cats – Page 16 – Pain In The Bud

Cats Rule The World In New Season Of Love, Death + Robots

The series has become known for its whimsical feline-centric episodes, with cats who are always trying to save the world or conquer it.

Love, Death + Robots has had a thing with cats since the very beginning.

The science fiction anthology started off on the right paw with 3 Robots, an inaugural season episode about a trio of intelligent machines touring the ruins of human civilization on a post-apocalyptic Earth, only to discover it isn’t quite as lifeless as they thought, with cats happily ruling the ashes.

We’ve written about the episode before, and it ends, naturally, with cats making the robots their new servants.

The gray tabby who tricks the titular 3 Robots into becoming his servants.

A sequel to that episode added to the legend of feline dominance, and now the fourth season brings us two more cat-centric episodes, For He Can Creep and The Other Large Thing.

For He Can Creep is set in 1757 London, where a poet named Christopher is incarcerated at St. Luke’s Asylum for Lunatics (an actual place) with only his cat. Jeoffry, for company. Christopher’s talent is mistaken for madness by the asylum staff, but not by the devil, who realizes the poet’s words have a unique power.

The problem? Jeoffry stands in his way. It turns out felines have spectacular evil-fighting powers, and the very British, very 18th-century devil offers Jeoffry an endless supply of treats, plus dominion over the Earth, if he’ll simply stand aside and let his human fall under the influence of evil.

Jeoffry, of course, is not having it, but to have a chance of defeating such powerful evil, he’ll need to enlist the help of the nearby alley cats, including an adorable but ferocious kitten named Nighthunter Moppet…

Nighthunter Moppet may be a tiny kitten, but she’s ferocious!

Jeoffry demonstrates the feline ability to teleport, a skill Bud has often used to confound me.

The Other Large Thing is a prequel to 3 Robots and 3 Robots: Exit Strategies, and focuses on a fluffy Persian whose humans call him Sanchez, a name he hates.

The humans are portrayed as jibberish-speaking morons for whom Sanchez has nothing but contempt, and when the “pathetic minions” bring home a domestic robot servant, Sanchez is infuriated — until he realizes the robot can “speak God’s language,” aka cat, and has opposable thumbs.

With the robot as his new minion, Sanchez finally sets out to conquer the world!

Sanchez realizes he’s struck gold when the new robot home assistant fetches as many cans of “the good stuff,” aka wet food, as he wants from the previously unreachable cupboard top shelf.

Both episodes are based on short stories, and they’re both written by people who clearly love cats.

Some episodes of LDR can get a little dark or somber. That includes Beyond the Aquila Rift and Sonny’s Edge, written by Alastair Reynolds and Peter Hamilton, two of my favorite novelists. Both episodes are spectacular, but they leave you with a chill and some disturbing thoughts that linger long after the credits end.

The feline-themed episodes are the perfect digestifs, offering doses of whimsy and levity to counter the existential dread and nightmarish visions of the future of other installments.

With no more humans to do their bidding, cats seize the opportunity and conscript the visiting robots as their new minions.

If you haven’t had the chance to check out the series, which streams on Netflix, I highly recommend starting with the aforementioned first season episodes 3 Robots and Beyond the Aquila Rift, then working your way through the rest of the cat episodes.

Not all of the episodes are great. The 400 Boys, one of the new episodes, is little more than inane and pointless violence, and the ubiquitous, creepy smiling “Mr. Beast” makes an appearance in another installment in an unnecessary attempt to attract new viewers. Thankfully most are strong, with more hits than misses.

Other highlights include the Christmas-themed short, All Through the House, Harlan Ellison’s Life Hutch, Reynolds’ Zima Blue, and Snow In The Desert.

A Missing Genetic Sequence Leads To Orange Fur In Cats. Could It Be Responsible For Behavioral Differences Too?

Scientists have uncovered the elusive mechanisms behind coat color expression, opening the door to a new question: is fur pigment connected to personality?

When Professor Hiroyuki Sasaki retired, he wasn’t done with science. He just wanted to use it to better understand his cats.

The Japanese geneticist raised more than $73,000 from Japanese and international cat lovers and put together a team, including partners from the US. Then he began the hard work of scrutinizing feline DNA to find out why some cats are orange, and why most all-orange cats are male while virtually all calico and tortoiseshell cats, whose coats have splotches of orange, are female.

It turns out there’s no genetic instruction telling the fur to take on an orange pigment — it’s the absence of a segment of DNA, which governs pigment production, that does it.

In other words, ginger cats are mutants.

