearance.
(28:13):
It's irrefutable that cats are picking up on things beyond human's capacities.
From a physiological standpoint, though, how exactly are they doing that?
Is it clear avoidance?
I don't know about supernatural or anything like that, but what I can tell you is that they
definitely do see things differently than we see it, especially when you think about
(28:36):
a phenomenon called the critical flip or frequency.
The what now?
The critical flicker frequency.
Yeah, it definitely is a super complicated retinal physiology topic.
How they experience it is likely very different than we do.
(28:58):
Easiest way to think about this is imagine that you're sitting in a room and someone is
standing next to the light switch and they just keep clicking the light on and off and
then as they keep clicking it on and off, the time between the on and off gets faster
and faster.
Eventually, if there was a person that had a superhuman fast switch, it would get to the
(29:22):
point where our brains and our eyes would not be able to actually differentiate between
the on and off, so it just perceives like a regular beam of light rather than a flicker.
So that's what the critical flicker frequency is.
Maybe this is where their extra sensory perception comes in.
(Those are my words, not Dr. Hanes', I hasten to add.)
(29:45):
In cats, it's estimated that they can parse out changes in movement roughly three times
higher than in humans and see things differently than we can just because they're able to kind
of track things in a way where they have like an increased frequency basically that they
can see up to until that flicker becomes just a regular beam of light.
(30:08):
So if there are say beings out there that are moving at a frequency or speed, we humans
just can't pick up like a bug or a tiny movement in the building or ghosts.
There could totally be things that a cat is seeing whether it's like a flicker or whatever
that humans just physiologically can't.
So that's what I feel like has to be the answer to is my cat staring at a ghost because
(30:32):
it feels like this is the, you know, it's something that we can't perceive as people.
Anatomically physiologically that frequency is something we can't accomplish whereas they
can.
Not for nothing, they can also see better than us at night, which is when most paranormal
activity happens just saying.
(30:53):
It has to do with the size of the structures within their eyes.
So the diameter of their cornea, which is the clear window at the front of the eye and
of their pupil, which is kind of the whole inside the eye that the iris, which is the
colored part of the eyes surrounds, those areas, both the cornea and the people are much
larger than in people.
Let's say the people is completely dilated both in a person and a cat.
(31:17):
A cat is able to take in much more light into the back of their eye than a person is.
So in that sense, they're able to kind of illuminate their retina a little bit more efficiently
than we are.
The other big thing is that most cats have this reflective surface in the back of their
eye, the tapetum lucidum.
(31:38):
It's the same kind of thing.
If you're driving at night and you see a deer in the headlights where they have that green
reflective surface in your high beams, and what that does is it basically helps reflect
light back onto the retina again, not only is there more light going into the cat eye because
of the larger structures, but that tapetum and helps actually like self-aluminate the retina
to then provide even more light to those neurologic structures to help them see in the dark
(32:01):
more so than a person.
They just have supervision powers, right?
Humans can basically see at a greater distance than cats can.
Wait, we see better than cats in some ways?
When we think about people's vision, we think about it being 20/20, meaning that if there's
something that's 20 feet away, then a person with normal vision should be able to see
(32:23):
that thing at 20 feet away.
I don't remember the exact numbers off the top of my head, but I know that their vision
is worse than that regard.
My cat is nearsighted?
I believe if we can see something at 100 feet away, then cats need to be a 20 feet away in
(32:43):
order to see it.
They also have this interesting phenomenon that they're way more nearsighted when they're
kittens, and as they kind of grow to adulthood, their skull shape becomes more adult and
kind of the position of their eyes within their skull becomes more normal.
They become more of what's called an emetropic, which means not nearsighted or far sighted,
(33:04):
somewhere right in the middle, like the Goldilocks zone.
So when Snuggles, our apartment sentry, fixates on something in the house and tracks
it.
She may see something we can't see, or she might just be trying to see better.
(33:24):
It gets complicated because they are in a sense more nearsighted in that way, but in the
same as people, the degree to which an individual cat is near or far sighted compared to the
general population of such an individual thing.
Should I get Snuggles
Some little prescription eyeglasses?
