Tamed and Untamed

by Sy Montgomery

  But the most important reward for life with cats is purring. No sound in the world is as soothing or pleasant as purring. The cats sit on our laps while purring, and as we relax our minds fill with pleasant, dreamlike thoughts, perhaps of wonderful times we’ve had or beautiful things we’ve seen. We stroke their heads and behind their ears so they will keep on purring. We so enjoy the sound.

  Oh, and as for destruction, as cats grow older they don’t cause as much, and the scratch pads you can buy in pet stores help a little. So does the big cat tower I have in my house. It’s covered with heavy fabric that takes about ten years to scratch off. We saved an upholstered chair by pinning towels around it, and we’ve all lived happily ever since.

  Cat Tracker

  — Sy —

  “The cat is within fifty yards,” my companion, Vermont wildlife biologist Forrest “Frosty” Hammond, announced as he slowly swung what looked like a rooftop TV antenna in an arc, listening for a chirping sound. We were standing in a snowy driveway in Springfield, Vermont. A few weeks earlier Frosty had been tracking radio-collared black bears; I had been in India studying tigers. But the cat we were tracking together lived in the house at the end of the driveway: a seven-year-old, fourteen-pound, black puffball named Darryl.

  Though tigers and bears still keep many secrets, the enigma of the suburban house cat remains more mysterious yet. In the 1950s one of the world’s top experts on felines, German ethologist Paul Leyhausen, had tried to study the outdoor travels of Felis catus. To follow just one house cat “would have required three well-trained, physically fit, and inexhaustible observers, plus a lot more equipment than we could command at the time,” he later admitted.

  Frosty and I hoped for greater success. We had better equipment: We had obtained, from a company that normally supplied telemetry for studies of wolverines and cougars, a custom radio collar small enough for a house cat. We had a 400,000-candlepower searchlight. And we had Barbara Burns, a Vermont state forester, who had generously provided us with a detailed aerial map of the area we might cover, as well as our study subject. Darryl was one of her two cats, and by her account, spent most of his day asleep. But at night?

  We imagined hours of adventure. One English study showed female cats roamed up to 17 acres and males ranged over up to 148 acres. Because Darryl was neutered, it was unlikely he’d be seeking mates. But he could be fighting rivals, hunting prey, or being hunted himself.

  Nearly two decades after our Vermont evening, the mystery of cats’ outdoor travels remains. Our findings were not exactly revelatory. We encountered several problems—the most salient of which was, every time we went outside to track him, Darryl came to ask us to let him back in.

  But now North Carolina researchers have launched the most ambitious effort yet to reveal the secrets of cats’ outdoor excursions. Using tiny satellite tracking harnesses, the Cat Tracker project has enrolled a virtual army of cats in a program outfitting them with GPS devices.

  The findings will be intriguing and important. Cats affect other species in ways we are only beginning to understand. A controversial 2012 Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute analysis of previous studies contended that nationwide, outdoor cats kill between 1.4 billion and 4 billion birds and more than 20.7 billion small mammals yearly—making outdoor cats the single largest human-related threat known facing these mostly native wild animals. (Belling a cat can help, but not always; one belled cat, who was also declawed, learned to bat flying birds out of the air and bite them to death.)

  That’s one reason that the Humane Society of the United States and the American Veterinary Medical Association recommend we keep our cats inside. Another is that indoor cats live significantly longer—to seventeen years or more—than those allowed to roam. With an average life span of only two to five years, outdoor cats are apt to meet violent deaths. One study found 63 percent of recorded cat fatalities were caused by cars. Other outdoor cats die in the jaws and talons of predators or in combat with rival cats. They are also more likely to contract diseases such as feline AIDS or feline sarcoma virus.

  Cat Tracker researchers will be investigating diet and parasites in selected cats, too. But mostly, as the website states, “We want to know how cats decide where to go.” The data already amassed, from more than 500 cats, are intriguing. Most cats stay close to home, covering fewer than 12 acres in their tracking period. Only about 5 percent cover more territory—but one roamed over 116 acres. And a number of cats were discovered to be “cheating” on their owners. “Many cats, we found out, spend a lot of time at a secondary house,” said Troi Perkins, a zoology and fisheries and wildlife conservation student at North Carolina State University who is responsible for downloading the data. “That’s quite interesting!”

  “We’re hoping to find out more about whether cats are cosmically inclined to [visit] other cats outside,” Troi said. “Do they have little cat games, or group buddies? Or maybe they’re just solo creatures out there.”

  As for her own cats, Troi has rescued two and rehomed them—where they both stay indoors.

  And Darryl? We did manage to glimpse some secrets that snowy night. Every time we emerged from the house with our telemetry, he tried to get back in. Finally, sometime after 10:30 p.m., we let him. But while we had been waiting inside, he had left fresh tracks in the snow. We followed his paw prints down a ravine, into a hemlock forest, over a snowbank, into a thicket. Here he met another cat, then a third, and the three traveled together for some time.

