CHAPTER 1 - JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS

One of the things that will help you to understand cats is to see that they are likely to jump to conclusions based on limited information. For example: If you are traveling somewhere fun and bringing the cat, when they see the carrier, they are likely to jump to the conclusion they are in for a bad experience.

I have learned that putting a cat into a crate is not like putting a dog into one. The difference here is that most puppies are crate-trained early on. Cats, on the other hand, think you should be the one in the crate. Cats don't need all the information to form a quick judgment of a situation. A cat will always have an exit strategy in mind anywhere it hangs out, and even the carrier's sound when picked up sets off alarms in the cat's carefully determined 'sounds of concern' database. If you walk into the room where you last saw that cat, you may find it’s no longer there. Bolting for the nearest place to hide, they are easily triggered and are often hard to retrieve.

It's not fun trying to get a cat into a carrier of any sort since a cat lives very much in the moment. The carrier represents a certain amount of fear along with much discomfort they will have to endure in this moment. They care nothing of the future fun place they are going, but only of the discomfort this moment will present to them.

Cats live only in 'the now.'

Cats live in a relatively plausible sense of constant suspicion and will always approach new things with caution. Their sense of inevitable curiosity can definitely get them into trouble since the more dangerous a new item seems, the more drawn to it they are.

A cat has no concept of what a new thing might be until it has had a chance to investigate it. It will use all of its senses to form an opinion of this new thing, and as I said, will jump to conclusions very quickly.

First, what does it smell like? This information will be stored in their database along with other info and experiences that might be threatening. If it jumps towards them, they will rapidly form the conclusion that it means to inflict harm upon them. They will engage the ‘backward leap' to evade the threat and return later to gather more information if necessary. However, it will remain in the category of things to watch out for until further notice.

My cat Skeeter finds ceiling fans to be high on his threat list. DefCat 1, I call it. He has no understanding of what a ceiling fan is or its purpose, but he has jumped to a conclusion based on a bad experience.

He had a toy on an elastic string that someone thought would be a good idea to attach to one of the fan blades. You can see where this is going. Skeeter grabbed the toy and proceeded to carry it to another room to disassemble when the elastic tightened to its full potential and pulled the toy from his mouth, launching it straight into the blades of the fan.

The resulting sound was similar to when you run over something with a lawnmower, and the collision nearly took the fan off the ceiling. Skeeter engaged the ‘evacuate room’ mode, skidding on the hardwood floor in an attempt to vacate the premises as fast as possible. He was never the same. Neither was the ceiling fan, but you see my point.

The ceiling fan now represents a DefCat 1 level threat.

A cat forms every one of its understandings based on its 'in the now' experience in life. The saying about a cat having nine lives is true. Curiosity is magnetic behavior for them, driving them ever closer to scary things to investigate. Often resulting in near-death experiences for them, it is incredible they don’t die more often.

The two most often used questions that run through a cat’s mind are: “What’s that?” and “What was that?”.

New situations, new surfaces, and new boxes are what drive a cat. Cats manage to avoid death by their incredible skill and execution of the 'backward leap.' When something new arrives that triggers the cat’s attention, they are immediately drawn to it like a moth to a flame. That saying should change. They are “drawn to it like a cat to a cardboard box."

They are likely to step closer tentatively, assess whether it is likely to attack, and get closer and closer still if it remains motionless. Their reaction timing is quite incredible; however, their ability to get away depends on many things. Flooring, for example, can delay hasty exits and leave them vulnerable. ‘Less claw, more paw’ is a concept cats don’t understand in emergency maneuvers.

Seldom is the emergency backward leap ever fully considered anyway. A cat will take it for granted that there will be solid ground behind them on which to land. This is not always the case.

A cat’s relentless curiosity is so well known that it has developed names, sayings, and references that everyone seems to understand and relate to. Curiosity killed the cat, for example. I don't know how many cats have actually been killed by the thing they are investigating, but I know the more danger a thing seems to have, the more intrigue it presents them.

So you can see that cats are definitely born with many basic instincts, and forming opinions of the things and people around them happen much on the fly. An anxious cat is usually a product of experiences that have led it to be that way. A chilled-out cat is also a product of the experiences it has had. Many times, those experiences have happened to the owner at around the same time as the cat. I, too, am dubious of ceiling fans, brooms, and vacuum cleaners since I was there during all the bad experiences that led me to understand my cat’s neurosis. Feelings that I recognized, felt, and assimilated into my very being. “The day of the ceiling fan” is a memory burned into my mind.

Is it our cats that become like us, or do we become like our cats?

Who knows?