Zzzzzzz…zzzzzz…zzzzz…wait, what?! Oh. Merry Christmas!
The Buddies wish all of you a wonderful Christmas filled with warmth, love, turkey, and lots of awesome stuff from Santa Claws!
Thank you for reading PITB and for being advocates for our furry friends!
There’s a disconnect between the usually careful language of research studies and the exaggerated claims of news articles.
The headlines over the past few weeks have all been variations on the same riff: cats meow more frequently to male caregivers because we don’t know how to bond with the little stinkers, we disregard their feelings, and we ignore their pleas.
Others are more blunt in their assessment, like a story from YourTango that stated women “bond deeply” with cats, whereas we men are merely “manipulated” by them.
“Other studies have found that women are much better at giving their cats more attention, understanding their cats’ emotions, and are more likely to mimic their cats’ vocalization, too,” the YourTango story claims. “Whereas for men, the same cannot be said. Considering they tend to give affection more sparingly than women, it’s no wonder that the dynamic is different.”
Just picture it: women levitating above the rest of us, sharing their amazing Female Affection with the poor, emotionally starved pet felines who belong to men. If we’re trying to get rid of the “crazy cat lady” stereotype and spread the idea that cats are great companions for every kind of person, this probably isn’t helping.
So what’s the source of these claims?
Apparently a study out of Turkey that involved just 31 cats and their humans. All of the human participants were Turkish, and just 13 of them were male. All were recruited online. (And for some parts of the study, like the analysis of greetings by owner gender, only 26 participants were included because the other five did not submit complete data, including the ages of their cats.)
It’s important to make a distinction between what the study’s authors claim and what the media reports, because they’re almost always two different things.
The research team from the University of Ankara counted more meows directed at the 13 male caregivers in their study compared to the 18 female caregivers. In their paper, the team acknowledged their sample size was too small to draw any conclusions, and lacked the demographic diversity to rule out innumerable potential reasons why those 13 cats meowed more frequently than the 18 cats cared for by women.
Even with a more robust sample size including men of different ages, social classes, and nationalities, correlation is not causation, and it may be that the apparent difference in feline vocalizations disappears with a larger study group that more accurately reflects universal demographics.
Indeed, the study’s authors state clearly that feline greeting behavior is “a complex, multidimensional phenomenon that defies straightforward explanation.” (Emphasis ours.)
The conclusion, as always, is that we need more data, which is one reason why studies must be repeatable.
That nuance doesn’t make it into listicles or stories optimized for maximum shareability on Facebook, so instead we get headlines that present studies as the last word instead of the first tentative steps to understanding a phenomenon.
In case it wasn’t obvious, there is no data to support the claim that men “give attention more sparingly” than women, or that women are better at reading feline emotions. We don’t even have baselines or criteria for those claims. How do we objectively measure “better” when it comes to reading cats, especially when every cat and human bonded pair have their own pidgin “language”? What’s the “right” amount of attention?
As the loyal servant of an infamously talkative cat, I’m not sure gender makes any difference. Bud’s vocal tendencies were already present from kittenhood, and I simply nurtured them by engaging in conversations with him, giving him loads of attention and doting on him.
Often our conversations go like this:
Bud: “Mreeeoww! Mow mow! Brrrrrt a bruppph!”
Me: “I know, little dude. You told me, remember?”
Bud: “Brrrrrr! Brrrruppp! Yerp!”
Me: “Yes, but they’ve tried that already. It’s not just about tokamak design, it’s…”
Bud: “Merrrrrp! Mow mow!”
Me: “No, it’s about plasma containment. No containment, no reaction, no energy gain!”
Bud: “Brrrrr! Mrrrowww! Brupbrupbrrrruppp!”
Me: “Yeah, well that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”
I really do talk about science and science fiction with my cat, since he seems to respond to it. Of course it’s gotta be at least partially due to my tone, but strangely if I talk to him about other abstract things, he acts like I’m bothering him with so much human nonsense.
