Cats- Tv Shows

noreply@blogger.com (The Night Cat) — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 00:26:00 +0000

This page can give you a good information about some of your favorites tv shows or programs. Click on this link below:

http://www.tv.com/search.php?qs=cat&type=11&stype=search&tag=search%3Bbutton&om_act=convert&om_clk=search#top

Cat's Claws

noreply@blogger.com (The Night Cat) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 21:26:00 +0000

The claws are the primary weapons in the feline arsenal. In addition to providing an iron grip for climbing, a cat's claws can be lethal, quickly unholstered to slash at an enemy or rip open an underbelly. Although the claws are often described as retractable — as if they normally were extended and then pulled back in by choice — the claws are, in fact, hidden until the cat's paw is extended. Safely sheathed when the cat is relaxed, even while it is walking, the claws stay razor-sharp, ready for action. During a mid-nap stretch or an angry swipe, the tendons controlling the claws are pulled taut, thrusting the talons outwards.

Felines, seemingly incorrigible scratchers, rake their claws over rough surfaces to both clean and hone them. But the raking motion also sheds the claws’ dead and dulled outer layers and helps exercise leg muscles. Just as importantly, scratching allows the cat to leave its calling card, a territory-marking scent released from the paw pads. Wild cats and domestic felines with access to the outdoors usually choose a tree or fence for these purposes. Indoor cats, unless they are encouraged to use a scratching post, will opt for a piece of furniture or anything else that is stable, rough in texture and high enough off the ground to provide a good stretch.

From:animal.discovery.com/.../body/clawsintro.html

Cat senses impending death

noreply@blogger.com (The Night Cat) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 21:09:00 +0000

Click on the link below to read this complete publication:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/26/nursing_home_cat/

Cat Senses

noreply@blogger.com (The Night Cat) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 19:40:00 +0000

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cat senses are attuned for hunting. Cats have highly advanced hearing, eyesight, taste, and touch receptors, making the cat extremely sensitive among mammals. Although a cat's senses of smell may not be as keen as, say, that of a mouse, it is superior in many ways to those of humans.

SIGHT. Testing indicates that a cat's vision is superior at night in comparison to humans, and inferior in daylight. Cats, like dogs and many other animals, have a tapetum lucidum that reflects extra light to the retina. While this enhances the ability to see in low light, it appears to reduce net visual acuity, thus detracting when light is abundant. In very bright light, the slit-like iris closes very narrowly over the eye, reducing the amount of light on the sensitive retina, and improving depth of field. The tapetum and other mechanisms give the cat a minimum light detection threshold up to seven times lower than that of humans. Variation in color of cats' eyes in flash photographs is largely due to the interaction of the flash with the tapetum.

Average cats have a visual field of view estimated at 200°, versus 180° in humans, with a binocular field (overlap in the images from each eye) narrower than that of humans. As with most predators, their eyes face forward, affording depth perception at the expense of field of view. Field of view is largely dependent upon the placement of the eyes, but may also be related to the eye's construction. Instead of the fovea which gives humans sharp central vision, cats have a central band known as the visual streak. Cats can apparently differentiate among colors, especially at close range, but without appreciable subtlety.

Cats have a third eyelid, the nictitating membrane, which is a thin cover that closes from the side and appears when the cat's eyelid opens. This membrane partially closes if the cat is sick; although in a sleepy, content cat this membrane is often visible. If a cat chronically shows the third eyelid, it should be taken to a veterinarian for evaluation.

Cats have a wide variation in eye color, the most typical colors being golden, green and orange. Blue eyes are usually associated with the Siamese breed, but they are also found in white cats. If a white cat has two blue eyes, it is oftentimes deaf; however, orange eyes usually indicate the cat is free of hearing problems. White cats having one blue and one other-colored eye are called "odd-eyed" and may be deaf on the same side as the blue eye. This is the result of the yellow iris pigmentation rising to the surface of only one eye, as blue eyes are normal at birth before the adult pigmentation has had a chance to express itself in the eye(s).

