HEAR This Steve Dale’s Animal World WGN radio show – all about cats.
Featured, Dr. Sarah Brown, author of The hidden language of cats: how they got us at Meow. One question this British researcher asks is how domestic cats evolved in the first place, and are today’s cats actually domesticated or not? Some say no.
Over time, cats were once worshiped as gods, and at other times during their rollercoaster journey, they were blamed for the Great Plague and associated with witchcraft.
Dr. Brown is an anthropologist and explains what this growing field is all about.
How dogs perceive the world (starting with smell) is the first step toward understanding cats, including how felines use and even depend on pheromones and pheromone communication.
Dr. Brown says cats communicate with us all the time; the problem is that we very often misunderstand what they are trying to say. Cats don’t usually meow to communicate with each other, at least not often. Most cats “talk” to their people all the time, but why do cats meow at us and in a higher pitch than cat-to-cat meows? Of course, cats provide us with visual cues through body language all the time. Are we better at understanding dogs than cats? And why?
Look at your cat – and you can tell how your cat feels by looking at everything from your cat’s face to your cat’s tail to the way your cat moves, or even doesn’t move. Film your cat in slow motion and you might be surprised by what you observe.
A common misconception is that you might think that cats are solitary animals, when in reality they are not. For example, outdoors, according to their own choices, cats live with other people of their species.
A purr heard on the other side of the world
THE the cat purrs the loudest breaking a Guinness World Record.