Cats And Tigers Are More Related Than You Think

Lions and tigers and...cats oh my? Most people know that the domestic house cat shares a common ancestor with the jungle cats of the wild, but how much do they have in common? This video lays out a lot of the similarities and shows you some differences. I’m more of a dog man myself, but I got a few nuggets of cat knowledge I can drop on you as well.

Starting off, this video says cats have several forms of communication. While that may be true, in my experience cat meows universally seem to mean one of two things: they want attention or they want food, which also involves attention.

In my younger years I owned a total of nine cats. Whitey, Blacky, Brownie, Curly, Spot, Fred, Cord, Nicky, and Meeshee all in that order. No my house was not a cat ranch, sadly I just had that many die between the ages of 1-4. Of those nine, six were hit by cars, one was stolen, another lost an ear and ran away, and one, ONE lived to old age and was eventually put down.

Sad but true. It could be that I was just a terrible child and the cats were looking for an easy way out, but I’ve had three dogs my whole life and two of them are still alive; so, I don’t think it’s me with the problem. Outdoor cats don’t have an extremely long life span, and even indoor cats can get themselves in some life threatening situations on a daily basis. Dogs are just happy to see you and have no interest in being sneaky.

I know I’m in the minority here, it seems there are more cat lovers in the world than stars in the sky. They’re cute, I want to love them very much, but I don’t think it’s in the cards. I’ll probably get one and it’ll be dead in two days at the hands of my adrenaline filled toy Poodle. Perhaps it’s for the best I learned my lesson early in life, or there’d be a pet cemetary in my wake.