Speaker 1: Guess what will?
Speaker 2: What's that? Mango?
Speaker 1: So, I was looking online and I found this description
Speaker 1: for a job that's definitely not for us, professional cat cuddler.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. And first of all,
Speaker 2: why is that a job?
Speaker 1: So? I have no idea. And this posting is from
Speaker 1: late January this year and it was put up by
Speaker 1: a cat's only veterinary clinic in Ireland. But here's a
Speaker 1: list of some of the questions you'd have to answer
Speaker 1: to see if this job is right for you. And
Speaker 1: these are all real. Are you a crazy cat person
Speaker 1: and love cats already? I'm thinking that's enough? Right? Does
Speaker 1: catitude come to you naturally? I wouldn't say we have
Speaker 1: high catatude levels? No, have you counted kittens before you
Speaker 1: go to sleep? Do you feed stray cats in your locality?
Speaker 1: Does pett and cats make you warm and fuzzy?
Speaker 3: I mean, I gotta be honest, Mango, I can't say
Speaker 3: that any of those sound like me.
Speaker 1: So I can't think of a job you're less suited for.
Speaker 1: And the job basically involves calming down skittish cats and
Speaker 1: mister me them into a zen like space so the
Speaker 1: vets can see them but one of the biggest criticisms
Speaker 1: of our show has been that we're not kind enough
Speaker 1: to cats on the program. You are, of course scared
Speaker 1: of them, and I have let's call it a healthy
Speaker 1: respect for them. So I thought it was time for
Speaker 1: a cat intervention, or a cat invention. We're gonna increase
Speaker 1: our empathy of cats and try to understand them a
Speaker 1: little better and maybe even call out some of their achievements.
Speaker 1: And perhaps by the end of this all you and
Speaker 1: I will be begging for that cat cuddling job.
Speaker 3: Well I'm not sure I see that happening, but let's
Speaker 3: dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 3: I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my
Speaker 3: good friend Mangesh how Ticketer and sitting behind that soundproof
Speaker 3: glass surrounded by cat themed music albums, and there are
Speaker 3: far more of these than I expected from him. But
Speaker 3: he's got cat power. Cat Stevens, I think letti Grey
Speaker 3: Acoustic Kitty, and I didn't see the album cover for this,
Speaker 3: but I swear is that Garfield's smooth Jazz I hear
Speaker 3: playing in the background.
Speaker 1: It is so Tristan was showing me this earlier it's
Speaker 1: all Garfield inspired music, but my favorite is fat is
Speaker 1: where It's at, you know, because Garfield eats a lot.
Speaker 3: Right, Thanks for explaining that that guy has the best
Speaker 3: taste in novelty albums, and that of course is our
Speaker 3: friend and producer Tristan McNeil nw Mango. As you know,
Speaker 3: we've gotten some criticism about not being cat friendly enough
Speaker 3: on the show, and I have to be honest, it's
Speaker 3: a little bit surprising how much we've heard from listeners
Speaker 3: about this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it was really shocking to me too,
Speaker 1: and I actually love all animals, or at least most
Speaker 1: furry animals. And you know this, but maybe some listeners don't.
Speaker 1: There was a long period of my life where I've
Speaker 1: dreamed of the becase vet. And also, for the record,
Speaker 1: we had cats on a bunch of covers of Mental
Speaker 1: Flos Plus. The first story I wrote on mentalfloss dot
Speaker 1: com was about a cat piano, so I had no
Speaker 1: idea when he came across this anti cat.
Speaker 2: That's right, you wrote.
Speaker 3: About what was it called the cats and Clavier. It
Speaker 3: was this musical instrument that I think it was invented
Speaker 3: to cheer up a prince or something.
Speaker 2: Is that right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it was like a piano, but instead of strings,
Speaker 1: you just put kittens in a box behind each key
Speaker 1: and it was supposed to gently prod the kitten to
Speaker 1: meyow in tune. And there was this modern version of
Speaker 1: it that was made with toy cats all tuned to
Speaker 1: different notes with this dude playing over the rainbow on
Speaker 1: them by squeezing them in order. I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: video of this on YouTube, but all that meowing isn't
Speaker 1: exactly music, but it's also not not music either.
Speaker 3: I have definitely seen that video a few times and
Speaker 3: it's pretty great. And you know, it is interesting how
Speaker 3: polarizing cats are. And for the record, I should say
Speaker 3: I don't hate cats. I just happened to be terrified
Speaker 3: of cats.
Speaker 2: When I was growing up.
Speaker 3: I was across the street from Triplet Boys. They had
Speaker 3: a family cat, and not intentionally, but just by being
Speaker 3: Triplet Boys, they tortured this cat, and the cat decided
Speaker 3: to take out all of its anger on me for
Speaker 3: some reason, attacked me every time I came over there.