It would make my life a lot easier if I could have a cat walk in and read the chart in the same
(33:47):
way that we do when we go to the doctor.
Unfortunately, I can't do that.
I guess until then, we can't entirely rule our ghosts.
Friends!
Even as we continue to learn more and more about the natural world and rectify it with
(34:07):
our sense of wonder and curiosity, I think it's okay to say that there are some things
we just…get see yet!
We continue to learn about the natural and even supernatural world whenever we ask
these seemingly weird out-there questions.
Heck, in the animal kingdom, we've discovered that bees dance.
(34:29):
Bats and dolphins use echolocation to zero in on the formerly magical radio waves that
the scientific community didn't accept existed until the late 19th century, courtesy one
Heinrich Hertz.
So why not clairvoyant cats?
Regardless of your stance on, if, say, wearing cat eye imbues anything beyond powers of attraction,
(34:51):
or if cats do actually see ghosts, I think we can still agree with the wisest of our ancestors.
The ones who first notice the good energy that we bring into our homes when we welcome
and take care of these little home security detectives.
Speaking of…
In the next episode, we'll keep investigating these spooky critters and what other things
(35:16):
their mighty eyes might spy.
I want to thank my wonderful experts Zahra Hankir, Alicia Halloran, and…
Steve Hanes.
While the opinions are definitely my own, the research and work is theirs.
If you'd like to learn more about them, please check out our show notes, which also includes
the references and research that went into this episode.
(35:37):
If you loved it, please tell all your friends about this wacky podcast that's, and I
quote, "The Radiolab of cats for cat people."
Shout out to Jenny of the Cat Museum of NYC.
And if you feel so moved, please give us a five star rating and a positive review on the
platform where you listen, be it YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Pocketcats--er, Pocketcasts,
(36:00):
whatever.
We're so grateful to all our supporters on the Captain's Log, which is our Substack,
and coffee, or Ko-Fi.
How does that even get pronounced anyway?
For the cost of a cup of coffee, you help us stay afloat.
We really appreciate you.
You are the apples of our eyes, including our cat's eyes, which are watching your every
(36:21):
move.
Because remember, everything is connected.
Six degrees of cats is produced, written, edited, and hosted by yours truly, Captain Kitty,
aka Amanda B. Please subscribe to our mailing list by going to linktr.ee/6degreesofcats
(36:43):
or look us up on all those social media platforms.
You'll be first in line for the extra audio and more treats if you connect with us there.
All episodes are dedicated to the misunderstood, the marginalized, the resilient, and the
weird.
And of course, all the cats we've loved and lost.
(37:05):
Yeah, so I have two.
One of them, his name is Shrek, he's an orange boy.
He actually was a blood donor at the University of Pennsylvania for a while.
They kind of have like a blood donation room where they take cats from poorer situations,
like whether they're on the street or in crowding situations, basically give them the best
(37:29):
life ever for a few years.
And then also, we'll take blood from them to use that blood bank for animals that might
need it in the hospital.
And then after their tenure of being a blood donor is up, then they get adopted out.
So that's where I got Shrek.
And my other one's name is Bernard.
And he is a black and white guy that I actually got at the University of Florida because he,
(37:52):
interestingly enough, came into the ER because he got attacked by an armadillo.
He ended up kind of like fixing up real quick in the ER and I took him home.
But since then, I was like, how did this cat get into a fight with an armadillo?
What was that?
(00:03):
Snuggles?
What do you see?
What are you doing?
Why are you still in bed?
It's 2pm!
Welcome back to 6 Degrees of Cats.
The world's number one and only cat-themed culture, history and science podcast in which
(00:23):
I, Captain Kitty, aka Amanda B, and my feline co-executive producers Binky, Snuggles,
and Peanut navigate the weird, wild world from the past to the present with the help of
an exceptional array of guest experts.
All aboard!
(00:48):
There are millions of reasons that we homo sapiens have been simultaneously bemused and confused
and enchanted by cats.
Obviously I wasn't there, but I'd wager that
Truly it was love at first sight.
Or rather, scrutiny.
Who among ye has escaped the alternatingly or simultaneously curious, searing, judgmental,
(01:13):
or loving gaze of a feline in your vicinity?
