This blog is written and maintained by Miss Cuddlywumps, a fluffy-tailed calico cat who is both classically educated and familiar with mysteries. She receives creative input from the Real Cats and clerical assistance from She of Little Talent (old SoLT, a.k.a. Roby Sweet). Comments or complaints should be addressed to Miss C rather than to old SoLt (Ms. Sweet). Ms. Sweet accepts no responsibility for Miss C's opinions.
We are pleased to be joining Athena's Caturday Art blog hop with this picture:
Old SoLT did this in Dreamscope with the Greek vase filter. We just love how it turned out. Sort of a modern take on a Greek vase. The frame is from PicMonkey.
Here is the original. It's an older picture of Real Cats Webster and Paisley, from several years ago, but it's one of old SoLT's favorites of the two of them together:
We have two fun features for you this Friday. First up is
Words with Webster, in which Webs shares some information about eyes. This is followed
by Friendly Fill-Ins.
Words with Webster
Hi, all! Real Cat Webster here. Today in Words with Me, I’ve
picked a really interesting word. It’s tapetum
(plural tapeta), and it means the
reflective layer behind the retina in the eye. My cousin Merriam-Webster
says that tapetum is
any of various membranous layers or areas especially of the
choroid and retina of the eye; specifically :
a layer in the choroid chiefly of nocturnal mammals that reflects light
and is made up of several layers of flattened cells covered by a zone of double
refracting crystals.
Whatever. Basically, it’s what helps us cats see so well at
night. Some light that comes into the eye misses the retina’s receptor cells,
and the tapetum reflects that light back toward the retina so it has another
chance to hit a receptor cell and get “seen.” The tapetum is also what makes
our eyes shine in the dark when you point a flashlight or something at us.
Pretty cool, huh? I mean, I’m twelve years old, and all this
time I never even knew I had a tapetum!
Friendly Fill-Ins
And now it’s time for Friendly
Fill-Ins, from 15andmeowing and McGuffy’s Reader. They are a fun way to learn a little bit about the authors of
the blogs you read. The first two questions, answered by Real Cat Paisley this
week, are from Ellen of 15andmeowing,
and the next two, answered by Real Cat Webster, are from Annie of McGuffy’s Reader.
Real Cat Paisley’s
answers
1. I don't understand why sleeping late on weekends
is so popular. C’mon, human. Five a.m., time to feed the kitty, even on
Sundays!
2. My in-case-of-emergency person is Mommy.
Real Cat Webster’s
answers
3. There is so much napping to be done! It’s hard to keep
up, actually.
4. I would be lost without my family. And my tapeta.
Emperor Akbar hunting with cheetahs.
By Painter at the Court of Akbar c. 1602. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
It is hard to believe now, but beginning at least a few thousand
years ago, humans trained cheetahs as to hunt with them. When we first heard of
this, the little bit of information we had raised several questions: When,
where, why, how? And of course, What?
To understand hunting with cheetahs, let’s start with the cheetahs themselves.
A few cheetah facts
The cheetah, Acinonyx
jubatus, is the world’s fastest land animal. The common name “cheetah”
actually describes the cat’s spotted coat. It comes from a Hindi word (chita) meaning “spotted” or “sprinkled.”
When you picture a cheetah, you probably see a cat with a compact head with
black “tear lines” on the face, a small waist, long legs, and a superflexible
spine—adaptations that help them run at up to 54 miles per hour for short
distances. This remarkable speed is what allows them to catch their prey.
Prince Hunting with Cheetah.
India, West Bengal, 1764 or earlier.
Opaque watercolor on gold paper. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
These cats are found in much of sub-Saharan Africa, where
they hunt on grassy plains and open forests. The Asiatic cheetah (A. jubatus venaticus) is now critically
endangered, but it was once found in India and southwestern Asia. There
may be only 60 Asiatic cheetahs alive today, all in Iran. The Asiatic
subspecies will be the focus of much of this post.
It all starts in Egypt
Mongol hunter and cheetah in
Tsonjin Boldog, Tuv aimag, Mongolia. Enerelt at English Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0].