Speaker 3: So I just wanted to put that out there. But
Speaker 3: it has been really weird as we just make these
Speaker 3: little jokes about cats on the show. These I guess
Speaker 3: we think of them as like throwaway comments, and then
Speaker 3: the angry letters that we hear from people about I
Speaker 3: don't know if I can listen to this show because
Speaker 3: you guys hate cats, but we apparently are not alone
Speaker 3: in this polarizing world of cats. I actually found this
Speaker 3: quote by the American writer Carl Van Vectim, and he
Speaker 3: wrote a book called Tiger in the House, which is
Speaker 3: really all about house cats. And here's how he talks
Speaker 3: about people's strong feelings about cats. And I actually really
Speaker 3: like this quote. So he says, one is permitted to
Speaker 3: assume an attitude of placid indifference in some matters, you know, elephants, cockatoos,
Speaker 3: hg well Sweden, roast beef, pouccini, even Mormonism. But in
Speaker 3: the matter of cats, it seems necessary to take a
Speaker 3: firm stand. The cat himself insists upon this. He invariably
Speaker 3: inspires strong feelings. He is indeed the only animal who
Speaker 3: does well.
Speaker 1: It is true that cats definitely inspire strong feelings. And
Speaker 1: when we've joked on the show about not being cat lovers,
Speaker 1: people have ridden in and said, you know who also
Speaker 1: hated cats? Hitler and also Napoleon, and Mussolini, and I
Speaker 1: looked this up. It's true they were cat hitters. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure all three of them also hated like broccoli
Speaker 1: and homework, so it doesn't really mean that much, like
Speaker 1: a lot of people dislike a lot of things. But
Speaker 1: I was intrigued by the comments, so I looked up
Speaker 1: other famous cat haters in history, and it's not a
Speaker 1: good look for us to be perceived this way. So
Speaker 1: in addition to Napoleon and Mussolini, you've got Genghis Khan
Speaker 1: Stalin also hated cats. Caesar Alexander the Great, Eisenhower, for
Speaker 1: some reason, is on the list, but frankly, I'm a
Speaker 1: little surprised that Pollpond and Ediemine aren't on there as well.
Speaker 1: To around out, the list.
Speaker 2: Has a lot of terrible people.
Speaker 3: I mean, aside from Eisenhower, who we love for building
Speaker 3: highways and infrastructure.
Speaker 1: Of course love infrastructure.
Speaker 2: I love infrastructure.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think what's worse than the list of
Speaker 3: horrible people is when cat fans tell you about all
Speaker 3: the great people who were obsessed with cats. You've got
Speaker 3: Abe Lincoln, who was notorious for his love of cats,
Speaker 3: and his wife Mary Todd once said that cats were
Speaker 3: his only hobby. Also, they've got the prophet Mohammed, Nikola, Tesla,
Speaker 3: Saint Francis of ASSISI, Mark Twain, Florence Nightingale, Catherine the Great,
Speaker 3: Charles Mingus, and all of the Brontes.
Speaker 1: All the Brontes, even Branwell Bronte.
Speaker 2: I checked up on this mango. They got Branwell.
Speaker 1: Well. Obviously, of those two sample sets, I'd rather be
Speaker 1: associated with the cat lovers than the cat haters. But
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out why it is that
Speaker 1: dictators and world conquerors don't like cats. And here's one
Speaker 1: theory about it that I found that's popular on cat sites,
Speaker 1: and it goes like this quote. It might just be
Speaker 1: that cat people who have dreams of dominating the world
Speaker 1: can't get used to the idea that cats won't submit
Speaker 1: to them.
Speaker 3: So is the idea that cats are just too independent
Speaker 3: minded for dictators or what exactly?
Speaker 1: And truthfully, that's also a big part of what cat
Speaker 1: people like about cats, their total independence. Right, Like people
Speaker 1: are always saying cats have more personality than dogs and
Speaker 1: that they're less needy and they're like a little more
Speaker 1: badass and rock and roll or something. And in fact,
Speaker 1: this is a little off topic, but one of the
Speaker 1: cat origin stories I read, and this is an Islamic
Speaker 1: tale I believe, is that Noah was on his arc
Speaker 1: and during the storm, he became really afraid that the
Speaker 1: mice on board would eat all the food, or even worse,
Speaker 1: that they'd nibble through the floors and create these holes
Speaker 1: in the arc, kind of just like putting all the
Speaker 1: other animals in jeopardies. So he prayed for a solution,
Speaker 1: and God answered his wishes by having a lion sneeze,
Speaker 1: and out of both nostrils from that sneeze emerged two cats,
Speaker 1: which is I guess how cats came to be. And
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of a sweet origin story in
Speaker 1: terms of myths, but I feel like you can interpret
Speaker 1: the story in two ways, right, Like cats are either
Speaker 1: God's gift to humanity, like what adorable little god bless
Speaker 1: yous they are, or no one needed a ruthless killing
Speaker 1: machine on a ship and God provided cats.