As Ergo Josh said in our baby slande- "Cat Art" episode, across the animal kingdom,
eyes communicate and Express a lot.
Among other things they do for us, of course, such as focusing visual sensory information
into a specifically engineered liquid orb and starring in Louis Bounouel art films.
(01:37):
And well, I have played a huge part of my identity, specifically as a Korean American cat
fanatic.
It's my specific eye shape that has a racial connotation.
One that sort of also connects me to cats.
(01:57):
A stellar example of this, that one time this runny kid in 8th grade English class overheard
me talking about my cats.
He turned his little rat face towards me and said, "You look like my mom's cross-eyed
sight of me's cat."
Apparently the shape of cats eyes and eyes like mine is sometimes referred to as "almond-shaped."
(02:23):
And of course, exotic.
However, back-handed racism aside, I'd rather have my eyes described as "feline" than say,
"piggy-eyed, cow-eyed, bug-eyed, cock-eyed, beady-eyed, or evendoe or puppy-dog-eyed."
(02:47):
Cat eyes rule, and every time I'm blessed by their watchful gaze, I feel so seen, bewitched,
and even protected.
And that, my friends, is what we came here to discuss.
In this episode of "Six Degrees of Cats," join me as we take a closer look into the all-seeing
(03:09):
eyes of these demanding house gods with the help of history, ophthalmology, and clairvoyance.
If you rank facial features in order of expressiveness, let's say that eyes are number one, and that's
a design feature, not a bug, it seems.
(03:33):
According to brain researchers, specific regions in the brain activate, depending on the type
of eye contact we encounter, which reinforces the important role of eye contact in communication.
One of the tests used to locate where one falls on the autism spectrum is a scale that
invites people to assess a person's feelings based on only the expression of the eyes.
(04:00):
This priority in communication isn't just for humans, of course, which animal behaviorists
and zoologists have well-documented through studies on intra and interspecies eye contact.
Without the animal kingdom, I think there's something especially otherworldly, magical event
about cat's eyes, though.
(04:27):
Their eye color ranges from sky blue to iridescent green to golden yellow and everything in between.
So distinctive that gemologists refer to the cat's eye gems "Shatoyancy," or the degree
to which it displays the look of an actual cat's eye.
(04:49):
And their shape, which is apparently similar to my ex-ratface.
We can't talk about the magic and mystery of cat's eyes without getting into the most bladdering
look any person of any age, face, shape, culture, or gender can rock.
(05:16):
That would be the cat eye.
Anybody can wear eyeliner.
I think what's important is how you wear it.
Now the title of cat eye, the concept of cat eye, just derives how the eye is framed.
I can think of no better expert on this than my next guest, who literally wrote the book
(05:41):
on the cat eye.
So my name is Zahra Hankir.
I'm a Brooklyn-based author and journalist and I'm the author of eyeliner, a cultural
history.
I started off as a journalist so I was writing about finance, which wasn't really my thing.
I did it for a few years and then started doing a lot of writing about culture, which
(06:06):
is my real passion.
And I would actually say that the pinnacle of that is the book eyeliner, which obviously
is a very culturally driven book.
I'm Lebanese with some Egyptian heritage and I grew up in the UK.
My parents had left to the war.
(06:27):
They'd fled Lebanon.
It's funny when people ask me where I from, I often say I'm Arab.
I was always fascinated by the Middle East and the Arab world and I always knew that I was
going to be writing about it in some capacity.
And like me, Zahra has a very personal connection to this topic.
(06:54):
To look at it simply as makeup is very productive.
My introduction to eyeliner was actually through my mother when we were living in the UK and
she had six kids and she was very worried about her family back home.
She would still make time every morning to apply her eyeliner and she would do it very
ritualistically.
(07:16):
I would look at her and all because I was a little girl just thinking, oh look how pretty
mom looks.
But I also understood even then that this object was sort of connecting her to something
bigger than herself through her culture and when I do put it on I feel like in the same
way my mother was connecting to her culture.
I'm connecting to my culture as well from a different place.
(07:38):
I feel like I'm adorning my face with my heritage.
