Secrets of the Cat_ Its Lore, Legend, and Lives - Barbara Holland [29]
Some cats, I’m told, watch a lot of it. Maybe they have larger screens and better reception than my cats do, or maybe, like our children, they find it easier than summoning genies out of the imagination. It would be interesting to know if they have any preferences in programs, if the content makes any difference to them. Does what a cat sees on television make any narrative sense to it? Most cats recognize their reflections in the mirror as being cats, so presumably people on television look like people, but would they understand, for instance, a chase?
Barney once watched an entire program about caribou. It was one of those hypnotically peaceful public broadcast programs that all seem to be about a hundred years in the day of a sandhill crane, only these were caribou. Caribou walking back and forth, moulting and migrating, eating and giving birth, accompanied by the singsong drone of narration, and Barney watched each caribou’s every step, utterly absorbed, only his eyes moving as it crossed the screen. When it was over he got down off the table and went out to the kitchen to check his dish.
He has never watched anything since, or shown the slightest interest in subsequent nature programs.
Why caribou?
Morgan also watched just once. This program was about birds, a twittering flock of them, and she watched until they all flew upward and vanished from the screen. She raised her head and looked up over the television, and then turned to inspect all the corners of the ceiling; no birds. She was displeased: not real birds at all, then, but a trick, a joke to play on cats. She left the room and has never again even glanced at the television; if she sits on my lap while I’m watching, she closes her eyes. She seems to me an earthy, sensible, pragmatic sort of cat, and has no delusions and no use for unreal birds.
The ways in which they share our lives and occupations and accommodate themselves to our households vary from cat to cat. Some cats listen to music, or to certain kinds of music, with every sign of enjoyment. Some are indifferent to it and some, like my Blueberry, find it all excruciatingly painful. Morgan hates guitars. My aunt had a cat named Simke who hated Caruso. She ignored all other vocalists, but Caruso’s opening notes sent her yowling across the room, throwing herself against the door to get out. In Are Cats People? Paul Corey mentions playing a Caruso record that always brought a neighbor’s cow galloping across the field to lean over the fence and moo. Perhaps investigators could spend a couple of grants analyzing Enrico’s vibrations.
Sidney, though not intelligent, is musical. A lot of his vocal expressions seem to be musical in intent if not in effect, and he used to play the piano. He played in the classical kitten-on-the-keys fashion, by walking on it, but he stepped thoughtfully, and paused, and sometimes crouched to produce chords with his haunches, all with deliberation and obvious enjoyment. He’s an insomniac, and from time to time I woke up in the dark house at four in the morning to the unsettling notes of a piano in the empty living room below.
Then one day Sidney watched my husband playing. He sat on the floor and stared and stared, apparently never having noticed before: the man sat on the piano stool and used only his two hands. When my husband vacated the stool, Sidney hopped up onto it. He sat and looked at the keys. He lifted a front paw and reached out tentatively and touched one. Nothing happened. Presently he got down and went away, and never again went anywhere near the piano.
Sidney has always shown uncatlike signs of feeling inferior to people, or that people were somehow doing things the right way and cats the wrong way. At dinner he sits on the extra chair, not on the table, and watches the people eat. When he accepts a tidbit, instead of putting his face down and eating it cat-fashion, he hooks at it awhile with his paw, as if wishing