“Oh my God, this is my job every day!” Charlie Shaw says of his position as a big cat keeper at one of America’s most well-known and well-funded zoos.
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to work with big cats, WTOP has a new interview with Charlie Shaw, a big cat keeper at the Smithsonian National Zoo.
Hint: it involves a lot of meat, physical enrichment, olfactory enrichment, and checking on the felids to make sure they’re healthy.
Shaw starts his day by feeding the hungry apex predators, including Damai, a 16-year-old tiger who wants all the snacks, and Vostok, a fast-growing young Amur tiger who doesn’t know a genetically-compatible mate is arriving in short order, and he’ll get to be a dad if things go well.
The genetic matches are carefully made to avoid inbreeding and give the species the best chance to recover.
“Tigers are critically endangered,” Shaw told WTOP. “What we want to do is make sure the gene pool itself is still very diverse.”
Vostok loves to swim. Credit: Charlie Shaw/Smithsonian National Zoo
Shaw says he’s working his dream job.
“You walk in and the tigers all chuff at you, or the lions roar. And you’re like, ‘Oh, my God, this is my job every day!’”
THAT story
I’m aware of it, and I think every person concerned about the welfare of cats should at least know it’s happening.
But it’s also extremely distressing. I actually had nightmares the night after I read it. So I’m offering a strong warning here: think about it before you click the story. The report is by CNN, so there are no gory images and the reporters aren’t trying to make anyone uncomfortable, but the reality of it is bad enough.
For everyone who doesn’t want to know the more upsetting details, the essence of it is that there’s a network of people making “content” of themselves torturing and killing cats, and a rapidly growing audience of people who pay thousands of dollars to “sponsor” the horrific content.
They have “menus” set up where people can select the cat they want to see tortured and specify the ways in which the cat should be hurt and killed. CNN, citing a group of vigilantes trying to dismantle the networks, says people pay up to $1,300 for the “service.” Collectively, the torturers and their audience refer to themselves as “cat lovers.”
The Chinese government, to no one’s surprise, does not care. There are no criminal penalties for what the content producers are doing, and the government hasn’t responded to complaints from concerned people or media networks.
I might address it in the future, but for now I don’t even know what to say. I was away when I read it, and it made me really want to hug Bud and make sure he’s never out of my care. Ever.
If cats are like small children emotionally and intellectually, is it ethical to give them a mind-altering drug?
That’s a question posed in a new article in The Conversation, and it’s something I’ve never really considered before.
It’s generally accepted that our little buddies are more or less equivalent to small children in terms of intellect and emotional intelligence. In fact kittens develop much more quickly than human children and come to certain understandings — like theory of mind and object permanence — considerably earlier than young kids do.
They also seem to possess some sapient qualities. My niece was born a year before Bud, for example, but in their early interactions he understood she was still developing motor skills and did not intend to cause him harm. I have photos of a young Buddy, still a kitten, cautiously allowing her to touch his fur and being uncharacteristically gentle with her.
There’s growing evidence that pet cats are “kittens in perpetuity.” Not only do their behaviors toward us mirror their behaviors toward their mothers — like meowing and using us as a “secure base” when faced with uncertainties — but they depend on us completely. We care for them, in turn, at least in part because they have neotenous (baby-like) features, which trigger our protective instincts.
Bud is basically a “kid,” so is it ethical for me to give him a potentially mind-altering substance?
Catnip isn’t really a drug
While some catnip companies lean into the whole “marijuana for cats” thing, naming catnip after famous marijuana strains, selling it in gag pharmaceutical bottles and even calling themselves “dispensaries,” those are marketing efforts aimed at us servants. As the authors note, it’s not accurate to consider catnip the equivalent of a drug.
It’s not physically addictive, its effects only last a few minutes and cats can’t overdose on the stuff. In fact the primary “danger” of giving too much catnip is your four-legged friend getting desensitized completely to the effect, which is why it’s an occasional treat, not a routine pick-me-up.
Meowijuana Catnip Company really leans into the whole “weed for cats” thing with catnip packaged like marijuana.