Speaker 3: I think I might lean toward the ladder, but I'm
Speaker 3: gonna be careful. I don't need any more hate mail
Speaker 3: about this. But I have a different question here, mago,
Speaker 3: like how useless is every other animal on the arc, Like,
Speaker 3: why couldn't any of the owls on board pitch in
Speaker 3: for this effort?
Speaker 1: I know, well, I mean, the truth is cats are
Speaker 1: incredible hunting machines. And I read this crazy story in
Speaker 1: the New York Times from five years ago, and that's
Speaker 1: when the Smithsonians Conservation Biology Institute teamed up with the
Speaker 1: US Fish and Wildlife Service to do some research on cats.
Speaker 1: And they wanted to identify how much wildlife these cats
Speaker 1: were killing every year, so they used cameras and created
Speaker 1: this new math model, and basically they were stunned by
Speaker 1: the results. So listen to this between feral and domestic cats.
Speaker 1: The domestic ones, you know, are the ones that get
Speaker 1: to roam out doors while sleeping indoors. Together, they kill
Speaker 1: about two point four billion birds every year. And also
Speaker 1: they killed twelve point three billion mammals a year. Wow,
Speaker 1: and most of those things like shrews and chipmunks and
Speaker 1: bowls along with mice.
Speaker 3: I kind of want to know how they came up
Speaker 3: with that estimate of twelve point three billion mammals, But
Speaker 3: either way, it's insane and terrifying. So I don't understand, Like,
Speaker 3: why would this make me like cats more so.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this on the program before, but those
Speaker 1: mousers are also keeping places like Disney parks and houses
Speaker 1: and also city streets more free of vermin. And also
Speaker 1: I've read this thing about how there are all these
Speaker 1: cat islands in Japan that are super popular as tourist destinations,
Speaker 1: just places where there are all these feral cats, And
Speaker 1: initially I was thinking, like, who wants to go to
Speaker 1: these islands? But one of the arguments I was reading
Speaker 1: online that I had actually never thought about was most
Speaker 1: people can go to a cat island and not be
Speaker 1: terrified because these small feral cats aren't going.
Speaker 2: To bother you.
Speaker 1: They just don't care about you. But you know, if
Speaker 1: you went to a wild dog island and there were
Speaker 1: just wild packs of you know, feral dogs there, you'd
Speaker 1: be terrified. Like, yeah, you'd want to call animal control
Speaker 1: because roaming packs of wild dogs aren't fun. But you know,
Speaker 1: the cats don't have that herd mentality.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's an interesting point. But to be fair,
Speaker 3: if you put the word feral in front of any animal,
Speaker 3: like I don't want to be near those and I
Speaker 3: have no desire to hang out with I don't know
Speaker 3: like Australia's feral camel population or any of these other animals.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you started talking about cat origins and killer cats,
Speaker 3: and you were talking about how cat lovers tend to
Speaker 3: love the animals independence, And actually I had a story
Speaker 3: that I wanted to share just real quick. You know, so,
Speaker 3: while free thinking critters might be great for pet owners,
Speaker 3: they're not great for filmmakers. I was reading this inner
Speaker 3: with the Cohen brothers about filming Inside Lewyn Davis, and
Speaker 3: they were talking about how hard it was to shoot
Speaker 3: the cat in the movie. So here's a quote from
Speaker 3: an NPR interview that Ethan Cohen did, and he says,
Speaker 3: the whole exercise of shooting a cat is pretty nightmarish
Speaker 3: because they don't care about anything. They don't want to
Speaker 3: do what you want them to do. As the animal
Speaker 3: trainer said to us, a dog wants to please you.
Speaker 3: A cat only wants to please itself. It was just
Speaker 3: this long, painstaking, frustrating day shooting the cat.
Speaker 1: Which to me is a little refreshing. You know that
Speaker 1: cats don't want to be seen as film stars. But
Speaker 1: you know, I've seen lowin Davis and I loved it.
Speaker 1: But how do they get all those shots eventually? Like,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing they didn't use CGI.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, they used a lot of cats,
Speaker 3: and a cat trainer told them specifically to use a
Speaker 3: marmalade orange tabby because it's easier to get a lot of.
Speaker 2: Them on hand.
Speaker 3: So they had three or four cats ready for each scene,
Speaker 3: and essentially they had to find cats that had a
Speaker 3: predisposition for doing whatever it was that they were looking for.