There are different ways of referring to it.
The cat eye, sometimes you might say it's winged liner, the way to achieve the cat eye.
It would be the tracing of the eye, the stenciling of the eye with sort of a dark line and
(08:05):
the lines would then meet at the corners of the eye and create something of a flick.
But really it's this idea of going beyond the natural sort of lining of the eye and creating
that flick at the corner of the eye.
I have to say here that as it is used in the global south is made from natural materials.
(08:28):
The kohl as it is referred to is it can be prepared at home.
So it isn't what you would find at like CVS or Walgreens or whatever.
It's actually made from materials that you might be able to find in the backyard or in
a garden or through nuts or through just so many different types of natural materials.
(08:49):
So that to me sets kohl apart from just how we uninterpret what eyeliner is.
Kohl, it's spelled K-O-H-L.
Coal originated in ancient Egypt so that is the longest chapter in my book is actually
about ancient Egypt.
(09:11):
And it was used as I mentioned for purposes that go far beyond the aesthetic.
And it was also worn by both women and men which I think is a really important point.
This idea of makeup and beautification is so often tied to women.
Whereas kohl and many other forms of adornment actually would be used by both men and women
(09:35):
throughout the centuries and across cultures.
And the utility of the cat eye is not just skin deep.
The materials used had a medicinal benefit.
Part of the reason also according to many studies is that some of the materials used would
(09:55):
provoke an immune response in the eye so that that could then treat any ailments such
as conjunctivitis or bacterial infections and could also protect against things like the
sands or the glare of the sun and things like that.
I would say for sure that the way that kohl was produced in ancient Egypt has persisted
over the centuries.
(10:15):
So similarly people would burn materials today in different parts of the global south and
create kohl from the soot of that burned material.
Now really it depends on the materials used in terms of sort of how medicinal useful the
eyeliner can be on the eye.
(10:39):
But as I said there have been studies that have shown that it can provoke an immune response
that then benefits the eye.
And also it's one of the reasons that the Prophet Muhammad in Islam was said to have
worn the purist form of eyeliner himself made from antimony.
He used it also to treat his eyes medicinal and that's why many Muslims today continue
(11:01):
to wear eyeliner both men and women.
Zara's research of cultures that embraced the cat eye look winged us out from north
Africa.
Oh yeah you know the place.
For the chapter on ancient Egypt I write extensively on Nefertiti who as we all know is
(11:25):
just sort of one of the most adored ancient Egyptian queens primary for her beauty.
And her beauty as we understand it today is depicted in her bust the bust of Nefertiti
which has been on display in a museum in Berlin for a hundred years her bust was found
(11:48):
in the deserts of Egypt and then quote and quote taken out of Egypt and into Germany.
Unfortunately she has not found her way home to Egypt.
Her eyes are lined very distinctly with kohl over the course of a hundred years her image
has been used to evoke this idea of the quote unquote exotic look.
(12:21):
Eyeliner was ubiquitous in ancient Egypt so it was worn by people of all classes and different
genders.
So Cleopatra very likely wore kohl as did Nefertiti there were different cultural fascinations
with different figures from ancient Egypt and obviously cure patria was one of them
and that happened in the nineteen sixties with the release of the film in which Elizabeth
(12:44):
Taylor played.
Cleopatra.
Depictions of Cleopatra in the film Cleopatra are not entirely historically accurate.
The color of the eyeliner would most likely not have been blue it would have been closer
to.
greys or blacks or greens keeping the materials used which were malachite or galena.
(13:06):
She did not meet the conventional beauty standards at the time in the way that people assume
that she did.
I think actually it's more about the power she wielded and that we have to assign conventional
standards of beauty to her irrespective of all those narratives swirling around her.
Yes, she would have worn eyeliner.
That is really the origin of the cat eye as we know it in the western world because white
(13:31):
western women started clamoring to try to emulate that look.
As with all things we discuss here on 6 Degrees of Cats, there's so much more to the cat
(13:53):
eyes than what meets the eye.
I don't deny that it's makeup or cosmetic but I would look at it more as a cultural artifact.
