Rudyard Kipling wrote a story about the cat that is free. It is a myth worthy of that great writer.
For our opinion on cats, please contact our owners. I do believe we are not allowed an actual opinion on cats other than what we think they should get for dinner, and breakfast, and snacks, and between snacks.
The occasional tooth-and-nail brawl and a leg over after the fight, now that's a cat's life. Do not ever think you own a cat. Life does not work like that, but if you really do well, and the cat thinks you are worthy, it will come when you call it. True, it only comes in the hopes of seeing food, but it comes. Many people think cats do not respond to their name, but actually they are morally quite advanced creatures. If they ignore you, it is because they are busy with higher things, and a mere mortal like you can wait until you are acknowledged. Cat language is a very personal thing, and the more we learn, the more proof we find that cats might be interplanetary visitors, stuck here after a dog they were buzzing bit their spacecraft thinking it a frisbee. Dogs were bigger in those days.
Cats are not really trainable. What you do with a cat is to raise it according to strict and steady rules. Cats do not respond well to violence, and they can rip holes in you that may leave you surprisingly bloody and long in healing. A happy, fulfilled cat, on the other hand, has amazing cognition, and knows exactly what you expect of it, and how far it can push you before you catch on. Mistake you not, a cat will manipulate you the way your mom did, only you don't expect that from a dumb animal. Every master of propaganda will tell you that controlling your subjects depend very much on them not realising they are being herded along. Cats are master manipulators, and the term "as impossible as herding cats" actually has political undertones, a rebellious quip at the cost of our divine masters, CATS. They don't mind the insults, a billion ripped curtains, two billion tattered couches, three billion ripped and bleeding hands all prove that cats don't mind violence, and you will pay for every misstep against felines.
There has been suggestions that a cat's whiskers operate like dowsing rods. This is why they can detect a mouse other side of a wall, or in a hole. I am not aware of any further research into the matter, but that is hardly surprising. Before your mind can even contemplate designing such research, you have to bend your beliefs around two obstacles: Intelligent, concious and metaphysically aware animals, and the existence of a folklorish superpower of finding things by pointing a stick in random directions. Somehow, i don't think the chappies at Cambridge will take time off their pederast party schedule to research such obvious nonsense.
Until that situation changes, please read the article on cat behaviour, it mentions six different but distinct and recognisable ways your cat ignores you.
The last issue is that of cat collars. At Greenpets, we understand that some people actualy tolerate collared pets better, because they obviously have owners. Like humans, cats are also victim to classism and disrespect by those who consider themselves priviledged-by-right. An aristocat with pretty collar gets a treat and a rub, poor streetcat gets the boot and boiling water. In neighbourhoods like that, it is best to clearly collar your cat, but beware: Thousands of cats get throttled by collars caught up in obstructions the cat was jumping over, in essence hanging the cat by the neck until dehydration and exposure kills it. If you are going to collar your cat, make sure the cat's weight is enough to break that collar loose, okay? Cat biltong tatses like cruelty. Maybe that is what jerky is made of.
