Cats' Concert

I bought the book, Animals in Translation, hoping that it would offer insights into the way animals think. Temple Grandin has been diagnosed as having high-functioning autism and has shown an exceptional understanding of animals.

It is well known that children with autism have difficulty learning to talk. Some autistic adults have recalled how, as children echoing the speech around them, they concluded that the meaning of language resided in the tone of voice used by the speaker and not in the words used. Temple Grandin knows of one mother of an autistic child who can communicate with her daughter only through singing. The child understands a command like, "Set the table now," when it is sung but not when it is spoken. As a two-year-old, unable to speak, Temple herself was able to hum Bach while her mother played the music on the piano. As an adult she admits that the only social cue she picks up easily is tone of voice.

Temple claims that it is her autism which gives her a unique insight into the way animals think and she has developed a hypothesis that music is the language of many animals. She refers to the scientific literature to lend weight to this hypothesis. Unfortunately the evidence is fragmentary, her list of references is erratic and the statement of her case far from clear.

Cats are not the animals with which she is most familiar. Like young autistic children, and unlike dogs, they seem to have no, or almost no idea that words convey meaning (Sherpa shows interest when she hears her name). They do understand what is conveyed in the tone of a voice and, contrary to popular perception make a variety of very expressive sounds and not just, "Miaou," as we render it in English. They purr when contented, hiss as a warning, and howl when face to face with a cat that has invaded their territory. Sherpa makes a soft trilling sound when I open the window to let her in. To me it conveys pleasure and acts as a greeting. When Banjo was a kitten he occasionally uttered soft whistles. Apart from purring and trilling which are rhythmic, there doesn't seem to be anything very musical about cat communication, although there may be surprises awaiting us, giving new meaning to the term, "Cats' Concert."

Temple Grandin and the Reviewers

Temple Grandin is a celebrity. She is also a high-functioning autistic, a woman with impressive academic qualifications. BBC TV devoted a Horizon programme to the work she has done in making American slaughter houses less stressful to the animals. She has a unique understanding of those we rear for food and this she attributes to the way she thinks in pictures rather than words.

Recently I visited the BBC Worldservice archive of interviews, listened to an interview with her and was moved to buy one of her books. There isn't a good book shop in the vicinity so I visited Amazon. co.uk and clicked on the reviews of Animals in Translation. There were a total of 18 reviewers who awarded it stars as follows:

72% 5 stars

22% 4 stars

6% 1 star

The person who grudgingly gave it a single star did so on the grounds that the book was "essentially a self-help book for abattoir owners". Obviously this was a book worth buying. I am about half way through it and hope to write a review when I have finished. In the meantime, reading the book has made me think again about book reviews and the people who write them.

I decided to look at the reviews of this book on Amazon.com and discovered there were 187 0f them. There was a greater spread of reactions, but, amazingly, around the same percentage of people awarded it 5 stars and 1 star. Here are the percentages:

71% 5 star

14% 4 star

6% 3 star

3% 2 star

6% 1 star

I didn't read all the reviews, but I found that many of those that were critical were among the most thoughtful. It was also obvious that many people write reviews when they have very little, or nothing to add to what has been said before. It's as if they simply want to register a vote, usually in favour of what they have read. I am almost certain that many of the most effusive reviewers were influenced by Temple Grandin's celebrity and by her academic qualifications and felt they had to accept everything she and her co-author, Catherine Johnson, wrote. It takes a very confident person to question the famous, but if the feedback celebrities receive is always unjustifiably positive they can end up less connected to reality than the average person.

The pygmy shrew

Once I noticed Banjo watching an old rose bush at a point where thick roots formed a small arch above the soil. When he started to paw under the arch a shrew ran to escape from him. Banjo watched the little mammal, then began to follow it pawing it so that it changed direction. Eventually he killed it and tossed it into the air. He didn't eat it. Cats generally find shrews distasteful.

It was a pygmy shrew, a tiny mammal few people have ever seen, which weighs 5g (about 50,000 pygmy shrews would need to be placed on the bathroom scales to register my weight). It had a broad, black back, a pale belly, a long tail, small eyes and a slender, pointed snout. Shrews are classified as insectivores but they eat a variety of small invertebrates. Woodlice, spiders and beetles, but also fruits, seeds and small carrion are drawn into the snout and broken up by small, sharp, red-tipped teeth. They forage day and night, alternating periods of activity with periods of rest. Their nests are loose balls of woven grasses at, or just below, ground level.

They don't hibernate in winter, the young, born in the spring and summer ensure that the species survives when their parents die in autumn.

Banjo tired of the dead shrew after playing with it for some time and Sherpa, who had been watching, took over the toy. When she had satisfied her desire to play and walked away, Banjo resumed his playing. When he had enough the shrew was left on a step outside the french window.

Sherpa as scientist

Doris Lessing writes that some cats display a type of intelligence she describes as scientific. There is no doubt that Sherpa is one of these curious about all that goes on around her.

When she was a couple of months old I saw her stand beside a litter tray where Banjo was doing a pooh. Then I noticed her head was under his tail, watching as it emerged. She soon became a feline authority on the things humans do in private as well as in public.

From a very young age she showed independence, wandering off on her own and leaving behind a lonely little brother. I would find him crying, and then I lifted him or took him to find his sister.

Sherpa was the one who discovered that the chain on the back door could be used as a knocker with which to gain attention when she wanted to go out.

One evening, when I was with Banjo at the front of the house I noticed her coming towards us with something in her mouth. It was an empty bird's nest, made of moss and feathers. She laid it on the ground and began to pull it apart.

Once, while she was not yet two years of age, she found an elastic band and picked it up with her teeth. Holding down the free end with her paw she pulled the elastic and found it stretched. She let it go, picked it up again and repeated the experiment. She did this several times, stretching the elastic a bit more each time. When the band finally broke she ate it.

cat and mouse

Expect to be given your first mouse at around the time your cat's kitten canine teeth are replaced by adult weapons. Until then it has been honing its hunting skills on insects.

Not long after banjo and Sherpa reached this milestone in their development, a couple came to help us in the garden. While we were having lunch they left their wellingtons at the back door and a dead mouse was dropped into one. It was a field mouse with yellowish brown fur on its back, a white belly, large round eyes and prominent ears.

I have opened the door on a wet evening to a cat howling as if in distress, only to find, too late, that it had a mouse in its mouth. I could only close a door to the rest of the house as the cat placed the mouse on the tiled floor and allowed it to run for safety in the low space under the cooker, or the narrow space between the back of the washing machine and the wall. If only the mouse stayed there until the cat lost interest, and then asked to be let out! No, it came out, was temporarily immobilised under a paw, released, reached safety, came out... Usually the mouse was still in hiding by the time we went to bed.

There was a mouse in the kitchen when I was admitted to hospital for an operation. It was only caught when I returned home and some time later came down to the kitchen in the early hours of the morning to find it frolicking. It left a nest in a drawer that contained gloves, cotton tea- cosies and rolls of gauze. To make its nest it gnawed pieces from a scarf and supplemented these with bits of the brown paper in which the gauze was rolled. The result was a sphere, several centimetres in diameter, as soft and warm and light as thistledown.