Chapter 3: Part 2:
the adult years

In suburbia, the cat's daily life is variable and unplanned. She lives in the present and there seems to be some scientific doubt about her ability to think in an organized way, to anticipate the future, or remember much of the past. No cat ever does something on, say, Tuesday that looks as though she'd planned it on Monday.

There are, first of all, two basic kinds of cat days: those in which she sleeps or lazes around during daylight and gallivants at night, and those in which she sleeps at night and cruises by day.

The activities are much the same in either case, although hunting is usually better at night and human hazards, such as annihilation by automobiles, more numerous by day.

The day-shift cat rises with her humans. She arches, yawns, stretches and looks bleakly at the morning. Usually she washes and trots to the kitchen to ask what's for breakfast. A normal cat with a healthy appetite will have a great deal to say about this, most of it arguments in support of her being served first. There will be some ardent rubbing against a leg -- table, chair or human -- to indicate sincerity. And if all else fails, there may be some clawing at the upholstery, or other deliberate wickedness, to attract attention.

Eating, the cat is all business. She inspects the fare gingerly, and if it passes muster she crouches quietly and goes to work. If the dish happens not to be to her liking, she may turn away, shake a paw in distaste and stalk out of the room.

Breakfast settled, one way or another, there usually follows another brisk session of washing and a request to be let out.

Where cats spend their time is probably not as much of a mystery as it seems. Most cats want to observe life, to have a little sport and to be warm or cool while doing either. Unless attention is paid, however, they all seem to disappear for certain periods of the day. It isn't that the neighbor's cat comes to your yard and yours goes to the neighbor's. Neither is visible at either.

By discovering a cat in various lairs, haunts and dens over a span of time, it is possible to construct a certain pattern of behavior, but you will never be sure.

