Being a lifetime cat owner, I’ll add a few things too:
Cats do not see motion better than we do, they perceive it more. To use a human example, you may notice that you find yourself attuned to straight lines, right angles, and other linear relationships. If you’re looking out a window with venetian blinds you’ll sometimes find yourself lining the blinds up with horizontal objects outside the window, stuff like that. It’s not that you see straight lines any better than anything else, but your brain notices them more. Cats are the same way with motion.
Cats, despite their reputation, aren’t very clean animals.
Cats don’t really think they own us or any of that. We just compare them to dogs, so it seems that way. (They just look different when they’re happy, too.) In my experience cats are actually very deferential to their owners, just in their own cat way. Dogs are social animals and behave in predictable ways based on what they perceive the social structure of their “pack” to be. Cats are less attuned to heirarchy (which is why you’ll often see cats who are sweet and obedient to their owner but hate everyone else) but they know who the boss is, and it isn’t them. I have especially noticed this when I’ve had more than one cat; I get the sense they feel they need to compete with each other for my affections.
Cats hear much higher frequency sounds than we do, but they CANNOT hear the very lowest-pitched sound that humans can. Really low rumblings you or I could hear won’t register to a cat’s ears, IIRC.
As I’m sure you know, cats are generally NOT social animals. Dogs will jostle for position along a defined heirarchy, but they’ll work things out and work as a team. Cats will just beat the hell out of each other if they can and live in grudging acceptance if they can’t. Much of the difference between dogs and cats, in fact, can be understood just by keeping that in mind; Dogs are designed to work as a team, cats are designed to work alone.
Hee hee! This reminds me of an odd thought I had a while back; maybe you can use it. Cats, in rubbing against stuff, are (IIRC) marking their territory with pheromones from a gland in their cheeks. So, if you think about it, there’s an invisible cat-scented stripe eight or ten inches off the ground on everything in your house.
Hazel-rah - i just checked and i got my facts wrong! shame It’s actually by Thomas Nagel and although i can’t remember from which book i read it (it was a collection of philosophical essays), it would say it’s quite likely that it’s in Other Minds: Critical Essays. I like Nagel on consciousness, makes quite a bit of sense.
As per plans, I did a bit of tithing (well, okay, it wasn’t ten percent of my income, but it’s more than I’ve spent on books in awhile–felt good) at the bookstore this afternoon. Picked up both “Catwatching” (just finished a read-through on it; quick, entertaining, informative, and made me nostalgic about the various litters of kittens from the family’s farmcats while growing up) and “The Cat’s Mind”, as well as other non-OP-related material (the complete “Hitchhiker’s” series in hardback, my paperbacks of it are very much showing their age, a few other bits.)
Francesca–also picked up Daniel Dennet’s “Consciousness Explained”, as it’s been something on my to-read list for awhile now–also, you’d made the mention of attributing said essay to him and a look-through the table of contents showed a chapter section of “What It Is Like to Be a Bat”–which, by brief skimming ahead, looks to be his take on Nagel’s original essay (which I haven’t read). So I’d say your facts aren’t fully wrong, just a bit of memory-crossing.
I bought Catwatching this afternoon as well. Very nice, except I finished the whole thing over lunch, and now I wish I’d bought another one.
Highlights from Catwatching:
“Cats hate doors. Doors simply do not register in the evolutionary story of the cat family.”
“Why do cats react so strongly to catnip? In a word, it is because they are junkies.”
Tomorrow I’ll have to pick up Consciousness Explained. I don’t know Nagel, but I recognize Dennett from some Hofstadter essays, so I know he’ll be interesting.