Speaker 3: So like, if you needed a fidgety cat to jump
Speaker 3: out of someone's hand, you have to find a cat
Speaker 3: that tends to do that all the time and hates
Speaker 3: to be held. So you get that type of cat
Speaker 3: for one angle. But then you know, if you want
Speaker 3: them to rub against the table or run down a
Speaker 3: fire escape, you need to find the cat that wants
Speaker 3: to do that naturally. And even then when they had
Speaker 3: those cats on hand, the cats rarely did what they wanted.
Speaker 3: The Cohen Brothers actually compared the experience to having to
Speaker 3: film a vulture and true grit. They said the vulture
Speaker 3: was awful, and they said that was even by vulture standards,
Speaker 3: And even though the experience was really frustrating, they'd take
Speaker 3: filming a vulture scene over a cat scene any day.
Speaker 1: So that is ridiculous, and I do love that story.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, and maybe it's something that'll increase
Speaker 1: our own empathy for cats, But I don't actually think
Speaker 1: it's a cat's fault that they're so independent.
Speaker 2: And why is that?
Speaker 1: Because there's a theory that cats aren't actually domesticated animals.
Speaker 1: They've never had to be domesticated. But even more than that,
Speaker 1: the theory goes, these clever, adorable beasts have over a
Speaker 1: thousands of years, actually domesticated us. But before we talk
Speaker 1: about that, let's take a little break.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to Part Time Genius, and we're talking cats. So, Mango,
Speaker 3: I know you were going to tell us about cats
Speaker 3: and domestication, but before we talk about a cat in
Speaker 3: a household, let's talk about cats breaking up households. And
Speaker 3: you know that totally unfair reputation they got for causing
Speaker 3: divorces in America.
Speaker 1: So I obviously know people are attached to their animals,
Speaker 1: but I had never heard about this trend. So what's
Speaker 1: the scoop?
Speaker 3: Well, this comes from Natalie Zareli at Atlas Obscura, and
Speaker 3: she reports that once the married Women's Property Act took
Speaker 3: hold in America, there was actually an uptick in the
Speaker 3: number of divorces, and essentially unhappy couples weren't doomed to
Speaker 3: stay together, but you still had to have someone at
Speaker 3: fault and it had to be irreconcilables. So a big
Speaker 3: strategy from the nineteen tens going forward were couples that
Speaker 3: they just started blaming their cats. That's pretty crazy. I'd
Speaker 3: never heard of that, you know.
Speaker 1: I actually remember one of our friends from college had
Speaker 1: a grandmother who got divorced, and he told me that
Speaker 1: the couple staged her walking in on him with another woman,
Speaker 1: and it was purely so that they had a traumatic
Speaker 1: story to tell. The New York courtse But you know,
Speaker 1: just blaming a cat would have been so much easier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say that would have been a lot easier.
Speaker 3: There's actually a story from this piece in nineteen oh
Speaker 3: three where a man told the judge this horror story.
Speaker 3: He says a cat met him at every turn, with
Speaker 3: an angry and a chorus of blood curdling mews. Apparently
Speaker 3: he'd find cats in his bed sheets, and when he
Speaker 3: tried to escape them, he was too scared to leave
Speaker 3: the bed, you know, lest he should expose his bare
Speaker 3: feet to the claws of numerous pussies and provoke a
Speaker 3: melody that would ring in his ears for the rest
Speaker 3: of the day.
Speaker 1: So that feels so dramatic.
Speaker 3: Well, he really had to sell it to the judge.
Speaker 3: And you know, if the judge asked why the husband
Speaker 3: and didn't just get rid of the cats. Often there'd
Speaker 3: be some story about his wife being involved in like
Speaker 3: the ASPCA, which I guess felt virtuous or something.
Speaker 1: So, I mean there were lots of these stories.
Speaker 3: Oh, there's tons of these stories. There's actually also a
Speaker 3: Civil War veteran who claims he could never sit in
Speaker 3: his easy chair because a cat was always there hissing
Speaker 3: at him. There was another there was a wife that
Speaker 3: said she didn't mind her husband's profanity, but it was
Speaker 3: too much when he heaved the family cat at her,
Speaker 3: and looking at that case, apparently she wanted twelve hundred
Speaker 3: dollars for the humiliation of being beamed by the family cat.
Speaker 2: Just unbelievable.
Speaker 3: There was also another dude who was upset that his
Speaker 3: wife kept fifty cats around the house and gave them
Speaker 3: more attention than him.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean fifty cats would need a lot of attention.
Speaker 3: Well, in court, she testified that she only had fifteen cats,
Speaker 3: but you know, since her husband didn't come home most nights,
Speaker 3: they were both interested in splitting up. And you know,
Speaker 3: most of these stories were either made up or just
Speaker 3: greatly exaggerated.
Speaker 1: So how long did this cat blaming go on for?
