Secrets of the Cat_ Its Lore, Legend, and Lives - Barbara Holland [43]
The French psychologist Leyhausen compares cat relationships to those of a paranoically unsociable human, and Fernand Méry, agreeing, adds that even the friendship of siblings ends the moment they’re able to hunt and fend for themselves. But environment does affect sociability, and when the struggle to survive eases off, surely a cat, most adaptable of creatures, can lay down the sword and indulge in the luxury of a friend, even a club full of friends?
There are also reports of ownerless cats living free in communities with a kind of social structure, or government.
Most of the stories come from Italy, especially Rome. Cats there, they say, live in a colony or federation of colonies and submit to a sort of law or code of behavior. If a cat commits a heinous crime—and no one has been able to report on what constitutes a crime among cats; kitten murder, perhaps—that cat is expelled from the colony. Ostracized; shunned, as among the Amish. And it is further said that a cat so shunned falls into despair and may commit suicide by running under a moving car. Given the nature of traffic in Rome, it seems a bit thick to attribute intention to a run-over cat, but that’s the story.
In Rome and a Villa Eleanor Clark reports that the Roman cats seem not to be wandering freely around the city but keep together in a clearly defined asylum area. In a market square, Piazza Vittorio, she watched a group of about 150 going about their business and sunning themselves on the remains of a great ruined fountain, completely relaxed and at home, washing each other’s heads. They were well-mannered and there was no fighting, no scars or chewed ears. When a sudden rainstorm struck they all dashed for shelter, but not for the closest shelter; apparently each had a prearranged niche under an eave or in a cranny and made for it in an orderly fashion, with no confusion or squabbling. They weren’t thin, being fed on a kind of semiofficial basis, and they enjoyed a life midway between childish dependency and the perils of utter wildness.
Maybe we’re being presumptuous in assuming that there is
even such a thing as cat “behavior.” Opportunistic, flexible, perhaps almost reasonable, maybe a cat can behave in any way at all that seems consonant with its own best interests. Unlike the confused, neurotic human, bewildered by guilt and aspirations, a cat can usually assess its choices and act accordingly.
They have few prejudices. A cat that lives with different creatures learns to explain itself to them, if not with subtlety, then at least well enough to build a relationship, and affectionate friendships have sprung up between cats and horses, roosters, goats, rabbits, guinea pigs, wild foxes, and even canaries. More than half the households with cats have dogs as well, and everyone usually gets along. Sometimes it’s only a guarded neutrality, but often they’re deeply attached, and a well-disposed dog will defend its cat from other dogs. One cat in the literature required her dog to move her kittens for her from place to place in the house. She was a restless mother, constantly looking for better nests for her babies, and when she found one she went to the dog, and he followed her to the kittens and picked up each one very gently by the scruff of the neck and followed her with it to the new site.
People worry that a cat raised among dogs will be too trusting of strange dogs, but even the dimmest cat distinguishes between family members and outsiders, and all cats consider the circumstances. A cat in a safe place may tease a dog unmercifully; a cat that knows a dog is chained knows the precise circumference of the chain; turn the dog loose and the cat retires discreetly up a tree.
A cat of ours was regularly