I traveled to six locations from my book, Chad, Jordan, Los Angeles actually to write about
the Mexican-American Chola community to Berlin to visit Nefertiti to India and then also
(14:17):
to Japan.
So that to me was really interesting just to see how culturally different these places were
but still had this idea of protecting the eye.
And that's why we had the ancients literally mimicking cat's eyes to harness their powers,
right?
I forgive me for saying this because I hate using puns but I'm not drawing like a very
(14:42):
clear line in between the two.
I think it's spurious but also it could just not be very deep like it could just be that
at some point somebody said oh yeah but these look like the lines that would line a cat's
eyes you know.
So no connection to cats at all, Egypt, bust that.
(15:03):
Really who knows.
I do think that there is some overlap there between how cats were revered as a symbol
of protection because eyeliner was also viewed as a symbol of protection and they also symbolized
sort of grace and poise and that kind of thing.
So some of those themes can be seen in the use of eyeliner too, like sort of the idea of
(15:24):
it being protective, the idea of it being associated with rebirth or fertility.
So I definitely see an overlap there.
Although I will say it's not clearly known why ancient Egyptians felt that they had to
line their eyes to in some way protect them.
(15:45):
It's just interesting to see again that there is that unique through line across all the
cultures is that this idea protecting against evil or evil spirits is sort of manifested
by drawing a line around your eyes.
Well I guess the line drawn between the cat eye and literal cat eyes is a more modern thing
(16:09):
though the very spiritual protective connection to Egypt between eyes and cats.
This is clearly there so this will be our last stop in Cairo this season but up next we're
off to other realms after the break.
(16:41):
For the break thanks to Zahra the connection between eyes, cats and protection came into focus
regarding which our next guest has a very unique perspective.
In a very broad sense I think of dogs as being kind of the keepers of people and cats being
(17:04):
the keepers of the space that they live in.
That was an actual expert in these kinds of things.
My name is Alicia Halloran and I'm the founder of Healing Habitat.
It was cats that brought me into all of the healing work that I've done.
(17:24):
I started working in Healing Touch for animals so Healing Touch is a certified healing technique.
Many nurses do Healing Touch so if you're ever in the hospital you can ask for a Healing
Touch practitioner just as a side note.
Through Healing Touch I had met a woman who did Healing Touch for animals and then animal
communication as well.
(17:46):
I enrolled in a clairvoyant training program and so that's where working with energy and
working with animals came together.
Right now I do animal communication working with people and their pets and I also do holistic
coaching working with people and I'll tell you that 95% of my clients come from their animals.
(18:10):
Animals come in and they're like we need more help and so I work with the pet parents.
About clairvoyance.
That falls into a category of what some might consider asotarica or as Dr. Ali Alomean
season 2 helped us understand the occult, the hidden.
(18:38):
In the 21st century the most reliable standardized methods of measuring and reporting on the
physical world in which we live requires a foundation of scientific knowledge and the
assumptions that have already been established.
I don't dispute this and you know I also think hey it can't hurt to keep it in the
(19:00):
open mind.
Now don't worry, I won't be handing over my life savings based on what one person claiming
to be psychic says.
That's not even what Alicia's work is all about.
I'm not a medium, a medium is a totally different form of energy work, it involves channeling
(19:22):
and I don't channel.
If you're like me, most of your understanding of extra sensory perception or ESP comes
from the 1990s white collar crime thriller ghost starring Whoopie Goldberg and Patrick
Swayze.
So let's break down some of the language here real quick then we'll get back to Alicia.
(19:45):
The word medium aptly describes a person who uses their body to facilitate the receipt
and relay of messages from those other dimensions.
Maybe they place like heaven or hell or purgatory or other places in the universe or even the
same place but at a different time like the past or the future.
(20:07):
Famous purported mediums and psychics have included Nostradamus, Edgar Casey and my personal
favorite Miss Cleo.
There's like a whole documentary on her.
Anyway, now that we've gotten that out of the way at least for this episode, hint hint.
Let's get back to Alicia's domain of expertise.
(20:27):
Clairvoyance.
Clairvoyance literally it translates as clear seeing so it's the ability to see clearly.
