Happy Pets

Whether it be an immobile peanut, a living victim or any other object that the cat considers worthy of more detailed exploration, the feline has an armoury of sensitive touch receptors at its clawtips - and not only there. You may have seen a curious cat tentatively patting an object –perhaps a new toy mouse — with its paw. Although it may look comical, the cat isn’t playing, but is instead conducting a serious investigation. After all, it doesn‘t yet know that this alien object is a toy — it doesn‘t show signs of life, but that doesn‘t mean that it won’t jump up and bite the cat on the nose. With caution being the watchword, the cat therefore extends a forepaw, keeping its vulnerable nose well away from the potential danger, and delicately touches the toy mouse.

The instant it does so, a barrage of messages is relayed to the brain by the touch receptors — nerve endings — in the hairless pads of its paw, which are activated by sideways, brushing movements similar to those that the cat is generating as it pats and strokes. (So sensitive are the paw pads that many cats hate having them stroked — Melchior certainly does, although Caspar tolerates it — presumably because it elicits a tickling sensation that is too excruciating to stand.)

Only when the feline brain has ascertained that the toy mouse doesn‘t present a threat will the cat draw closer to investigate it with its nose, which is equally chock-a-block with touch receptors, both touching and smelling the mouse to garner a: much information as it can. If the toy were a real mouse, this closeness of contact would trigger an innate set of killer reactions in which further touch receptors under the skin of the mouth and lips play a vital role in prompting the cat to bare its fangs ready for the killing bite, the final information that seals the mouse fate being relayed by nerve endings within the mouth and pressure-sensitive receptors at the base of the canine teeth.

Beneath its fur the feline skin is packed with touch receptors (which is one of the reasons why cats are so responsive to being stroked), but certain areas are more sensitive than others - around the cat’s mouth, for example. Among the most responsive to touch are the vibrissae: the whiskers and stiff, whisker-like hairs thatsprout from above a cat’s eyes, from its chin and the sides of its head, as well as from the ‘wrists’ of its paws. Not only do the vibrissae register touch when they come into contact with a solid object, thereby acting as feelers, they also identify changes in air pressure, even the most imperceptible (to humans) movement causing the vibrissae to bend and triggering a brain-signalling response in the touch receptors at their base, within the skin. Because solid objects affect the air flow or pressure around them, the cat is alerted to their presence and can therefore avoid them.

As well as enabling it to map out the size and shape of any object that the cat encounters (including the prey that it holds in a death grip), the vibrissae provide an invaluable navigational aid, giving the cat the ability to ascertain with remarkable accuracy, particularly during its night-time sorties, whether it can squeeze through a prohibitively small-looking gap. Never cut off a cat’s whiskers, for if you do, you will be inflicting a considerable handicap on it by removing its ability to make accurate spatial judgments and will also probably be condemning any future prey to a lingering death as a result of the cat’s impaired ability to judge exactly where to administer the coup de grace.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 8:09 pm and is filed under Cats, Deworm, Health, Kennels, Pet Medication, Pets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.