Speaker 3: According to the article, cats were scapegoats for really about
Speaker 3: a century, and it wasn't until nineteen sixty nine, when
Speaker 3: no fault divorce laws started becoming adopted by states that
Speaker 3: suddenly all the cat blaming disappeared from the newspaper stories.
Speaker 1: Which is pretty insane. And you know, you feel sorry
Speaker 1: for the cats.
Speaker 3: I know it's true, it's weird to say that, but
Speaker 3: I actually do feel a little sorry for them. But
Speaker 3: you were going to talk a little bit about this
Speaker 3: idea that cats aren't really domesticated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, you know, aside from that lion sneezing theory
Speaker 1: about cats, researchers have actually found cat bones near human
Speaker 1: bones for a while. There's a New Yorker piece on this,
Speaker 1: but in China, by analyzing the bones and teeth of
Speaker 1: cat skeletons from about five thousand years ago, scientists can
Speaker 1: actually show that cats were eating rodents and grains as
Speaker 1: well as leftovers from human meals. And basically cats were opportunistic, right,
Speaker 1: Like they realized that rodents were plentiful around these farmers'
Speaker 1: stores of grain, so they ingratiated themselves, and people were
Speaker 1: opportunistic realized that cats would kill off the disease carrying
Speaker 1: vermin for them, and it was relatively little investment, Like
Speaker 1: they didn't actually have to train the cats. All they
Speaker 1: had to do was give them some shelter and like
Speaker 1: a little extra food to eat, and then just lean
Speaker 1: on their natural instincts. It was totally symbiotic. But you know,
Speaker 1: cats were never bred for traits the way dogs or
Speaker 1: cattle were. Like, you know, you look at a dogsund
Speaker 1: and you see how that dog was bred to go
Speaker 1: after badgers, right, it was supposed to chase badgers down
Speaker 1: badger holes and it's fearless, but it's also shape for that,
Speaker 1: with that sort of long noodleized shape. And you know,
Speaker 1: cat breeding is a relatively recent phenomenon by comparison.
Speaker 3: So I mean, are there ways to prove out this
Speaker 3: theory that cats are only semi domesticated?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there definitely are So there's this geneticist that Washington
Speaker 1: University in Saint Louis named Wesley Warren, and apparently he
Speaker 1: and his colleagues looked at DNA from wildcats and breeds
Speaker 1: of domestic cats. And this is from the New Yorker again.
Speaker 1: The research showed that genetically cats have actually diverged far
Speaker 1: less from their wildcat and than dogs have from wolves.
Speaker 1: You know, you can kind of see this in the wild, right,
Speaker 1: Like house cats are better hunters than dogs, they can
Speaker 1: also fend for themselves in the wild, and according to
Speaker 1: the Peace feral cats have even routinely bred with their
Speaker 1: wildcat cousins. And according to Warren quote it's not the
Speaker 1: true differentiation you see between wolf and dog by comparison.
Speaker 1: His belief is that the modern cat isn't fully domesticated.
Speaker 3: That is pretty interesting, and to be honest, it kind
Speaker 3: of explains why I don't fully trust them and I
Speaker 3: do still almost feel sorry for them.
Speaker 1: Though, well you shouldn't feel too sorry for them, because
Speaker 1: some people like to joke that these wildcats have actually
Speaker 1: domesticated us, and you know, they've obviously stayed aloof while
Speaker 1: were keeping them shelter and putting scratching posts in our
Speaker 1: houses and allow them to go to the bathroom indoors.
Speaker 1: But the biggest argument for them having trained us is
Speaker 1: that they've conditioned humans to feed them on demand with
Speaker 1: something called solicitation purring. So this comes from the journal
Speaker 1: Current Biology. But scientist Karen McComb from the University of
Speaker 1: Sussex analyze the acoustic structure of cat purs and she
Speaker 1: actually realized that cats dramatically exaggerate their purrs all to
Speaker 1: elicit this emotional response from humans. Apparently it's the same
Speaker 1: frequency that babies cry. And it isn't all cats that
Speaker 1: do this, it's just cats that have one on one
Speaker 1: relationships with humans.
Speaker 3: That is pretty manipulative. I mean it's impressive, but it's
Speaker 3: pretty manipulative.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they've got us on a tight leash.
Speaker 1: And also they have a behavior where they rub up
Speaker 1: against our legs. As you know, we pull a can
Speaker 1: out to get their food, and that's supposedly rewarding us
Speaker 1: for being good to them. But there's one more thing
Speaker 1: that people say it as feline's clever control over humans,
Speaker 1: and that's that we actually taste test their food for.
Speaker 3: Them, you know, I know, we talked about humans taste
Speaker 3: testing dog food before, but I can't remember it, Like,
Speaker 3: why do they do that again?
Speaker 1: So this comes from a Brocky University study from Canada.