Completely futile, of course, is following a cat to see where she goes. She will do one of two things: sit down to see what you are doing, and thus go nowhere; or go somewhere. This is highly inconclusive. In the former case she may actually be doing what she always does. In the latter she may take you someplace she doesn't ordinarily go. As far as anyone can say definitely, cats like to rest under rose bushes, forsythia bushes -- in fact, anywhere that smells sweet and offers concealment. There they can snooze, with ears a-tilt for danger, or lounge, seeing but unseen. (The keen-nosed dog will often pass within a foot and not notice the indolent cat. This means that he knows she's there and doesn't care, that he knows she knows he's there and it's wiser to keep going, or that he really doesn't know she's there and ought to see someone about his nose.) the cat as a hunter Even in thickly settled communities there is a wide range of game for a cat. Aside from mouse and rat who, though unwelcome, have always stayed close to man's side, there are squirrels, chipmunks, moles, shrews, young rabbits and other small, furry, squeaky creatures that stir the killer instinct in the cat. On the prowl, her ears attuned to the merest whispers of sound, the gentle tabby becomes a destroyer as fearsome to her prey as any of her wild cousins. Her cautious footfall is silent, her gaze alert, her proud tail is carried low. When the quarry comes into view she crouches, head outthrust, eyes level and intent. With infinite stealth -- "What I don't like about cats is that they're so sneaky" -- she eases forward, acutely responsive to every attitude of vigilance or torpor in her prey. As she comes into range her chin juts out just over her evenly placed front paws, her eyes are electric. Her hind legs are gathered under her, the muscles of her haunches flexing alternately as she seeks the ideal footing for the takeoff. Tension is drained off through the switching tail, leaving the body superbly poised, almost relaxed. The leap is high and short, a pounce which brings the front paws reaching forward, with claws distended. The canines bite, searching for spine or brain. The kill may be swift or lingering. The killer toying with her victim is no spectacle for sentimentalists or true-blue sportsmen, but in time the cat slays the mouse and gravely eats it. (Many cats, however, prefer to lay the mouse on the doorstep as a trophy, and all cats enjoy being praised for their accomplishment.) There is, of course, no use in placing a moral value on the performance. Nature permits many unequal struggles and miserable deaths -- and so does man, who invented the ASPCA in order to restrain himself. A cat may be frightened or discouraged from hunting at all, but she will not change her techniques. About all the distressed human can do is not look, or dispatch the mouse himself, remembering that few mice are as pleasant or hygienic as Mr. Disney's. By late afternoon the daytime cat usually returns from wherever she's been and checks in at home. She may scratch at the door or stand on a window sill to call attention to her arrival. Or perhaps she will sit on the porch, cleaning her fur and gazing at the world until noticed and invited in. The aroma of the family dinner cooking in the kitchen will set the cat to clamoring for her own, and after being fed she most likely will settle down for the evening. She might be tempted to play with a string or a catnip mouse, but the chances are that she will prefer to find a spot -- under a lamp or on top of a warm television set -- in which to rest, relax and sleep. This is the time cats purr loudest. mating Whether they prowl by day or night, all cats are constantly prepared for an encounter with the opposite sex. For much of the time this will involve little more than long, whining conversations, occasionally exploding into a squawking, spitting, short-lived fight. In season, however, conditions change. The female is swept by huge, imperative waves of sexual desire and goes seeking a torn to assuage her. This may happen a few times a year or many, depending on the cat. It is a seizure of emotion fierce, primitive and unembarrassed. The docile cat of the week before becomes restless and filled with anguished longing. She pads about, tense, nervous, tail switching. She rolls, writhes and undulates. She is yielding, receptive and female in every sense. Her voice changes. She cries, piercingly, demandingly and incessantly, for a torn to come and relieve her. And come he does. Yowling, potent and all male, he comes in great numbers and from miles around. What follows is so natural, unabashed and public that squeamish human beings may become quite distressed. The toms form a wide, interested ring around the female -- or queen, as she is called. Fights break out sporadically among the males -- screaming, spluttering tangles that add mightly to the general tension of the affair. Before the session has ended one of the several who have mated with her is likely to have impregnated her. His prime function accomplished, the male goes out of the female's life. And she, her passions cooled, becomes her old mannerly self again. pregnancy and birth Her pregnancy lasts nine weeks, or perhaps a few days less. She swells to matronly proportions, and toward the end of the period prowls around looking for an appropriate place for her accouchement. Humans invariably are touched by the onset of maternity, and rarely more so than when the mother-to-be is a nice, neat, delicately bulging cat. They scurry about preparing a bed for the great event: a box, not too high, not too shallow; strips of warm wool bedding; a location convenient, yet private -- and a good distance removed from the better pieces of household furniture. Cats regard this activity with mild interest at best, usually ignore the box when it is presented by the happy people, and generally may be found resting contentedly in it, with eyes half shut, after everyone has trooped off to bed sulking over the ingratitude of cats. As far as anyone can tell, the cat's use of the box signifies nothing, except that cats like to sit in boxes anyway. When the time is upon her the cat will retire to a place of her own choosing, and the odds are 10 to 1 against its being the box. What it will be depends on how well several basic conditions are met. The cat will seek