Regardless, Buddy and I object to the claim that a talkative cat is a disengaged or neglected cat. It’s not that he talks a lot, it’s that he never stops!
Buddy the Cat’s talents are innumerable! In this rousing number he slips into the style of Gilbert and Sullivan and uses verse to tell us what a feline should be.
“I am the very model of a feline so crepuscular
My visage is so handsome and my meowscles are so muscular!
I am a little tiger though the fact may seem improbable
My knowledge is near boundless in all matters gastronomical
I eat six meals a day in circumstances nominal
For serving snacks when I demand, my human is responsible
No challenge is impossible, no problem yet insoluble
I am the very model of a feline so phenomenal!
I’m schooled in all biology from macro to subcellular
A meowster of olfactory for every object smellular
My hearing’s extrasensitive in low and higher frequencies
I hear the mice a-chatter but the elephants don’t speak to me
My style is more Big Punisher than Doctor Dre or Easy E
Cuz when it comes to hip hop my tastes all face to easterly
I like to shake my booty, I’m funky when I need to be
I am the very model of a cat who does it easily!
I rule with iron paws be it jungle or the living room
And when I’m finished dining, I am content to sit and groom
When it comes to games I am the ultimate competitor
Obligatory carnivore, I am a model predator
Yet somehow cute and fluffy when I feel the need to be
Mostly when I tell my buddy “Wake up, human, and feed me!
I am well-versed in big cats whether tiger or jaguarian
And qualities of catnip like a feline rastafarian
Intimidating surely, in my home I am the guardian
Look dashing in a tux or the kit of a safarian!
When it comes to ladies all the gents seek my analysis
I designed the Taj Mahal and Cleopatra’s palaces
I drink champagne from bottles and sip water from my chalices
Then ignite sky with a range of borealises!
A champion of Opens like the French, Aussie and Wimbledon
My game is too complex for the tastes of canine simpletons
A predator so optimal, impeded by no obstacle
When I’m roused to anger you will find me quite unstoppable
Stylish with a monacle, calm and rarely volatile
I am the very model of a feline so phenomenal!
I am the very model of a feline so phenomenal!
[Chorus of girls]
He is the very model of a feline so phenomenal! Find a better cat? Well that is just impossible! He is the very model of a feline so phenomenal!”
How do you ensure people will heed warnings to steer clear of nuclear waste storage sites thousands of years in the future? One outlandish proposal involves genetically engineering domestic cats to glow in the presence of radiation.
Imagine you’re a person living five thousand years downstream.
Maybe civilization collapsed and restarted, maybe records were lost, or maybe like Etruscan, Harappan and proto-Elamite, the languages we speak today will be long forgotten.
At any rate, if you discover a forceful warning left by your ancestors from the deep past, would you understand it without translation or cultural context?
And if you’re the one tasked with leaving the message, how would you do it?
The message has to be enduring. It must be recorded in a format that will withstand the tests of time, conquest and natural disasters. The message must be comprehensible without cultural context, because we have no idea how language will shift in the future or whether our descendants will enjoy the knowledge that comes with continuity of records.
Lastly, the message must be both compelling and absolute in its meaning, because its content is vitally important: This site contains nuclear waste. Do not under any circumstances excavate or disturb the contents of this facility. It will lead to sickness, suffering and death.
How do you phrase that in a way our naturally curious species will heed the message?
We certainly didn’t heed the warnings on the tombs of King Tut and other pharaohs. For all we know, humans of the future might believe the hidden chambers deep in Yucca mountain or buried 3,000 feet underground are filled with fabulous treasures and wonders beyond imagination.
They might interpret the warnings as superstition, meant to ward off looters, “grave robbers” and anyone else who might be motivated to break in. They might see the care and effort that went into encasing the objects and conclude there must be something very much worth preserving inside.
Or they might be driven by simple curiosity, as so many human endeavors have been.