Speaker 1: But basically, the pet food industry has noticed over the
Speaker 1: years that cats are fussy eaters and they're quote unreliable,
Speaker 1: expensive test subjects in the pursuit of more appealing cat
Speaker 1: food flavors, and the study basically showed that human taste
Speaker 1: panels are you know, a much more cost effective way
Speaker 1: to test can cat food. Apparently, the paper lists of
Speaker 1: methodology for human testers to quote profile the flavor and
Speaker 1: texture of a range of cat food products, including evaluating
Speaker 1: meat chunk and gravy to gel constituents gross. So, you know,
Speaker 1: if we're going to keep keeping our feline masters happy,
Speaker 1: more people are gonna have to get into the cat
Speaker 1: food tasting business.
Speaker 2: Well, I definitely have.
Speaker 3: Come away with some understanding of why cats act the
Speaker 3: way they do, and maybe even a little admiration for
Speaker 3: how they manipulate this. But why don't we talk about
Speaker 3: how cats became so popular in the first place. Let's
Speaker 3: take a quick break first, back to part time Genius
Speaker 3: where we're talking cats. All right, Mango so obviously we
Speaker 3: know that the Internet has done a lot for cat appreciation,
Speaker 3: and you know, you had grumpy cat Little bubb ruling
Speaker 3: the Internet for a while, and all that I can
Speaker 3: has cheeseburger memes being such a big thing.
Speaker 2: For a while.
Speaker 3: But actually, looking back, Time Magazine kind of predicted this
Speaker 3: trend way back in nineteen eighty one, right.
Speaker 1: That's right, and you and I found an old Time
Speaker 1: magazine cover story from nineteen eighty one that declared that
Speaker 1: cats were the hot new thing. But I'd almost argue
Speaker 1: that the thing that truly brought cats to the level
Speaker 1: of popularity and endearment they're at now isn't the Internet
Speaker 1: or Morris or even Garfield.
Speaker 3: Comics, which are some of the things that are in
Speaker 3: this Time article, and I do think we should talk about.
Speaker 1: Them, definitely. But one of the things I saw that
Speaker 1: writer Paul Ford points to is the rise of kitty litter,
Speaker 1: which is actually a relatively recent invention. I didn't realize this.
Speaker 1: It only came about in nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 2: So what were people doing before then?
Speaker 1: So I had the same question, And basically they had
Speaker 1: sandboxes outside, or they'd let their cats go in the
Speaker 1: yard Anyway, the story's pretty interesting and Ford wrote this
Speaker 1: up for Medium. But basically, this woman's sandbox for a
Speaker 1: cat was frozen, so she came to buy some sawdust
Speaker 1: from a local mill in Michigan. And the guy's name
Speaker 1: was ed Low. He had been working for his dad's
Speaker 1: mill at the time, and when she described what she
Speaker 1: wanted for her cat, he gave her an alternative. He
Speaker 1: had this kiln dried granulated clay that they just started
Speaker 1: using for grease bills at the mill, and when she
Speaker 1: came back for more, he started labeling it kitty litter
Speaker 1: and tried marketing it. But what's amazing is what a
Speaker 1: business it became. So, according to his obit in the
Speaker 1: New York Times, he sold the product to Ralston Purina
Speaker 1: for two hundred million dollars. And listen to this, he
Speaker 1: owned twenty two homes, a private railroad, a stable of quarterhouses,
Speaker 1: and an entire Michigan town. Isn't that incredible?
Speaker 2: That is crazy?
Speaker 3: So basically kitty letter changed how we interacted with cats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, like all cats were indoor, outdoor cats until
Speaker 1: the advent of kitty litter, and then slow more and
Speaker 1: more cats became housebound. But it's also starting to think
Speaker 1: about how much kitty litter we use. So according to
Speaker 1: Ford's research, about twenty companies Strip mine about four billion
Speaker 1: pounds in the necessary clay each year, four billion pounds.
Speaker 1: And by comparison, Ford sites the Great Pyramid of Giza
Speaker 1: only weighs thirteen billion pounds.
Speaker 2: I like that, that's the comparison to use.
Speaker 3: So all right, so then you're saying, with three or
Speaker 3: four years of work, you could actually build this impressive
Speaker 3: pyramid of kitty letter then, which is amazing. But all right, well,
Speaker 3: let's talk about this time article because it is pretty.
Speaker 1: Fun blind for it. So this piece basically argued that
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties were this time that really primed the
Speaker 1: world to love cats, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And here are just a few of the indicators
Speaker 3: they show that cats were on the rise. So the
Speaker 3: point you made earlier, these cat litter boxes in the
Speaker 3: eighties were now odor proof and kickproof, and that made
Speaker 3: keeping a box where your cat poops in the house
Speaker 3: far more appealing than it previously was. There were also
Speaker 3: three different Garfield books on the bestseller list, which means
Speaker 3: cat humor had truly arrived.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what.
Speaker 3: It says about the taste of people in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 3: that three of them were on the bestseller list, and the
Speaker 3: California suddenly there were a cat everything. You could find,
Speaker 3: a cat resort at, a cat department store, a cat
Speaker 3: rest home, a rent a cat agency, a cat dating service.
Speaker 3: I have no idea what that is, but it was
Speaker 3: one of the things. Cats psychics, cat acting coaches, and
Speaker 3: of course a special annual contest to judge cats mea house.
Speaker 3: And then at that time you had Mars, the cat,
Speaker 3: who was officially declared a celebrity cat, you know, essentially
Speaker 3: the feline Burt Reynolds, if you will. And then, as
Speaker 3: the story reported, cats were quickly gaining on dogs. According
Speaker 3: to the article, thirty four million cats had worked their
Speaker 3: way into homes, which was a fifty five percent increase
Speaker 3: over the last decade. If you look at those numbers now,
Speaker 3: some reports have cats that closer to ninety five million
Speaker 3: cats and homes, you know, plus the thirty or forty
Speaker 3: million feral community cats that you know, they're the ones
Speaker 3: that keep rodents at bay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess for all.
Speaker 1: The jokes about this cat trend, like cats have really
Speaker 1: grown on us as a culture, and while you and
Speaker 1: I might not be cat people yet, I do think
Speaker 1: we have to grudgingly admit that they're pretty amazing creatures.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not sure I'm there just yet, but
Speaker 3: maybe after a few amazing facts.
Speaker 2: So let's start the fact off.
Speaker 1: Did you know that jazz musician Charles Mingus trained his
Speaker 1: cat Nightlife to go on the toilet. In fact, he
Speaker 1: even wrote a step by step manuel called the Charles
Speaker 1: Mingus Catalog for Toilet Training your Cat.
Speaker 3: Well, there is at least one thing you cannot train
Speaker 3: a cat to do, and that's hold a candle for you.
Speaker 3: According to the folks at QI, Dante desperately tried teaching
Speaker 3: his cat to hold a candle for him so he
Speaker 3: could write at night, but to no avail, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, stupid Dante, Like, why wouldn't you just get a
Speaker 1: candle holder?
Speaker 2: It doesn't make It never occurred to him for some reason.
Speaker 1: So you know, I know will always talk about cats
Speaker 1: incredible ability to land on their feet, but did you
Speaker 1: know that cats can survive falls from sixty feet? Now,
Speaker 1: obviously this isn't a suggestion for listeners to go test
Speaker 1: this out on their cat, far from it, But in
Speaker 1: a nineteen eighty seven study on cats that had fallen
Speaker 1: from tall buildings. Apparently ninety percent of them survived, though
Speaker 1: they did have injuries. And this comes from an old
Speaker 1: pal bill domain. But the study found that cats that
Speaker 1: fell from heights of seven to thirty two stories were
Speaker 1: less likely to die than those that fell from two
Speaker 1: to six stories, which.
Speaker 2: Makes no sense. So do scientists know why this is?
Speaker 1: So there's actually a lot of theories, and there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of research into it. And part of it
Speaker 1: might be that because cat's bodies act as a bit
Speaker 1: of a parachute, and part of it might be that
Speaker 1: cats relax once they've fallen in a certain distance. And
Speaker 1: you know, the reason babies and stumpmen often survive accidents
Speaker 1: is that they bounce because they don't tense up their muscles.
Speaker 3: I mean, I always love that buttered cat paradox, you know,
Speaker 3: because cats always land on their feet, and butter bread
Speaker 3: always lands faced. So like, if you tie a piece
Speaker 3: of buttered bread to a cat's back and then drop it,
Speaker 3: will the cat just like hover above the floor.
Speaker 1: I love that. So here's a quick one about cats
Speaker 1: making the world a better place. So in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, the New York Times board that Thailand was
Speaker 1: shaming wayward cops. You know, these were the officers who
Speaker 1: were littering, or parking in the wrong place, or even
Speaker 1: showing little abuses of power. And they did this with
Speaker 1: an unusual method. They started making them wear pink Hello
Speaker 1: Kitty armbands, and, as a police chief told The Times
Speaker 1: after the policy came out, police were scared, it will
Speaker 1: be very embarrassing to walk around with Hello Kitty on
Speaker 1: your arm. What's strange, though, is that this is actually
Speaker 1: the second variation on this armband technique. So there was
Speaker 1: a previous iteration where they gave bad cops plaid armbands,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately they were seen as like gestures of pride
Speaker 1: or something, and they started taking them home and treating
Speaker 1: them like metals.
Speaker 3: All right, well, here's a strange bit of science. According
Speaker 3: to new scientists, cats don't understand the cause and effect
Speaker 3: of tugging on a string.