It's working with energy on a visual sense so a picture based sense.
(20:50):
There are other types of sensitivities or psychic abilities you could say such as clair-
audience which is the ability to hear.
So hearing guidance, hearing voices, things like that or clairesentience that you're able
to feel the energy.
So as a clairvoyant I work I would say visually with my eyes closed I can see pictures.
(21:13):
So when people ask me questions about their animals, it's just kind of seeing the energy
of it.
So in colors there's shapes, there's textures, there's just all of those different visual
cues that then I've learned to interpret.
It comes as pictures like watching a movie and then in the same sense when you watch a movie,
(21:37):
you know, a movie can make you cry, a movie can make you jump, a movie can create a lot
of feelings in your body.
It's not working from the feelings in my body but really of what I'm watching.
So it sounds like it's almost refining sensations or energies if you will input from the environment
and clarifying them into observations that might have been overlooked or written off at
(22:01):
first glance.
Let's gather the facts.
Let's see what's going on, see how we can pull this together and see what's going on with
that, see what's going on with the person, what's going on with the animal and how those
two things relate to each other.
Not as a predictor, but rather absolutely a reporter.
(22:25):
Clairvoyance really works from a space of neutrality.
I don't use empathy at all.
Somebody says, you know, my cat just died and really sad.
An empathy is like, "Oh my god, I remember that happened to me."
We have a lot of feelings and to be able to not match those feelings is one of the most
(22:46):
important parts in working with people and their animals or people themselves.
There's a lot of really heavy energy in that.
So to be able to have neutrality about it is so important to me.
I think we could all stand to cultivate some more clairvoyance in our lives.
(23:07):
Now that we have some clarity around this, let's talk about the cat stare.
You know what I mean.
Is it cat's natural clairvoyance that allows them to be our house guards?
I think that cats have a level of mystery to them, but a lot of their mystery is that they
(23:31):
don't care.
But they're really neutral.
That neutrality helps bust through a lot of the noise obscuring the signals that we humans
are missing.
So cats are very much about where they live.
One of my cats, I was referred to him as the house manager.
(23:55):
He did patrols at the end of the day.
He'd walk around the whole house and then he'd come to bed.
Any workmen that would be in my house, he would be right there next to them like supervising.
So that sense of being in charge of the space.
That's how I have always seen cats that they are very aware of not just the people in the
(24:17):
space, but the energy of the space.
So that's a lot of the, you know, staring up in a corner, just looking.
That's a very cat thing and that that's energy.
So people ask is it ghosts?
Is it entities of any sort?
You could say that, but I really think it's just much more the energy.
(24:42):
Keeping portals, working the energy of the space, keeping it grounded is another part
of what cats do.
They keep the energy in the space connected to the earth and in motion.
Whoa, portals?
(25:03):
I just got more shivers there.
Cats have always been kind of part of that in folklore, the witch's familiar is always
a cat.
They're just ubiquitous in that occult space.
So you know, maybe pay closer attention to the moment at hand.
(25:26):
These feline paranormal investigators may be picking up something that you are not.
Sure.
Could be mice in the walls.
It could be leaking water in your ceiling.
It could be dog poo (which is why we are shoes off household).
Or it could be ghosts.
To align with what most feline behaviorists and researchers have long known, it's not your
(25:50):
home.
It's theirs.
Anyway, Snuggles, I'm sorry I ever doubted you.
Let's add house manager to your CV.
Snuggles?
Snuggles?
Hello?
What are you staring at?
(26:16):
We've established the ways the cat eyes integrated into our aesthetics and how possibly those beautiful
twin channelers of light might bring protection into our homes.
I'm curious though.
What's actually going on with their eyes, physiologically?
Could that help us understand more about the cat's eye view of the visible and hidden world?
(26:39):
Lucky for us.
I have a cat eye expert here to explain what exactly is catching their eye or eyes.
My name is Steve Hanes.
I'm a veterinary ophthalmologist at the Veterinary Eye Center in New York City.
My backstory is that I went to undergrade at Cornell University at that school at the
(27:00):
University of Pennsylvania.
