Scoots Volume I, Issue 4

The Newsletter all about Scoot Binkerson, Third Eye/Ace Reporter/Apache Cat

In This Issue:

Did You Know?

Cat Haiku!

DID You Know??

Collected Catfacts

Here are a few fun catfacts I've collected from my reading (& observations) so far.

Most are taken from Desmond Morris' Catwatching, reviewed in issue #3.

DID YOU KNOW....that cats were fully domesticated over 3,500 years ago?? Records from ancient Egypt document domesticated cats, & show the high esteem the Egyptians had for cats--including mummifying them and incorporating them in their pantheon as the cat goddess Bastet. (Cats have also been found at the Neolithic site of Jericho, dating from 9,000 years ago, but there is no evidence that these animals were domesticated.) The penalty in ancient Egypt for killing a cat was death, and if a household cat died of natural causes, the whole family would go into mourning just as they would for each other.

DID YOU KNOW....Cats aided the progress of civilization by successfully hunting rodents in grain stores, reducing losses to hungry rats and mice enough to make long-term and large-scale grain storage really feasible. As an example of their rodent-hunting prowess, one modern-day British factory cat--over an amazingly long life of 23 years--was recorded to have killed no less than 22,000 mice!! No wonder early farmers, merchants, & sailors loved them!

DID YOU KNOW....that cats generally range in size from 18 to 20 pounds down to about 3 pounds, depending on breed and sex?

DID YOU KNOW....that a cat's whiskers can actually sense air currents? They are vital for night hunting, as they can sense and transmit information on the size, shape, and movements of prey animals during a pounce. They are then used to direct the killing bite to the right spot on the neck (a cat can do this fine by sight alone in sufficient light). Whiskers are more than twice as thick as other cat hairs, and are imbedded in the upper lip 3 times deeper than other hairs. Typically there are a dozen on each side of the nose, and the technical name for them is vibrissae (from the Latin word for vibrate). Their highly specialized and useful nature has spawned the phrase "the cat's whiskers" to refer to something really special.

DID YOU KNOW....that tabby cat markings may be imitative of snake skin patterns?? The beautiful mottled stripe pattern of tabbies may be a defense against predatory birds particularly, as a tabby curled up in a tree stump hollow or similar spot will present a very snake-like pattern to watchful eyes from above. The tail also has a slender, striped appearance, again perhaps to discourage snake-wary predators from pouncing on it! Here are a couple of pix of Scoot's coat to illustrate: