A Clouder

My ever-inquisitive mind wants to know what to call a group of cats. Big cats like lions are called a “Pride” I know. Since our cats came from the same mother they could be called a Cat Litter; they certainly use enough of it. How about a “mob” as they mob us as we come into the Schackteau. Did you know cats have better hearing than dogs, or any other animal for that matter? Just thought I’d throw that in. A “bunch of cats” just doesn’t seem to cut it. A cat club sounds a bit salacious.

So, it was off to Wikipedia, the Oxford dictionary, and various other web sites for the answer. Ready? A group of cats is a clouder or a glaring  or a clutter, Feral cats live in colonies.
Felis catus, Felis domesticus, genus Felis,.. from the Old English – catt. So, our clouder/glaring/clutter contains two mollies (females) and a gib (a neutered Tom/male cat).

Pawline, (a.k.a. Sybil, for her multiple personalities) our large female is the loudest and most prolific purrer. Cats purr at about 26 cycles per second, similar to an idling diesel engine. She is more like the trains running full throttle past our house. Their fellow purrers include squirrels, guinea pigs, lemurs and elephants among others.

Dogs like chocolate even thought it can kill them. Cats can’t taste sweet things, so don’t bother tempting them with sweets. However, if you talked them into eating chocolate it would kill them as well along with onions, garlic and Tylenol. Does that mean cats are smarter than dogs?

Cats apparently domesticated themselves about 10,000 to 11,000 years ago just because the liked hanging out with humans. Doesn’t say much for their sense of selection.

Doreen is always turning down the air-conditioning to make our domesticated feral cats comfy, but they could care less. Cats can be comfortable up to about 126 to 133 degrees and don’t need much water though Lamont likes to play with it. They also seem to drink a lot of it, I suspect just to make those large clumps in the liter box.

Doreen likes to push cat drugs on them – catnip or the chemical nepetalactone, a pheromone found in other cats. This also fortunately repels cockroaches and mosquitos, so they might help in ghetto apartments and I rub myself with a cat before going golfing.

Well our clowder of cats certainly can glare at us and do clutter up the place but we rather like it. (That in the British understatement coming out in us.)

Freyja in Norse mythology is the goddess of love, beauty and fertility is seen as riding around in her chariot drawn by cats.

It is estimated there are 500 million cats in the world, 220 million of them domestic. Albanians call them mace, Basques call them catua, Bulgarians kotka, Cherokees eesa, Dutch poes, Eskimos pussi, Ethiopians domadh, Finnish kissa, French chat, Gaelic pishyakan, Greeks gata, Hebrews cha’tool, Hindis billi, Irish cat, Italians gatto, Japanese neko, Polish kot, Russian koshaka, Swahili paka, Vietnamese meo, Zulu lkai among others.

If you are a cat I would not recommend living in China as they eat about 4 million of them a year. But if in China head north as they don’t eat cats. Some cat lovers stormed the Fangi Cat Meatball restaurant in Shenzhen in 2006 forcing it to shut down. They don’t eat cats in Korea but they will boil them down to make a folk remedy for neuralgia and arthritis. Some South American countries such as Peru, Brazil and Argentina have groups that are known to munch on a bit of cat. There are parts of Switzerland than eat a bit of cat with sprigs of thyme but cats are not kosher with the Jews.

Cats have long been associated with Egypt who used to protect them by law and were revered as great hunters manifest as the god Bast. They would be mummified and buried in special cat cemeteries. In the 11^th century cats were honored for their mouse and rat catching which were over running cities. The Celts believed that cats were the guardians of the otherworld and spiritual links between humans and the universe, however, black cats were seen as evil; this was also a big deal in the Middle Ages where they were associated with witchcraft and rode on broomsticks with the witches; the church to its shame went on the 1000 year killing spree of cats; and even though they helped end the plague the Catholic Church blamed the cats with Pope Gregory in the 13^th century saying they were a creature of Satan. Isalmic people love cats because Mohammed loved them and one is said to have fallen asleep on his robe and rather than wake the cat he cut of the sleeve of his robe. Cats are known for high sensitivity to weather – if the wash themelves unusually it means fair weather, if the cats sits with her tail to the fire or licks herself above the ears (huh) there will be bad weather and if it licks its tail the rains will come. If you believe much of the material in this paragraph you might need a Cat Scan and have your brain checked.

Following is more totally useless information on cats. Cats have been domesticated half as long as dogs. Cats lose as much body fluid grooming as by peeing. The first domestic cat in this country arrived on the Mayflower. America’s only native pure-bred cat is the Maine coon cat (does that make a lick of sense?). Female cats are superfecund meaning each kitten in a litter may have a different father. Cats can go blind if the only eat dog food. Most pure white, blue-eyed cats are deaf. In 1930 the average cat lived to 8 years, it is now 16 years. Only 20% of cats get a high from catnip lacking a particular gene. Cats spend 30% of their time grooming and 65% of their time sleeping. The largest cat litter was 19 kittens. One cat in Texas had 420 kittens but that is according to a Texan. In catching mice they are 30% successful. Cats like women more than men because of their higher voices, the women’s voices that is. Folk who think they are allergic to cat hair or dander are really allergic to sebum, a fatty substance created by their sebaceous glands so you may be allergic to one cat and not another. In the U.S.A. there are 7,000 large cat pets such as tigers. Daft.

If your mind has clouded over by now it is because our black gib black cat Lamont Cranston has clouded your mind with techniques learned in the orient.

There will be a test.