Walking on ice

While I was walking home I met a man treading carefully on the icy pavement while his two dogs, full of joie de vivre, ran ahead sniffing the slippery surface. Sherpa too is very surefooted in the snow. Banjo, despite his imperfect hind legs has no fear either.

As children we made slides and unafraid slid down them, confident that our sense of balance and cerebellum once attuned would know which way to lean to avoid falling. For animals and young children walking on ice is left to the unconscious. It is when too-clever adults say, 'Watch, you might fall', and sliding comes under the control of the conscious mind, that we really are in danger of injuring ourselves.

Sherpa slighted?

Sherpa slept in the boiler house the night before last. Why she slept there and not in an armchair beside the fire, on a night when crisp snow covered the ground and it was forecast that the temperature could drop to -4 C, baffles me. Was she feeling unwell, in need of peace? Was she waiting for another cat? When I left Banjo out at an unknown hour in the morning, she had no inclination to come inside and declined the food I offered.

I wonder if she sought solitude because I have been paying more attention to Banjo recently. She even had to get up from my lap the evening before, a few minutes after settling on it when I went to let John in. Perhaps Sherpa feels slighted.

I try to avoid favouring one cat. Banjo is jealous if he feels Sherpa is receiving too much attention. She is aware of this and knows it is wise to leave my lap when he starts to make a scene. Often the first indication I have that he is on his way to the door to be let in, is when she slips down beside me in the armchair.

It is not that Banjo forbids all intimacy between Sherpa and me. Each cat accepts the other is entitled to love and be loved, and it is only when one regards the other’s demands as excessive that redress is needed. His distress is directed outwards, hers inwards.

Now and again we have the very happy situation where all three of us are on the sofa, she on my lap, he resting a paw, or two, or four on my arm, purring loudly.

Last night Sherpa slept in the house. On one side of me.

Doris Lessing on cats

Read this book in a private place because there may be times when you cannot help weeping. This is a great book, the product of a master storyteller’s remarkable powers of observation, her understanding of animals and people and her superb writing skills.

Decades after the death of a beloved feline childhood companion, and after acquiescing in the necessary but horrific cull of cats on an African farm, Doris Lessing re-embarked on a voyage of cat discovery. Various incarnations of ship’s cat, vain, flirtatious, self-indulgent, neurotic, courageous, grateful, loving, accompanied her and she was present at births and deaths. She watched and recorded matings, friendships and rivalries, mothers teaching kittens, hunting. She tended animals that were injured or became ill and took on board those that were neglected and needed help.

There was a cat that would only eat lightly cooked calves’ liver and lightly boiled whiting, another who seemed devoid of maternal feelings and who once drew attention to herself by speaking in a language of sausages stolen from a neighbour’s house. One travelled twenty miles across the veld, avoiding predators and crossing two rivers, to return to the farmhouse where she was reared. Another risked her life during a tropical thunderstorm rather than abandon the kittens she had given birth to in a disused mineshaft.

Cats vary in the quantity and quality of their intelligence, Doris Lessing discovered. Rufus, who was constantly challenged by adversity, was calculating and survived by living on his wits. Another male had the inquiring mind of a scientist. Telepathic communication when circumstances permit is not ruled out.

It is to the neutered male, Butchkin, alias El Magnifico, that she is most closely drawn. When they are able to sit quietly together in his old age ‘then he subtly lets me know he understands I am trying to reach him, reach cat, essence of cat, finding the best of him. Human and cat we try to transcend what separates us.’

This book is in essence a love story.

Emotions: Fear

There is a belief that animals do not have emotions and that cats in particular are cold and unemotional. Fear is one of the most basic emotions and essential for self protection. We don’t always recognise fear in cats because their fears often differ from ours.

Our cats, especially Sherpa, are afraid of what might await them when they leave the house. Sometimes they find it necessary to inspect the garden from upstairs windows; often, after a door has been opened, they need to spend some time testing the outside air or the frame of the door for threatening scents before venturing out. Perception of high frequency sounds, inaudible to humans, may also account for some of a cat’s inexplicable behaviour. I once noticed Sherpa become suddenly alert, and going to a window, saw two bats flying nearby.

Both our cats, but not all cats, fear traffic. Even though the footpath at our house is separated from the road by a wide grass verge, walks with the cats come to an abrupt end as they scramble back into the garden when the first car passes. Stationary cars do not terrify them: Sherpa has sunbathed on the roof of mine.

Journeys in cars recall being brought to the vet, being neutered, being operated on. Our local vets and veterinary nurses treated the cats with great kindness and succeeded in saving their lives. Nevertheless, when Banjo returned to convalesce after having a plate inserted in his leg, he was met by a hissing, spitting Sherpa with back arched and fur erect who refused to be in the same room with him for several weeks. Months later, when Sherpa returned with no tail, smelling strongly of veterinary clinic the situation was reversed.

These cat fears I can understand. What seems to me irrational is the way, while alone in the kitchen with me, Sherpa sometimes nervously looks around her before and while eating.

There are situations where cats are fearless when it is natural for humans to feel fear. Sherpa, climbing a tree, races along branches until only a thin twig is supporting her weight. She climbs through an open window on to a window sill high above the ground. And, of course, she and Banjo have no fear whatsoever of spiders or mice. These humans! How irrational they can sometimes be!

Self awareness

As I came through the bedroom door, Sherpa, who was sitting with her back to me at a corner of the dressing table where two mirrors meet at right angles, turned her head. I have no doubt that she heard me coming and that she also recognised my reflection as me, but did she equate the image of the cat in the mirror as herself? Does she realise that a unique cat we call Sherpa exists and is it she?

We are told that, unlike children older than two years, primates except gorillas, elephants and at least one magpie, cats fail the mirror self recognition test. This puts their self awareness in doubt. I don’t have access to the original research, so I don’t know the age of the cats tested and whether they had experience of mirrors or other reflective surfaces like puddles before being tested. I do know that both Banjo and Sherpa show a calmness when confronted by a cat image in a mirror, that is never apparent when a feline intruder enters their territory.

Their behaviour is very different to that of the blue tit which happened to see its reflection in the wing mirror of my car. The small bird undoubtedly saw, very close to where it stood, what looked like another member of its species, which failed to fly off when threatened. Bewildered it flew to the back of the mirror, found no bird there and returned to the reflective side. Repeated movements from one side to the other failed to establish a connection between the image and itself. Mirror self recognition was too difficult a problem for the undoubted problem solving abilities of this blue tit.

Mirror self recognition is only one aspect of self awareness. Full self awareness is something which I, and presumably the cats, have yet to achieve.