Arguments about how to warn the future are at least as old as the Manhattan Project (1942) and the first nuclear power plants (1954 in the USSR, 1958 in the US), but there weren’t serious efforts to come up with a plan until the 1970s, when scientists, historians and other thinkers began to engage in formal efforts to find a long-lasting solution.
Some of the ideas are boring, some are impractical, and some are absurd, like an idea to create a “garden of spikes” atop nuclear material waste sites, to discourage people from settling in the area or excavating.
Unfortunately, one idea that’s still being kicked around is the concept of the radiation cat, or raycat.
Knowledge and language may be lost to history, signage may be destroyed, physical obstacles may be removed. But one constant that has endured, that has seen empires rise and fall, and has existed long before Stonehenge and the pyramids of Giza, is the human relationship with cats.
They’re now valued as companions, but we still use them as mousers on ships, in heavily populated cities, in ancient structures and on farms and vineyards.
They’re embedded so deep into our cultural psyche that it would not be outlandish to think the archaeologists of the future may conclude the internet was constructed primarily to facilitate the exchange of images of cats.
Even the first high-bandwidth deep space transmission was a video of a cat, so in a very real sense, the dawn of a solar system-wide internet was heralded by an ultra high definition clip of an orange tabby named Taters, beamed back to earth from the exploratory spacecraft Psyche, which was 19 million miles away when it transmitted Taters on Dec. 11, 2023.
Consider also that the basic felid body plan — shared by domestic kitties, tigers, pumas, black-footed cats and the 37 other extant species — has barely changed in 30 million years, because cats are extremely successful at what they do.
In other words, cats aren’t going away, and domestic felines have a place in every human society.
So philosophers Françoise Bastide and Paolo Fabbri conceived of the “living warning” in 1984. The idea is to alter the genetic code of felis catus so that the animals glow or change color in the vicinity of nuclear waste, using minuscule levels of radiation as the trigger.
There are natural precedents for this, including bioluminescence and several species of octopus that radically change colors and patterns on their skin to evade predators.
The second component, once the genetic code has been altered, is the creation of folklore: songs, stories and myths that will endure through time, warning people to keep cats close, treat them well, and run like hell if they change color because it means something terrible, something evil beyond imagination, is nearby.
To ensure the folklore of feline Geiger counters endures, an idea by linguist and semiotician Thomas Sebeok would be incorporated. Although empires and states rise and fall, there’s one organization that has survived for 2,000 years preserving a unified message: the Catholic church.
Sebeok proposed an atomic priesthood, an order that would pass the knowledge down through generations, continually seeding culture with stories and songs of glowing felines.
If this stuff sounds wacky, that’s because it is. We won’t figure out a way to ensure a message is received and understood thousands of years in the future without considering some off-the-wall plans.
Of course messing with the genetic code of any animal raises serious ethical questions.
We don’t have the right to play God and tinker with the genetic code of extant species. We don’t fully understand the immediate consequences for the health and happiness of cats, and we know almost nothing about the long-term effects on the species.
I’d also argue that we have a special relationship with cats and dogs, one that exceeds any obligations we may feel toward our primate “cousins” or other non-human animals.
Cats and dogs have been living with humans for a combined 40,000 years. They have been molded by us, they are dependent on us, and all that time in human proximity has led to unique changes.
No animals on this planet can match them when it comes to reading human emotions. Our little buddies pick up on our emotional states before we’re consciously aware of them partly because of their robust sensoriums, and partly because as their caretakers, our business is their business.
We bear a responsibility to both species and the individual animals. It’s not just the fact that without them, our lives would feel less meaningful. It’s the indisputable fact that without them — without dogs who flushed out prey on yhr hunt and guarded small settlements, without cats who prevented mass starvation by hunting down rodents — we would not be here.
Cats and dogs play a major role in the story of the human race. We are indelibly linked. Their DNA is not ours to tinker with, and they are not tools we can repurpose at our convenience.
Thankfully the US Department of Energy has never endorsed the concept of raycats. While there is a website advocating for a raycat program and small groups around the world dedicated to its propagation, the interest is mostly academic.