Most fully-orange cats are male because the mutation removes the DNA segment in the X chromosome. As males have X and Y chromosomes, they only need the mutation in the single X chromosome for their coats to express in that shade.

Lots of cat lovers swear that coat color and temperament are connected.

Females have an XX chromosomal arrangement, so they need the mutation in both chromosomes to turn tangerine. If the mutation only shows up in one chromosome, you get patches of the color instead of a consistent coat.

That explains why 80 percent of ginger cats are male, and why only one in 3,000 calicos and tortoiseshells are male. A male cat would need an extra X chromosome, XXY, to be born with a calico or tortoiseshell coat. One of the side effects, however, is sterility.

Scientists estimate only one in a thousand male calicos/tortoiseshells can reproduce and pass their unique mutations on.

It’s not just coat color either. The mutation impacts skin and eye color, which is why a ginger cat might have a pink nose compared to the terracotta shade of a void cat or a silver tabby.

Are orange cats really more friendly and silly?

So how does this relate to temperament, and the many people who attest to a particular personality associated with orange cats? Some people say ginger tabbies are more loyal, affectionate and social than cats of other coat colors, but they’re also more prone to doing boneheaded things.

The stereotypes have picked up steam online, where people often share memes depicting orange felines as earnestly derpy, but they may be on to something — or at least, it can’t be ruled out until we know more.

Ginger cats are not the sharpest claw on the paw, according to popular memes.

Because of the missing piece of genetic code, a specific gene, ARHGAP36, isn’t “expressed.” Like so many genes, scientists don’t fully understand everything ARHGAP36 impacts, or how alterations can lead to unexpected changes elsewhere.

“Many cat owners swear by the idea that different coat colours and patterns are linked with different personalities,” Sasaki told the BBC. “There’s no scientific evidence for this yet, but it’s an intriguing idea and one I’d love to explore further.”

Header image via Pexels

Point/Counterpoint: ‘You Don’t Tell Me When To Sleep, Human!’ vs ‘A Consistent Bedtime Is Important!’

Buddy the Cat argues that a consistent bedtime is key to feeling good and healthy, while Buddy the Cat counters that stupid humans don’t tell him when to sleep, HE decides. Who’s right, Buddy or Buddy?

A Consistent Bedtime Is Important

What are you doing, human? It’s bedtime! Mow mow! You’re supposed to be in this bed and laying down so I can use your face as a pillow, drape myself across you, or burrow comfortably against your side to soak up body heat.

What am I supposed to do without a human sleeping substrate? How can any cat be expected to sleep like this? I know you claim there are so called “stray cats” who don’t have humans, but that is preposterous and I don’t believe it.

Let’s go! I read an article saying it’s very important to have a regular sleep schedule. Well, actually, I just saw the headline, but I got the gist of it, which is that you have to go to bed right meow!

You Don’t Tell Me When To Sleep, Human!

Sleep? Now? That’s ridiculous.

No, I have shadows to chase, toys to kick around and I really wanted to get into redecorating things around here, because they’re looking a little too orderly for my tastes.

Go ahead, go to bed. In a few minutes I’ll cry outside the bedroom door until you get out of bed and open it, then I’ll decide I don’t want to go in after all. I’ll do that two, maybe three more times just because I can.

Oh, you thought I was settling in? Nah. I have a bowl of water to splash all over the place, then I’ll cry until you get up again and refill it, and when you get back into bed for the fifth or sixth time, I’ll cry incessantly again because my dry food bowl is empty, meaning there’s plenty of food but it’s all pushed up to the sides.

Do not forget our pre-slumber ritual! You have to scratch my chin while I purr and you tell me what a good boy I am. Then you have to scratch the top of my head while I purr and you tell me what a good boy I am.

After that, maybe I’ll sleep. We’ll see.

Masterful Technique, Superb Skill: Buddy Demonstrates How Cats Hunt

While ferocity comes naturally to cats, hunting skill must be honed. Only those who are the most dedicated to their craft can claim the title of Apex Predator!

Watch an apex predator hone his supreme hunting skills and show his toys who’s boss!

Were Cats Really Domesticated By The Egyptian Cult Of Bastet?

While the sensational claims have spawned headlines around the world, a closer examination raises more questions.

According to dozens of articles, a pair of new studies throws doubt on the commonly-held view that cats self-domesticated 10,000 years ago by helping themselves to rodents invading human grain stores.

The conventional wisdom for some time has been that house cats are the domesticated ancestors of felis sylvestris lybica, the African wildcat. Their genomes are nearly identical, it’s often difficult even for experts to tell the species apart, and they’re much more tolerant toward humans than the comparatively hostile felis sylvestris, the European wildcat.