The Egyptians did not only domesticate the felines that
would become house cats, they also tamed cheetahs, starting in 1550 BC or
earlier. They taught cheetahs to hunt with humans, but they didn’t do it the
way you might expect, by catching cubs and raising them among humans. No, they
needed cats that already knew how to hunt, and that meant capturing adults to
be tamed and trained. During the hunt, the trained cheetahs were kept
blindfolded until the right moment. After prey had been flushed out, the cats
were let go to run it down.
From Egypt, this hunting method spread to Persia and India,
where the practice continued at least into the 20th century (and where the
cheetahs were often called “hunting leopards”). Taking adults from the wild
likely played a role in the Asiatic cheetah’s quick decline, and as local
cheetahs became rare in India, the wealthy imported African cheetahs for use in
hunting.
How cheetahs were caught and tamed
An account quoted in the book Wild Cats of the World reveals how adult cheetahs were caught and
tamed. It started with staking out a tree that the cats liked to scratch.
Nooses were set around the tree to snare the cheetah who came to sharpen his
claws. Once the animal was captured, “Women and children [were] told to sit all
day long close to the animals, and keep up a conversation so that they should
get accustomed to the human voice.” It would take months to train cheetahs for
hunting.
Hunting with cheetahs in India, c. 1860. From the Illustrated History of the British Empire in India and the East. Vol. 1. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
A sport for the wealthy
When we’re talking about hunting with cheetahs, we’re not
talking about subsistence hunting. We’re talking about a sport practiced by the
wealthy, and often by royalty. Akbar the Great (1542–1605), a Mughal emperor, was the first to keep hunting cheetahs in India. He was presented with his
first cheetah, a cat named Fatehbaz, in 1555. He supposedly had 1,000 cheetahs
at one time and 9,000 over the course of his reign, but these numbers may be
inflated. He used the cheetahs to hunt blackbucks, chinkaras, and antelopes. By
the way, he captured adult cheetahs not with nooses as described above but with
trapdoors that dropped the cats into pits.
Cheetahs with handlers at Baroda, Gujarat, 1890s.
The cheetahs belonged to Gaekwar Sayaki Rao III
(ruled 1875-1939), 12th Maharaja of Baroda. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The practice of hunting with cheetahs spread into Russia and
Mongolia, as well as Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. There are reports of an
Armenian ruler who had 100 cheetahs in 1474.
Hunting technique, as seen in the 1939 video below, involved
wheeling blindfolded cheetahs in on carts. In some works of art, cheetahs are
depicted riding on horseback behind their handlers. The cheetahs would be
gotten close to the prey and then released for the chase.
And today...
While hunting with cheetahs largely ended in the 20th century, it still goes on in some places, among those humans who have the time and resources to do it. Notably, a YouTube video shows a Saudi man hunting deer with a cheetah. We think that, given the cheetah's vulnerable conservation status (as listed by the IUCN), taking them from the wild for use as human entertainment is not okay. Such magnificent felines deserve better.
Each week in this space, we feature a senior cat in need of
adoption or sponsorship. Please remember all the older cats in shelters. They
make great companions, and unlike kittens, they (probably) won’t climb the
curtains! Adopt a senior cat, and help him or her enjoy the best years of their
life.
Today we’re introducing Ginger, a 14-year-old declawed lady
who is just beautiful. Look at the
coloring on her back! Ginger is described as being very mellow. She enjoys
lounging in bed for much of the day, as any self-respecting senior cat does.
Ginger’s family moved and could not take her with them, so she had to go to the
shelter. She enjoys being petted, and she loves having a person to sleep next
to at night.
OMC, the colors! Ginger has the prettiest pattern on her back.
Conventional wisdom has it that cats and dogs do not get
along. Cats and dogs hate each other, and that’s all there is to it. Well, many
of us know that this is not true. Cats and dogs can actually be best buddies.
But still the cats vs. dogs theme continues, right along with another theme:
Dogs are good, and cats are evil. Dogs are man’s best friend, and cats are
evil. Dogs are heroic, and cats are evil.
Cats and the people who love them are tired of this theme,
and so we’re not inclined to have a very high opinion of a movie based entirely on
it.
Which brings me to the 2001 film, Cats & Dogs, directed by Lawrence Guterman.