Catnip “won’t induce psychosis and won’t lead to addiction or withdrawal symptoms,” wrote authors Anne Quain, a professor of veterinary science at the University of Sydney, and Mia Cobb, a research fellow at the University of Melbourne’s Animal Welfare Science center.
We don’t have to worry about cats driving on the stuff, and they have no responsibilities to speak of so catnip and silver vine can’t impact important decisions. If they have any deleterious social effects, they end at making our furry friends drool, look silly and rendering them even more drowsy than usual.
The mysteries of the nip effect
But what about a kitty’s subjective experience? How does catnip make your feline overlord feel?
We don’t have a very good answer to that question other than what we can observe, which is that they love the stuff. (Some cats don’t respond to catnip but are put in a state of bliss by silvervine. Some respond to both. A small number may not derive much pleasure from either of the plants.)
Even when they aren’t technically impacted by it, cats seem intrigued by the scent and use their secondary olfactory receptor, the vomeronasal organ, to do that odd-looking “mouth-sniffing” thing they do.
Buddy loves catnip and silver vine. I keep his ‘nip in an out-of-reach cabinet, inside a sealed container, which is itself inside an air-tight plastic bag. Bud can be in a deep sleep yet within seconds of opening it he’ll appear like an overly enthusiastic djinn who thinks the wish thing works in reverse, meowing impatiently and trilling with anticipation as I set the good stuff down for him.
That’s as close to consent as we’re going to get from cats, and I think we can safely conclude Bud’s response is “Hell yes! Gimme that sweet ‘nip and silver vine blend!”
He gobbles the stuff down, by the way, so YMMV on your feline overlord’s reaction. The conventional wisdom is that cats who sniff catnip get more animated while cats who eat it tend to roll around in bliss and meow.
Making life more interesting for your fuzzy liege lord
Which brings us to the final point: catnip and silver vine are ultimately enrichment tools that help make indoor life more exciting for our little buddies, like toys, cat furniture, boxes, intriguing smells and most importantly, time playing with us.
We don’t talk about it enough, but keeping our cats stimulated and happy indoors is important, especially as pressure mounts for everyone to keep their felines inside. If your local area isn’t enforcing curfews and outright bans, it seems only a matter of time before they follow states in Australia, New Zealand and Europe in passing new laws. Every day there are news articles detailing the efforts of city councils and town boards to deal with outdoor, unmanaged feline populations, and it’s a safe bet that most of those elected officials will not have the welfare of the animals high on their list of priorities.
If we want to avoid cruelty toward cats, getting our own pets comfortable with living indoors is a good first step to making sure government doesn’t become involved.
When given a choice between an easy meal and food in a puzzle feeder, cats opt for the low-effort yums.
When presented with a simple tray of food and a food puzzle that requires a little work to get at the yums inside, every animal ever tested has opted for the latter.
Except cats.
Rhesus monkeys, rats, chickens, bears, starlings, gerbils, chimpanzees and a wide range of other animals are drawn to food puzzles, perhaps because the food tastes sweeter to them if they’ve had to work for it, or maybe because it’s just something amusing to do.
“There is an entire body of research that shows that most species including birds, rodents, wolves, primates – even giraffes – prefer to work for their food,” said Mikel Delgado, a cat behaviorist and lead author of the newest study on the phenomenon known as contrafreeloading. “What’s surprising is out of all these species cats seem to be the only ones that showed no strong tendency to contrafreeload.”
A puzzle feeder used in the study. Credit: UC Davis
Delgado, a research affiliate at UC Davis’ School of Veterinary Medicine, used a clear puzzle feeder so the cats in her study could see the treats inside. A few feline study participants gave it a shot, but only after grabbing themselves some easy grub first. Other cats just ignored the food puzzle and munched exclusively from the tray.
While this is at least the second study to specifically test whether cats “freeload” their meals, the why of this particular feline behavior remains a mystery. Delgado cautioned against the obvious conclusion — that cats are just lazy — and pointed out that several cats in the study were active and expending energy, just not with the puzzle feeder.
One possible explanation: As hunters and obligate carnivores, cats simply may not enjoy games that simulate foraging the way omnivores and herbivores do.
The study was published on July 26 in the academic journal Animal Cognition. Read it here.
Pain In The Bud 