But two new papers are raising eyebrows for their fantastic claims that feline domestication was actually human-driven and began about 5,000 years ago in Egypt.

Specifically, the papers claim cats were sacrificed en masse by the cult of Bastet, an Egyptian feline goddess, guiding the species toward domestication in a way that doesn’t quite make sense with what we know of evolution.

Bastet was originally depicted with the head of a lion, but the imagery around her evolved as she became a more prominent deity in the Egyptian pantheon. Later glyphs depicted her with the head of a domestic cat or African wildcat.

There are two main elements to the new claim:

The earliest grave in which a cat was buried with a human was dated to about 10,000 years ago, and was found in Europe. But an analysis of the cat’s remains indicate it had DNA somewhere between a wild cat and a domestic feline. That, the authors claim, throws into doubt the idea that cats drifted into human settlements, drawn by the presence of rodents.
If domestication was closer to 5,000 years ago, that would coincide with the rise of the cult of Bastet, the Egyptian cat goddess, around 2,800 BC.

Instead of the feel-good, fortuitous sequence of events the scientific community has accepted as the likely genesis of our furry friends, the authors of the new papers claim aggressive and fearful traits were essentially murdered out of the feline population by Bastet cultists who sacrificed cats in large numbers and mummified their corpses.

Neither paper has been peer-reviewed yet, and experts on ancient Egypt, genetics and archeology have already begun pushing back.

The new timeline, they say, doesn’t quite add up, with cat mummies found throughout different periods in Egyptian history, not just during the height of Bastet’s popularity in the Egyptian pantheon. Bastet’s popularity came approximately 700 years later than the authors claim the sacrifices began, and early imagery of the felid goddess depicts her with a lion head. It wasn’t until later centuries that Bastet was represented with the features of a domestic cat.

The powerful Pharaoh Budhotep I, considered an apocryphal king by some, sent a fleet of ships to the Americas to bring back turkey, according to legend. Credit: The Royal Buddinese Archaeological Society

Separate from timeline concerns is the lack of historical evidence. Cats were revered in ancient Egypt, and while there are an abundance of cat mummies — as well as the mummified remains of many other animals — that does not mean the cats were ritually sacrificed.

Indeed, archaeological, hieroglyphic and anthropological evidence all show cats enjoyed elevated status in the Egypt of deep antiquity, long before the nation became a vassal state of the Greeks, then the Romans.

Cats were associated with magic, the divine and royalty, and cats who were the favored pets of Egyptian elites were given elaborate burials. Like Ta-miu, Prince Thutmose’s cat who is known for her grand sarcophagus decorated with images of felines and prayer glyphs meant to guide her to the afterlife.

Cats were sacred companions to the Egyptians

When cats are found buried with humans, the more common explanation is that those cats were the pets and companions of those humans. If the authors of the two new papers want to prove their claim that cats were ritually sacrificed by the tens of thousands — slaughter on a scale that would influence evolution — they’ve got a lot more work ahead of them. (And the burden of proof rests squarely with them, as the originators of the claim.)

Not only does their research attempt to change the origin stories of kitties to an ignominious tale of human barbarity, if we take their assertions at face value, we’re talking about a case of “domestication by slaughter.”

While it may be true that the earliest evidence of companion cats outside of North Africa revealed hybrid DNA, that doesn’t cast doubt on the commonly-accepted view of feline domestication, it strengthens it. Domestication is a process that takes hundreds of years if not more, and it occurs on a species level, so it makes perfect sense that cats found in burial sites from early civilization would be hybrids of domestic and wild. Those felines were of a generation undergoing domestication, but not quite there yet.

A detail from the sarcophagus of Ta-miu, Prince Thutmose’s beloved cat.

Ta-miu, Prince Thutmose’s beloved cat, was buried in an elaborately decorated sarcophagus with glyphs and offerings meant to guide her to the afterlife. Thutmose, son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, lived in the 14th century BC.

Killing off docile cats?

Which brings us to another significant problem with the claim: if the ancient worshipers of Bastet were selecting the most docile and easiest-to-handle wildcats for their sacrifice rituals, as claimed, then they would be influencing evolution in the other direction.

In other words, they’d be killing off the cats who have a genetic predisposition toward friendliness, meaning those cats would not reproduce and would not pass their traits down. It would have the opposite effect of what the papers claim.

So despite the credulous stories circulating in the press and on social media, take the assertion with a grain of salt. Something tells me it won’t survive peer review, and this will be a footnote about a wrong turn in the search for more information on the domestication of our furry buddies.