HEARING. Humans and cats have a similar range of hearing on the low end of the scale, but cats can hear much higher-pitched sounds, up to 70 kHz, which is 1.6 octaves above the range of a human, and even 1 octave above the range of a dog.[2] When listening for something, a cat's ears will swivel in that direction; a cat's ear flaps (pinnae) can independently point backwards as well as forwards and sideways to pinpoint the source of the sound. Cats can judge within three inches (7.5 cm) the location of a sound being made one yard (approximately one meter) away—this can be useful for localizing prey, etc.

SMELL. A domestic cat's sense of smell is about fourteen times as strong as a human's. Cats have twice as many smell-sensitive cells in their noses as people do, which means they can smell things we are not even aware of. Cats also have a scent organ in the roof of their mouths called the vomeronasal, or Jacobson's organ. When a cat wrinkles its muzzle, lowers its chin, and lets its tongue hang a bit, it is opening the passage to the vomeronasal. This is called gaping, "sneering", or "flehming". Gaping is the equivalent of the Flehmen response in other animals, such as dogs, horses and big cats.

TOUCH. A cat has about twenty-four movable vibrissae ("whiskers"), in four rows on each upper lip on each side of its nose (some cats may have more), in addition to a few on each cheek, tufts over the eyes, bristles on the chin, the cat's inner "wrists", and at the back of the legs. The Sphynx

(a nearly hairless breed) may have full length, short, or no whiskers at all.

Vibrissae aid navigation and sensation. The upper two rows of whiskers can move independently from the lower two rows for even more precise measuring. Whiskers are more than twice as thick as ordinary hairs, and their roots are set three times deeper than hairs in a cat's tissue. Richly supplied with nerve endings at their base, whiskers give cats extraordinarily detailed information about air movements, air pressure and anything they touch. Vibrissae possess exquisite sensitivity to vibrations in air currents. As air swirls and eddies around objects, whiskers vibrate too. Whiskers may detect very small shifts in air currents, enabling a cat to know it is near obstructions without actually seeing them. Cats use messages in these vibrations to sense the presence, size, and shape of obstacles without seeing or touching them.

Whiskers are also good hunting tools. The structure of the brain region which receives information from the vibrissae is similar to that found in the visual cortex, suggesting that the nature of the cat's perception through its whiskers is similar to that via its vision. Stop motion photography reveals that at the moment a cat's prey is so close to its mouth to be too near for accurate vision, its whiskers move so as to form a basket shape around its muzzle in order to precisely detect the prey's location. A cat whose whiskers have been damaged may bite the wrong part of a mouse it's attacking, indicating that signals from these delicate structures provide cats with vital information about the shape and activity of its prey — interestingly, whiskers also help cats detect scents.

It is thought that a cat may choose to rely on the whiskers in dim light where fully dilating the pupils would reduce its ability to focus on close objects. The whiskers also spread out roughly as wide as the cat's body making it able to judge if it can fit through an opening.

Whiskers are also an indication of the cat's attitude. Whiskers point forward when the cat is inquisitive and friendly, and lie flat on the face when the cat is being defensive or aggressive.

Whiskers can also be a bother to a cat, especially when the cat tries to eat food out of a bowl. The end of the whiskers touching the side of the bowl transfer irritating sensations to its brain, making it hard for it to continue eating.

TASTE. The cat family was shown in 2005 to lack the T1R2 protein, one of two required for function of the sweetness sensory receptor; a deletion in the relevant gene (Tas1r2) causes a shift in the genetic reading frame, leading to transcription stopping early and no detectable mRNA or protein produced. The other protein, T1R3, is present and identical to that of other animals, and the relevant taste buds are still present but inactive. Such a genetic marker found in the entire family and not other animals must be the result of a mutation in an early ancestor; as a deletion mutation it could not revert, and thus would be inherited by all descendants, as the evolutionary tree branched out. Most scientists now believe this is the root of the cat family's extremely specialized evolutionary niche as a hunter and carnivore. Their modified sense of taste would cause them to some degree to ignore plants, a large part of whose taste appeal derives from their high sugar content, in favor of a high-protein carnivorous diet, which would still stimulate their remaining taste receptors.

The Cats Legion

Cats- Tv Shows

Cat's Claws

Cat senses impending death

Cat Senses