Friday 31 March 2017

Cats - The famed furry felines, or fierce and ferocious hunters?


If there's one thing that's popular on the internet today, that's cats! Cat pictures, cat videos and cat memes - full of cute kitty cats, playful cats, grumpy cats, angry cats, and all kind of cats. I had some experience with these furry felines, and their mysterious ways. Let's have a brief look at these famed furry felines.


The cats I speak of here, are the domestic cats, that are "domesticated" (or so we think) by us humans. One thing with a cat is that you're never it's master. It may be your master, but not the other way around.

These small furry friends are cute, cuddly and playful. But they're also skillful hunters that hunt and eat almost anything. A cat at our home used to catch small bats and bring them for its kittens to eat. They didn't even leave the bones, and ate up all of the bat. The kittens, while they were growing, caught their first baby squirrels and ate them up.

Once, that cat almost had a crow in it's claws (the crow was either sick or slightly injured), and would have devoured it, if not for the other crows that flew in to its rescue. The cat escaped with its dear life that day. I don't know which life it was out of its nine lives, but it surely escaped the pecks of doom. Unfortunately those days there wasn't a handy phone which recorded videos.

Cats are obligate carnivores that are dependent on a supply of at least some animal-derived materials in their diet [1]. No wonder they're such good hunters.


In fact, they could be the deadliest hunters on the planet [2]. After all, if you ever knew a cat, you'd know they love to hunt. I've seen them kill small snakes and lizards even though they would just play and not eat them up, not to mention all the birds, squirrels, rats, bats and other creatures that get eaten up.

Cats also like to lie around sleeping all day and you might be fooled into believing these are lethargic and lazy creatures. But, in fact they're agile, nimble and like to hunt, especially during the night.


In fact, cats normally sleep between 12 and 16 hours a day, which is more than most mammals and up to twice as much as us humans! [3]

So, what's the point of all this you ask? Nothing really. Just jumping on the bandwagon and sharing some cat facts and pictures, that's all. Maybe I'll be back with some post on doggies next time, or perhaps with more kitty cats again. Which one do you prefer?


References:
[1] Velegrand-Defretin, Veronique (1994). "Differences between cats and dogs: a nutritional view" (PDF). Proceedings of the Nutrition Society. 53: 15–24. doi:10.1079/pns19940004.
[2] Which animal is the deadliest hunter on the planet? - BBC - Earth, By Ella Davies 22 December 2015, retrieved 24 February 2017
[3] Here and Meow: What Cats Can Teach Us About Sleep - The Huffington Post, by Rubin Naiman, Ph.D., on 10 November 2013 08:13 am ET | Updated Nov 10, 2013, retrieved 27 March 2017


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