After vet school, I decided to go into advanced specialty training and then landed on the
fact that I wanted to do eyeballs for forever.
An ophthalmologist is basically a person that deals with diseases of the eye and around
the eye, like the medical and surgical aspects of eye disease.
(27:23):
Dr. Hanes obviously sees the obsession for all things cat eye across history.
It's steering us in the face.
I think that the reason that cats eye are so endearing and people are so attached to them
is because they are more prominent than a lot of dogs.
Eyes are...
A lot of that has to do with the fact that their orbit, which is their eye socket, is structured
(27:49):
a little bit differently and just the size of their eyeball is bigger of comparatively
than a dog's would be.
From one cat breed to the next, too.
You have your brachycephalic or smush-faced cat that have round, protruding eyes versus
your standard domestic short hairs that has more almond-y appearance.
(28:13):
It's irrefutable that cats are picking up on things beyond human's capacities.
From a physiological standpoint, though, how exactly are they doing that?
Is it clear avoidance?
I don't know about supernatural or anything like that, but what I can tell you is that they
definitely do see things differently than we see it, especially when you think about
(28:36):
a phenomenon called the critical flip or frequency.
The what now?
The critical flicker frequency.
Yeah, it definitely is a super complicated retinal physiology topic.
How they experience it is likely very different than we do.
(28:58):
Easiest way to think about this is imagine that you're sitting in a room and someone is
standing next to the light switch and they just keep clicking the light on and off and
then as they keep clicking it on and off, the time between the on and off gets faster
and faster.
Eventually, if there was a person that had a superhuman fast switch, it would get to the
(29:22):
point where our brains and our eyes would not be able to actually differentiate between
the on and off, so it just perceives like a regular beam of light rather than a flicker.
So that's what the critical flicker frequency is.
Maybe this is where their extra sensory perception comes in.
(Those are my words, not Dr. Hanes', I hasten to add.)
(29:45):
In cats, it's estimated that they can parse out changes in movement roughly three times
higher than in humans and see things differently than we can just because they're able to kind
of track things in a way where they have like an increased frequency basically that they
can see up to until that flicker becomes just a regular beam of light.
(30:08):
So if there are say beings out there that are moving at a frequency or speed, we humans
just can't pick up like a bug or a tiny movement in the building or ghosts.
There could totally be things that a cat is seeing whether it's like a flicker or whatever
that humans just physiologically can't.
So that's what I feel like has to be the answer to is my cat staring at a ghost because
(30:32):
it feels like this is the, you know, it's something that we can't perceive as people.
Anatomically physiologically that frequency is something we can't accomplish whereas they
can.
Not for nothing, they can also see better than us at night, which is when most paranormal
activity happens just saying.
(30:53):
It has to do with the size of the structures within their eyes.
So the diameter of their cornea, which is the clear window at the front of the eye and
of their pupil, which is kind of the whole inside the eye that the iris, which is the
colored part of the eyes surrounds, those areas, both the cornea and the people are much
larger than in people.
Let's say the people is completely dilated both in a person and a cat.
(31:17):
A cat is able to take in much more light into the back of their eye than a person is.
So in that sense, they're able to kind of illuminate their retina a little bit more efficiently
than we are.
The other big thing is that most cats have this reflective surface in the back of their
eye, the tapetum lucidum.
(31:38):
It's the same kind of thing.
If you're driving at night and you see a deer in the headlights where they have that green
reflective surface in your high beams, and what that does is it basically helps reflect
light back onto the retina again, not only is there more light going into the cat eye because
of the larger structures, but that tapetum and helps actually like self-aluminate the retina
to then provide even more light to those neurologic structures to help them see in the dark
(32:01):
more so than a person.
They just have supervision powers, right?
Humans can basically see at a greater distance than cats can.
Wait, we see better than cats in some ways?
When we think about people's vision, we think about it being 20/20, meaning that if there's
something that's 20 feet away, then a person with normal vision should be able to see
(32:23):
that thing at 20 feet away.
I don't remember the exact numbers off the top of my head, but I know that their vision
is worse than that regard.
My cat is nearsighted?
I believe if we can see something at 100 feet away, then cats need to be a 20 feet away in
(32:43):
order to see it.