darkness, or at least dim light, protective seclusion, warmth and softness. And most of all she must, like all female apartment hunters, feel "this is right for me." She may find these necessities in a closet, a bureau drawer or on your prize couch. (You can control this by closing off areas in which you'd prefer the cat not to have her kittens. But respect her needs, if you can.) Normal birth of a litter of four kittens usually takes about two hours. If all goes well, the cat is quite capable of managing all the details. The kittens generally are expelled into the world encased in a membrane similar to the human placenta. The kittens may rupture the sac with a reflex action of the legs upon arrival, or the mother cat may open it with her teeth. She also severs the umbilical cord, eats the sac, cleans up the wet, bedraggled little kit and starts it nursing. By the time the fourth baby appears, mother is a busy girl indeed. As with all births, many variations on the basic pattern are possible, and sometimes there are serious complications. Most cats do very well without human assistance. Others, though not requiring help, seem to like having human friends nearby to give quiet encouragement. Those who run into trouble may need first aid, in which case the humans hovering about had best be prepared to give it. The commonest problems are prolonged births -- 12 hours or more -- which exhaust the mother and require that she have a medical stimulant or a Caesarean operation; partial births, in which the emerging kitten may have to be gently but surely pulled out; or rupture of the sac inside the uterus, which requires that, after the kitten has been born, the sac be eased out by pulling on the umbilical cord attached to it. If matters get beyond you, call the vet fast. The mother cat will stay with her kittens for perhaps a day after they have been born. Eventually, though, she needs to eat and attend to her own functions. Briefly, anyway. motherhood Cats are most motherly mothers, and no one can look more proud or happy than a cat reclining luxuriously among a clutch of little new kittens. She is also extremely competent in all aspects of child care -- in fact, something to marvel at. She is affectionate, bountiful, responsible. She keeps her babies spotlessly clean, washing them with her abrasive tongue from their small blind faces to their small tails. She stimulates bowel and bladder action by licking their external organs, and cleans up after them so that the family nest is never messy. And once the kittens are old and active enough to move around, she teaches them all the duties of living with people, such as using the pan for eliminations (or going outdoors) instead of the living-room rug. She nurses them frequently throughout the day and night, and slips off to attend to herself only after they have fallen asleep from the lulling warmth and comfort of a full stomach. Her comings and goings are always noted, even when the kittens are too young to see. At her arrival, all heads lift and the sightless eyes peer in her direction. She settles herself, talking softly, and being careful to see that the group is clustered and no one is being rolled upon. Later, as the kittens reach the playful stage, the mother cat becomes an object of fun. She endures furious leaps upon her switching tail; she lazily pats with her paw at small antagonists sitting on their haunches and attempting to wrestle with her. Occasionally, exasperated, she will wrap a struggling kitten in her forelegs and give him a gentle but instruclive taste of the traditional hind-legs-rip-at-the-belly. At the end of this exercise, kittens often sit quiet and look thoughtful. Her most vivid pantomime accompanies her lessons to the young on the subject of mousing. Usually she appears among them carrying a freshly killed mouse. She summons the kittens around her, talking in a dozen different tones of voice. And, stiff-legged, with hair on end, the kittens come and circle the mouse. Eventually, mother will let them paw the mouse and eat the mouse, but woe to the venturesome kitten who snoops too close, unbidden. A dry, unfriendly hiss of warning from mother makes it very clear just whose mouse this is. In time and in her way, the kittens learn to be cats. Within a few weeks the mother begins to wean her group. She attends them less frequently and less devotedly. She cuffs away the greedy ones who nurse too much and too long. Gradually they leave her -- usually through human intervention -- and she does not care. In fact, by now she is ready for another ring of courting toms and more kittens -- and more, and more. In her lifetime she may bear as many as 20 litters. the twilight years Throughout the seasons of the years this will be the pattern of her life -- countless catnaps in the sun; countless mice slain and devoured; as many kittens as nature and her human friends allow. In summer she will enjoy the lush fullness of the earth, watching with eye and ear the movement of the days, and patrolling the scented nights. The crispness of autumn will find her vigorously campaigning among the harvesting field mice and southward-flying birds. Her coat will thicken against the threat of cold ahead. On frosty mornings she will huddle in the pale sun, arising ever more stiffly as her years advance. In winter she will retire, a fireside cat, saving of the world's warmth that comes her way, cowering before the bleak winds, reluctant in the snow, slowed down and waiting. With all other living things she responds at last to spring. The heart rejoices, the earth turns green, the air is filled with promise, and even old cats roll in the new grass, dance the skittering steps they learned as kittens and climb a few feet up a few good trees. To every cat at one of these time spans will come the day that is the end of everything. With luck, the cat will be properly old yet free of disability and pain. With luck, she -- or he -- will have lived fully, known the urgent, purposeful mating with torn or queen, and passed on the natural faculties of being cat to younger generations. With luck, too, she will have moved among people who cherished her, often for things she was not, but inescapably for the many honest things she was. And for having shared her good life, they will account themselves lucky. Go To: Cat Breed Videos

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