Your pets are really spies
In the world of Cats
& Dogs, pets are not just pets. Dogs (some of them, anyway) are secret
agents, and one of their missions is to protect the Brody household as
Professor Brody (Jeff Goldblum) works on his secret formula. This formula will
cure humans’ allergies to dogs, making it possible for even more dogs to live
with even more humans. Cats do not want this to happen. A fluffy white cat
named Mr. Tinkles (evil, obviously; voiced by Sean Hayes) plans to derail Brody’s
efforts by stealing the formula and making all humans allergic to dogs. Then he
can take over the world.
The movie opens with a rollicking good chase scene as cats
sent by Mr. Tinkles abduct the Brodys’ dog, who was the key agent protecting
them from the horrors of the cat conspiracy. His disappearance opens the door
for a new agent, and a beagle puppy named Lou (Tobey Maguire), who has
absolutely no training as a secret agent, moves in.
Lou now has to guard the house while Mr. Tinkles’ minions
attempt to break in and steal the anti-allergy formula. He also has to try to
be a friend to young Scotty Brody, who basically wants nothing to do with him. There
is a little family drama too, with Professor Brody so caught up in working on
his formula, he just can’t find time for poor Scotty. Also, Scotty sucks at
soccer.
Okay, so we thought it was funny…
Yes, I started out by complaining about the whole “dogs
good, cats evil” theme—and for the record, that still annoys me—but we still
had a pretty good time watching this movie. A bunch of cats driving a limo and
impurrsonating (sorry!) a human? Come on, that’s funny.
This movie has some basic flaws that we think hold it back
from being a true cat classic. We wish the story had been a little different,
to show cats and dogs working together to protect humans. We wish they could
have fit at least one female in among the secret agents. (Okay, yes, there is
one, but she’s there mainly to be pretty and be the love interest for one of
the male dogs. Yeesh. Hello, 21st century?)
Still and all, Cats & Dogs is basically what you get if you transmogrify Mission: Impossible into a madcap family comedy starring pets. Judged on those terms, it’s not half bad. Just don’t try to take it seriously.
Oh, and ...
Cats rule!
A
note on the "Paws Up" system: Miss C gives either one or two paws up.
One paw is for a good movie; two paws is for a great movie. She never gives
three or four paws because that would require her to lie on her back...and Miss
Cdoes notdo that!
The
link below is an Amazon Associates link. If you purchase the movie through this
link, old SoLT and I could get some coin for our kibble account. Thank you!
For this week's Sunday Selfies blog hop, hosted by The Cat on My Head, Real Cat Paisley posed in a dog bed. Again. It's a different bed though. Someday we'll post a selfie of the dog in the cat bed!
Today we're joining Athena's Caturday Art blog hop (one of our favorite weekly events) with two versions of the same photo. Old SoLT couldn't decide which one she liked better, so here they both are:
This first one was done in Dreamscope, with the Braque V filter. The frame is from PicMonkey.
The second one was done in LunaPic, with a Sketch2 effect, followed by some playing around with the color changer, and finally the Fairy effect. Again, the frame is from PicMonkey.
And here's the original:
By the way, that thing Webs is playing with is the Petmate Jackson Galaxy Go Fish Cat Toy. The Real Cats got one for Christmas because old SoLT thought they should play with their food more. They have both gotten really good at fishing the kibble out from between the fishtails. Our only real quibble is that it is not so easy to get the fishtails into the thing when you first get it. Still a great product though, and it's dishwasher safe! Check it out through the affiliate link below (we could get a little coin for our kibble account if you make a purchase):
![Mongol hunter and cheetah in Tsonjin Boldog, Tuv aimag, Mongolia. Enerelt at English Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0].](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibn8Ikjk18AV0JfeuCQi-Et4qutE3FhKuc5VSMNzGEWnrtasSC5uUACkbzKn2KaX5rAt-qG4Yk48UpNekRozTCeKRX7V06gpgy3KJGR80jxLuPLojz20EU-zJmWG6YN-xmpSQB_ItCcAnI/s1600/Mongol_hunter_with_tame_cheetah%25282%2529.jpg "Mongol hunter and cheetah in Tsonjin Boldog, Tuv aimag, Mongolia")
Each week in this space, we feature a senior cat in need of
adoption or sponsorship. Please remember all the older cats in shelters. They
make great companions, and unlike kittens, they (probably) won’t climb the
curtains! Adopt a senior cat, and help him or her enjoy the best years of their
life.