They also have this interesting phenomenon that they're way more nearsighted when they're
kittens, and as they kind of grow to adulthood, their skull shape becomes more adult and
kind of the position of their eyes within their skull becomes more normal.
They become more of what's called an emetropic, which means not nearsighted or far sighted,
(33:04):
somewhere right in the middle, like the Goldilocks zone.
So when Snuggles, our apartment sentry, fixates on something in the house and tracks
it.
She may see something we can't see, or she might just be trying to see better.
(33:24):
It gets complicated because they are in a sense more nearsighted in that way, but in the
same as people, the degree to which an individual cat is near or far sighted compared to the
general population of such an individual thing.
Should I get Snuggles
Some little prescription eyeglasses?
It would make my life a lot easier if I could have a cat walk in and read the chart in the same
(33:47):
way that we do when we go to the doctor.
Unfortunately, I can't do that.
I guess until then, we can't entirely rule our ghosts.
Friends!
Even as we continue to learn more and more about the natural world and rectify it with
(34:07):
our sense of wonder and curiosity, I think it's okay to say that there are some things
we just…get see yet!
We continue to learn about the natural and even supernatural world whenever we ask
these seemingly weird out-there questions.
Heck, in the animal kingdom, we've discovered that bees dance.
(34:29):
Bats and dolphins use echolocation to zero in on the formerly magical radio waves that
the scientific community didn't accept existed until the late 19th century, courtesy one
Heinrich Hertz.
So why not clairvoyant cats?
Regardless of your stance on, if, say, wearing cat eye imbues anything beyond powers of attraction,
(34:51):
or if cats do actually see ghosts, I think we can still agree with the wisest of our ancestors.
The ones who first notice the good energy that we bring into our homes when we welcome
and take care of these little home security detectives.
Speaking of…
In the next episode, we'll keep investigating these spooky critters and what other things
(35:16):
their mighty eyes might spy.
I want to thank my wonderful experts Zahra Hankir, Alicia Halloran, and…
Steve Hanes.
While the opinions are definitely my own, the research and work is theirs.
If you'd like to learn more about them, please check out our show notes, which also includes
the references and research that went into this episode.
(35:37):
If you loved it, please tell all your friends about this wacky podcast that's, and I
quote, "The Radiolab of cats for cat people."
Shout out to Jenny of the Cat Museum of NYC.
And if you feel so moved, please give us a five star rating and a positive review on the
platform where you listen, be it YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Pocketcats--er, Pocketcasts,
(36:00):
whatever.
We're so grateful to all our supporters on the Captain's Log, which is our Substack,
and coffee, or Ko-Fi.
How does that even get pronounced anyway?
For the cost of a cup of coffee, you help us stay afloat.
We really appreciate you.
You are the apples of our eyes, including our cat's eyes, which are watching your every
(36:21):
move.
Because remember, everything is connected.
Six degrees of cats is produced, written, edited, and hosted by yours truly, Captain Kitty,
aka Amanda B. Please subscribe to our mailing list by going to linktr.ee/6degreesofcats
(36:43):
or look us up on all those social media platforms.
You'll be first in line for the extra audio and more treats if you connect with us there.
All episodes are dedicated to the misunderstood, the marginalized, the resilient, and the
weird.
And of course, all the cats we've loved and lost.
(37:05):
Yeah, so I have two.
One of them, his name is Shrek, he's an orange boy.
He actually was a blood donor at the University of Pennsylvania for a while.
They kind of have like a blood donation room where they take cats from poorer situations,
like whether they're on the street or in crowding situations, basically give them the best
(37:29):
life ever for a few years.
And then also, we'll take blood from them to use that blood bank for animals that might
need it in the hospital.
And then after their tenure of being a blood donor is up, then they get adopted out.
So that's where I got Shrek.
And my other one's name is Bernard.
And he is a black and white guy that I actually got at the University of Florida because he,
(37:52):
interestingly enough, came into the ER because he got attacked by an armadillo.
He ended up kind of like fixing up real quick in the ER and I took him home.
But since then, I was like, how did this cat get into a fight with an armadillo?
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