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    WHY CATS ACT WEIRD : A Brief Guide to (Almost) Understanding Feline Behavior
    WHY CATS ACT WEIRD : A Brief Guide to (Almost) Understanding Feline Behavior
    WHY CATS ACT WEIRD : A Brief Guide to (Almost) Understanding Feline Behavior
    Ebook109 pages1 hour

    WHY CATS ACT WEIRD : A Brief Guide to (Almost) Understanding Feline Behavior

    By William G Jennings

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    About this ebook

    Feline behavior has long been a mystery to even the most devoted cat owner. Why do they suddenly have to be in another room? Why do they bring you dead and half dead prey? Why do they suddenly pounce on you? Why are they full of cuddles one minute and swatting you the next? Why do they jump on the desk when you're in the middle of something?

    Author (and cat owner) William G. Jennings, with editorial comment provided by a Flame Point Siamese named Magnum, addresses these and other questions in this guide that (almost) explains the odd quirks of the modern domestic cat.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilliam G Jennings
    Release dateSep 22, 2014
    ISBN9781311742148
    WHY CATS ACT WEIRD : A Brief Guide to (Almost) Understanding Feline Behavior
    Author

    William G Jennings

    William Jennings is an Army brat born in France who now lives and writes in Texas. His literary influences are Robert Heinlein and Ian Fleming.

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      Book preview

      WHY CATS ACT WEIRD - William G Jennings

      WHY CATS ACT WEIRD: A Brief Guide To (Almost) Understanding Feline Behavior

      Copyright 2014William G. Jennings

      Published by William G. Jennings at Smashwords

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Acknowledgements

      Prologue

      Chapter One - A Brief History of Domestic Cats

      Chapter Two - Just What Is That Cat Thinking!

      Chapter Three - Can We Talk?

      Chapter Four - Cat of Many Tales

      Chapter Five - The Feline Art of Catnipulation

      Chapter Six - Cat Rules

      Chapter Seven - Conversations With The Cat

      Chapter Eight – Quoting Authors On Cats

      Chapter Nine - A Few Final Words

      About William G. Jennings

      Other books by William G. Jennings

      Connect with William G. Jennings

      Acknowledgements

      While writing is a lonely endeavor, a writer never writes alone. He has a cadre of friends and family supporting him -- often without knowing the crucial contribution their mere presence provides.

      First, I would like to thank God, who, in His infinite wisdom -- or perhaps more likely a bit of fulsome whimsy He is rarely given credit for -- said, This one wants to be a writer; let us see what he can do with that.

      Thank you to my parents, Sherman and Helen, who passed along their love of reading. Before you can become a writer you have to be a reader. To remain a writer, you have to remain a reader.

      Thank you to my brothers Sherman, Jr., Loyal, Barry, Grant and Garth, and my sister Renee, and to all my in-laws, official and unofficial, nieces and nephews, official and unofficial; all of whom have no doubt been wondering where I was headed. Well, that's still a bit uncertain, but at least I'm moving now.

      Thank you to Amy Lindsay and Monique Parent, who's kind friendship provided the encouragement to get me moving in the first place. Also in their favor: they are cat lovers.

      Thank you to Anthony Hood. It is two years since his passing. He was that one friend every writer needs to snort and shake his head at something and say: This is crap. You can do better. I did the best I could without you, my friend.

      Thank you to the friends on Facebook who read my Conversations with the Cat and suggested I write a cat book. Understand what a boundless delight it is to know that I have made you smile, and I hope I can continue doing it.

      A thank you to the unknown artist who created the cat drawing used on the cover. It lacked credit at the clip art site where I found it.

      And most importantly I would like to thank Tiggy, Sheba, Mischief, Trouble and Magnum, the furry little mysteries this work takes a stab at solving. This really would have been impossible without them.

      Prologue

      There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person.

      ― Dan Greenberg

      When approaching the idea of adding yet another tome to the massive number already in existence on the topic of cats, the obvious question to ask is:

      Why?

      So I put the question to Magnum, a Flame Point Siamese of high intelligence and most excellent judgment.

      With an imperious flick of his tail he fixed upon me his most 'Oh, you silly human, so incapable of grasping the obvious' expression, and replied:

      Why not? We're worth it.

      And so here it is. Because they're worth it.

      Chapter One - A Brief History of Domestic Cats

      In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.

      ―Terry Pratchett

      Exactly when humans and cats began to tolerate one another enough to hang around together is lost in the mists of time.

      For many years scholars believed the domestication of cats began in Egypt around 2,000 BC. Ancient Egyptians came to worship cats as gods. And as the quote above says, cats have never forgotten that. DNA analysis (more on that later) of today’s pet cats shows it is much more genetically similar to wild cats in the Middle East than to that of similar cats in Europe, southern Africa or central Asia, or elsewhere. This is in line with the idea that Egypt was possible home to the earliest domesticated cats.

      However, recent archeological finds suggest the closer cat-human relationship began much earlier then 2,000 BC.

      From an excavation of a five thousand year-old village in Shaanxi, China were unearthed the bones of cats that preyed upon the bamboo rats raiding the local food stores. Biochemical tests determined that millet was part of that cat's diet. Since cats don't eat millet (it is a cereal, and even today to get a cat to eat cereal usually requires giving it a meat flavor) its presence meant they were eating the rats and other animals that were eating millet, the main crop the villages cultivated. However, the tests also found that the cats diet included wild deer: animals that were not eating millet. This suggests the cat-human relationship at that point was less congenial -- cats simply made occasional raiding parties into the villages when mice were plentiful and/or wild deer grew scarce.

      DNA studies (more on that later) of those cats reveal they cannot have been the direct ancestors of today’s house pets. The modern domestic cat has no trace in their DNA of either of the two kinds of Chinese wildcat (known to science as Felis ornata

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