Speaker 1: You'll have to explain what do you mean by this.
Speaker 2: Well, there was a.
Speaker 3: Study at Canterbury christ Church University in the UK, and
Speaker 3: there was a team of researchers and what they did
Speaker 3: was they attach fish or biscuit trees to the end
Speaker 3: of one string, and then they put another string with
Speaker 3: no treat attached, And according to the researchers, the cats
Speaker 3: couldn't see the cause and effect. The story states, chimps, parrots, ravens,
Speaker 3: they all understand that tugging on one end of a
Speaker 3: string will bring a treat closer. But cats don't, and
Speaker 3: they aren't alone. So pigeons and human infants also don't
Speaker 3: pick up on this, and for the record, neither do dogs.
Speaker 1: So speaking of cats and dogs, do you know that
Speaker 1: if your dog is overweight, there's actually a good chance
Speaker 1: you'll be overweight too? And in twenty ten, the Journal
Speaker 1: of Public Health Nutrition published a study from Ansterdam that
Speaker 1: showed that there's a significant relationship between overweight dogs and
Speaker 1: the BMI of their owners. But if your cat is overweight,
Speaker 1: it's not a good predictor of whether you'll be overweight.
Speaker 1: It's because you and your cat are just you know,
Speaker 1: on your own, living your best lives.
Speaker 2: Is that what it is? Okay? All right, Well here's
Speaker 2: a strange one.
Speaker 3: So Japan is obsessed with cats, right, and that's no
Speaker 3: surprise obviously. It's the land of waving porcelain cats that
Speaker 3: sit in stores and responsible for Hello Kitty. I think
Speaker 3: it's where cat cafes started. But now also they have
Speaker 3: cat bars and cat cafe train cars, so they are
Speaker 3: definitely cat obsessed. There's even a hand lotion that's now
Speaker 3: cat paw scented, so your hands can smell more like
Speaker 3: the bottom of your cats.
Speaker 2: I don't know why.
Speaker 3: People want this, but it is available now. But you
Speaker 3: know how cats make biscuits in the morning, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's when they kind of like wake you up
Speaker 1: and gently need on owner's chests in the morning for attention.
Speaker 3: So the craziest story I read is that there's a
Speaker 3: spa in Japan where they offer these cat treatments as
Speaker 3: back massages. You can actually pay to have a cat
Speaker 3: need your back. It was really hard for me to
Speaker 3: even just say that statement.
Speaker 2: So terrible.
Speaker 1: It's both amazing and terrifying to me. So do you
Speaker 1: know that cats aren't actually the only creatures they get
Speaker 1: hair balls? Cows and rabbits get them too.
Speaker 3: Oh that's weird, all right. So here's one about Mark Twain,
Speaker 3: the notorious cat lover. As we mentioned earlier. Now, one
Speaker 3: thing he truly enjoyed was giving his cat strange names.
Speaker 3: So here are a few of them. He had Apollinaris, Beeesel,
Speaker 3: bub blatherskite, buffalo bill, Satan, sour mash, soapy sal pestilence,
Speaker 3: and Bambino. And actually add one more fact about Twain.
Speaker 3: Apparently Bambino escaped one day and Twain was so worried
Speaker 3: that he did what any cat lover would do, and
Speaker 3: he put an ad in the New York newspapers and
Speaker 3: offered a five dollars reward for this. It was a
Speaker 3: large and intensely black cat. Now, Bambino showed up on
Speaker 3: his own in a few days, but putting an ad
Speaker 3: in the paper was a huge mistake. Years later, people
Speaker 3: were still using it as an excuse to try to
Speaker 3: meet Mark Twain. They would just show op at his
Speaker 3: door with like random cat that they claimed, we're definitely Bambino.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I thought I had you with my
Speaker 1: Hello Candy fact. I think you best to be with
Speaker 1: that Mark Twain one to two. So I'm actually gonna
Speaker 1: give you the Cat Fact Trophy today.
Speaker 2: Wow, it is truly an honor.
Speaker 3: And listeners, I hope you've enjoyed today's list of facts
Speaker 3: about cats. If we have forgotten any great fact, please
Speaker 3: send those to us. We'd love to hear from you
Speaker 3: part Time Genius and HowStuffWorks dot com. You can also
Speaker 3: call our fact hotline one eight four four pt Genius
Speaker 3: or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 2: I hope we have redeemed.
Speaker 3: Ourselves a little bit with all the cat lovers out
Speaker 3: there with today's episode. I have a bit more respect
Speaker 3: for cats now. But thank you guys for listening. Thanks
Speaker 3: again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of
Speaker 3: How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant
Speaker 3: people who do the important things we couldn't even begin
Speaker 3: to understand.
Speaker 1: Christa McNeil does the editing thing.
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Speaker 3: Gabeluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the research
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