  Sleeping Dogs

  — Liz —

  Many people dictate their dog’s sleeping arrangement, putting the dog in a crate or chaining her to a doghouse or a tree, but dogs are happier if they can sleep where they like, which usually has something to do with where their owners sleep.

  Dogs are social animals, as are humans, so they experience loss and loneliness as acutely as we do. Loss and loneliness are evolutionary tools that help us keep our groups together and were formed long ago, perhaps in the Pliocene epoch before humans existed. If you’re small, as were wolves in relation to larger predators, and as were our ancestors compared with the important predators, and if you find your food on the ground, not in the trees, you do better in a group than you do alone. This is true for many reasons, not the least of which is that all of you together are keeping watch for predators. A predator tends to attack from behind. Many social animals sleep in groups but face in all directions, so if a predator approaches you from behind, someone else who’s facing you will see it.

  Modern members of the dog and human species have found no reason to change their social instincts. If your dog sleeps on your bed, you may notice that he snuggles up to you for a while but may very well face away before he goes to sleep. Not all dogs do this, but most do. That way, one of you will see a predator approaching. You’ll understand the advantage if you imagine yourself alone in a Siberian forest or on the African savanna after dark. Would you rather lie down on the ground and fall asleep alone or would you prefer to be with others like yourself, not all of you asleep at the same time and all of you alert to possible danger?

  That’s why my dogs sleep with me. If predators approach, we’ll know. I’ve always let my dogs choose their sleeping places, and always they choose to sleep with a family member—either a person or another dog. Mostly, though, they sleep with me, either on the bed or right beside it if the bed becomes too crowded. We all feel safe.

  My current dogs are small. Going to bed is their favorite activity because I’m lying down and they can see me face-to-face instead of craning their necks and looking upward. They race ahead of me to the bedroom, looking back to see if I’m coming. When I appear, they’re standing on the bed waiting for me, so I must push and shove to get under the covers. As I pull up the covers, the Chihuahua dives under with me, waits for me to turn on my side and settle myself, then curls up tight against the back of my bent knees.

  But the bigge
r one, the pug type, stands on my chest and looks down at my face for a while. Normally he doesn’t sleep under the covers. He has more wildness than the Chihuahua, and soon enough he turns to face away and settles himself tightly in the curve made by my bent legs and stomach. Each dog has maximized the amount of body contact between us and feels both protective and protected. Sometimes the pug type gives a little sigh. The room is dark and quiet, and soon we’re sleeping. During the night a cat also joins us, jumping quietly up on the bed and finding his place on my pillow. He, too, likes the safety and the companionship, but he’s a cat, thus not so social.

  On rare occasions the pug type senses something. That’s why he won’t sleep under the covers. Perhaps the local bear is passing the house or our tenant is coming home late and trying to be quiet, which makes him sound stealthy. I’m usually asleep when this happens and am shocked into awareness when the bed explodes. The covers fly off, both dogs are standing up and barking wildly, and the cat is making a dash for the door. But as for me, the highly evolved, world-ruling human, I’m sitting up in confusion. What happened? Is something here? I get up and look out the window. Nothing is here. I see only moonlight and I hear no rustle, no footsteps, not even wind in the trees. But something was here, of that I’m certain, and if it’s gone we must be okay.

  The dogs watch quietly as I look and listen. If I think things are okay, they think so, too. Even the cat thinks so and inconspicuously returns to the pillow. I get in the bed and we resettle ourselves, but the others fall asleep before I do. I wait for my adrenaline levels to subside.

  I’m sometimes asked if we have a burglar alarm. We do—it barks. The skills we acquired in the Pliocene still serve us well, and that’s why it’s best to let dogs choose their sleeping places. Both of you, or if there’s more than one dog or one person, all of you, are better off together.

  Feral Cats and Stray Cats

  — Liz —

  Feral cats are born wild or have been homeless so long that they’ve become wild. Stray cats have been abandoned recently and are trying to live as best they can. It’s hard to find homes for feral cats because, being wild, they distrust people, so they may remain skittish for life. It’s easier to find homes for stray cats, because they return to a life they know and soon become friendly.

  I see all cats as individuals, not as members of a group that may or may not be causing problems, but that’s just one way to look at them—and that perspective certainly isn’t shared by all. Grant Sizemore, director of invasive species programs for the American Bird Conservancy in Washington, DC, points out that cats are an invasive species. They were moved around the world by people, but our species has no commitment to containing them. They are programmed for hunting whether they need the food or not, and in the United States alone, he says, they are responsible for killing 2.4 billion birds a year. Bird populations are declining for several reasons, and cats are making it worse. Cats also transmit diseases such as rabies and toxoplasmosis, both to people and to other animals.

  These are serious matters, surely. What gets me is the accusation that cats belong to the detested group known as invasive species. Humans are also an invasive species that began in Africa but then spread all over the world and are doing vastly more damage to it than the cats. But people do good as well as harm—and so do cats, who are useful in containing rodent populations, which are pests that can also spread diseases to humans. For a while the recycling center in our community encouraged a small group of feral or stray cats that significantly helped with the rodent population. Has a tally been made of how many rats and mice are killed by feral cats in the United States? Probably not.