The Raycat Solution, which maintains a site dedicated to the idea, has a FAQ which says its supporters are serious about its potential usefulness, but for now most experts see it as a thought experiment and reminder that the problem must be dealt with eventually. At some point NIMBY will have to yield to reality, and wherever the US ends up storing nuclear waste, it’ll need to be secured, sealed and marked.
The goal is for the message to endure at least 10,000 years, at which point scientists say the radiation will be minimal.
That’s assuming that the future holds the collapse and rebuilding of human civilization, or at least a technological backslide in which the majority of our species’ knowledge is lost.
We like to think things will be brighter than that and instead of glowing to warn people of danger, cats of the far future will be where they belong — with their human buddies, exploring new frontiers on starships with plenty of comfortable napping spots.
Header image depicts the Alvin Ward Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant in Georgia, the largest nuclear plant in the US. Image via Wikimedia Commons/NRC
[1] The nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain was initially funded and approved by congress in 2002, then was canceled and de-funded in 2011 after significant pushback from people who live in Nevada, along with their representatives in congress. Plans for the site have changed several times in more than two decades, leaving the US with no central, secure site to store nuclear waste.
Animals are a real source of joy in this world, and few things are better than cozying up on a couch with a book and a purring cat in your lap.
For more than two weeks after adopting him, I still didn’t have a name for my cat.
I imagined something badass, something funny, something better than all those boring pet names. But the playful, energetic, bold little kitten in front of me was no Brasidas (my favorite Spartan), Mo (my favorite pitcher) or Timothy Cavendish. (My favorite character from David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.)
So I kept calling him buddy while I waited for something to come to me, and then it became obvious: He is Buddy.
Original? Nah. But it describes him perfectly, and to me that’s the best part about adopting him, my first-ever pet.
We’re pals. Amigos. Chums. Accomplices. Buddies.
I don’t consider myself his “dad” even though I have parental, protective feelings for him. He’s my buddy who wants to be involved in everything I do, whether it’s helping me greet trick-or-treaters at the door like he did last night, batting a paw at my guitar strings to add his special touch to my recording takes, or just hanging out while I’m reading.
I knew it intuitively, but the best advice I ever got was to always remember your little friend, be it a cat or dog, has his or her own feelings.
There’s a lot of confusion around the word sentience and people often confuse it with the concept of sapience, but there is no doubt about it: mammals like cats and dogs, avian species like corvids (ravens, jays, crows and magpies), and even cephalopods like octopus are sentient.
They think. They feel. They experience emotions like joy, sadness, excitement, anxiety, love, loneliness and more, just as intensely as we do. They may not be able to articulate those feelings in words, but they’re real.
More than half a century’s worth of science has confirmed that fact at every step, and we continue to learn more about animal cognition with every advance in technology that allows us to peer deeper into their minds.
When you treat your pet with respect and keep their feelings in mind, you’ll have a friend for life.
A loyal friend whose love comes without condition.
A friend who won’t lie to you…except maybe when it comes to food. After all, Bud could win an Oscar for his role as a starving cat, even though a single glance at him confirms he’s never missed a meal.
If you’re where I was years ago and considering bringing a pet into your life, ask yourself if you’re ready for a commitment that could last two decades, if you’re ready and motivated to give an animal not just a forever home, but the best life the little one can live.
Remember that kittens and puppies grow up fast, and think about whether you’d rather have a whirlwind of energy who will wreck your sleeping habits for months, or an adult furball who is much more chill. Remember that you will have to do things you don’t like, whether it’s scooping a litter box or bagging poop on a walk. There will be expenses, scares, the occasional puked-on rug.
But the joy you’ll get, and the friendship you’ll have, will make it all worth it.
And if you’re sure, find yourself a buddy at your local shelter. Your life will be better for it.
P.S. If you’re a fool like me, you can also have fun imagining your cat or dog in absurd scenarios based on their personalities.
Pain In The Bud 