  As I see it, we humans have four possible methods of dealing with feral cats. We could (1) do nothing, (2) find homes for them, (3) kill all of them, or (4) support organizations that help them. As for method 1, if we do nothing, nothing will change. As for method 2 (finding homes for them), many shelters are already filled with cats who aren’t being adopted, and these shelters can’t take more. As for method 3 (exterminating them), we could try, but there’d be violent protests from cat lovers such as myself. And anyway, such slaughter might reduce an area’s feral population for a while, but there’s no way the human residents could kill them all, so soon enough the population would recover. As for method 4 (supporting organizations), this would certainly help the cats but would probably not reduce in any meaningful manner the 2.4 billion birds that cats kill annually. As has been said, cats hunt for fun, and it isn’t just feral cats who do it. Cats with good homes who go outdoors kill just as many.

  An essay of this kind is supposed to end with some sunny resolution that the writer is promoting. I don’t have one. I adopt stray and feral cats, I donate to the helpful organizations such as Alley Cat Allies, and I feed any cats who come near my house if they seem to be homeless, but that’s about it for me. The sunny part here, if any, is that many helpful organizations do a wonderful job by feeding and neutering feral cats, and they deserve our help and support.

  Death of a Dog

  — Liz —

  One of the most devastating experiences we can have is the death of a beloved dog, whose loyalty we never questioned, who loved us all her life, protecting us, helping us, as close to us as any family member, sometimes closer. A dog lives for about fifteen years, whereas her owner may live eighty or ninety years and experience this terrible loss multiple times. It gets no easier.

  Some of us then get another dog. The new dog does not replace the dog who died. Nothing could do that. But as is true with friends and family, our circle of love expands without limit. The new dog is wonderful, too. We’re charmed, and quickly we become devoted. This is normal. And then, after much too short a time, we lose that dog as well.

  As before, we struggle to move on, just as we would if the loved one was a person. But for a person, there’s an obituary in the paper, also visiting hours at the funeral home followed by the funeral or memorial service and the burial in sanctified ground. Our grief is understood and honored, gifts to charitable organizations are offered in our loved one’s name, letters of sympathy fill our mailbox, flowers arrive at our home, more flowers are placed on the grave, and sometimes a monument is erected or something important is named for the deceased.

  But if the dog dies? Nothing. Our mourning isn’t acknowledged, we don’t get a few days off from work, no flowers are involved, and there is no funeral. The burial is performed by us personally, perhaps alone with only a shovel and our tears. Others will sympathize, of course, but it’s we who concern them. They don’t mourn for the dog.

  So a dog is like a body part, as important to us as our arms or legs. If we’re in the bathroom taking a shower and our dog comes in to be together, we are no more embarrassed by her presence than we are by the presence of our legs. But if a person comes in, we might grab a towel, the intruder would back out quickly, and a torrent of apologies would follow—the intruder should have knocked, the door should have been latched, on and on.

  Thus losing a dog is like losing a leg. This would change our lives, and our family and friends would be deeply sympathetic, but we alone would miss the leg itself, and our supporters wouldn’t know or care what happened to it. We all know where people are buried or what happened to their ashes, but how many of us know what happened to the bodies of other people’s dogs?

  After the loss, we’re very much alone. Most of us don’t talk about it. Instead, we keep the dog in our hearts, thinking of her when passing the places where we walked together, missing her warmth when she slept beside us, looking at her bowl, now dry and empty on the kitchen floor. Thomas Hardy wrote a poem after the death of his dog, Wessex, which begins:

  Do you think of me at all, Wistful Ones?

  Do you think of me at all, as if nigh?

  The poem doesn’t end well—the dog speaks the last lines:

  “Should you call as when I knew you,

  I shall
not listen to you,

  Shall not come.”

  The dog won’t come because he can’t, but the answer to his question is an emphatic yes. Do we think of you at all? We don’t stop. We say your name when we’re alone, as if you could hear us. We remember the first time we saw you and the last time, too—that moment when we knew you were gone.

  The afterlife becomes a question. Some people say that animals go to heaven, while others say they don’t. If I arrived in an afterworld and saw only people, I’d know for a fact that my sins had caught up with me, because no place like that could be heaven and only humans go to hell. But I’m not sure there is an afterlife as we imagine it. So I keep the ashes of my dogs with instructions to mix them with mine and put us in the woods. We will then be together until the end of time, at least in molecular form. That’s not much, to be sure, but it’s something.

  Part Four

  Wild Animals

  We’re so far removed from the natural world we forget that until the Neolithic period, our lives were like those of all animals. We lived from the land as wild animals live now, so it’s useful to consider the realities of that experience. For years we’ve been told that animals lacked consciousness, didn’t think as we do, and didn’t have memories. They were nothing like us, we imagined, so that the pronoun for a wild animal was it, never he or she, unless she was a pet.