Catwatching by Desmond Morris Read Free Book Online Page B

a cat rubs against a landmark in its territory or sprays urine on it, it leaves a personal scent which immediately starts to lose its power. This decline is at a steady rate and can be used by cats to determine how long it has been since the scent-marker rubbed or sprayed. The repeated visits by a cat to inspect its territory are motivated by a need to reactivate its fading scent signals. Once this has been done, comfort and security beckons again, and the anxious feline face appears for the umpteenth time at the window.
     

What does a cat signal with its ears?
     
    Unlike humans, felines have very expressive ears. They not only change direction as the cat listens to sounds coming from different sources, but they also adopt special postures that reflect the emotional mood of the animals.
    There are five basic ear signals, related to the following moods: relaxed, alert, agitated, defensive and aggressive.
    In the relaxed cat the apertures of the ears point forward and slightly outward, as the animal quietly listens for interesting sounds over a wide range.
    When the resting cat stirs itself and focuses on some exciting detail in its surroundings, the ear position changes into the 'alert mode'.
    As it stares at the point of interest, its ears become fully erect and rotate so that their apertures point directly forward. The ears are kept pricked in this way as long as the cat remains gazing straight ahead.
    The only variation occurs if there is a sudden noise away to the side of the animal, in which case an ear may be permitted a brief rotation in that direction without a shift of gaze.
    An agitated cat, suffering from a state of conflict, frustration or apprehension, often displays a nervous twitching of the ears. In some species of wild cats this response has been made highly conspicuous by the evolution of long ear-tufts, but the domestic cat lacks this refinement and the ear-twitching itself is less common. Slight tufting does occur in some breeds, especially the Abyssinian where there is a small dark hairy point to the ear, but compared with the huge ear-tufts of a species such as the Caracal Lynx, this is a very modest development.
    A defensive cat displays fully flattened ears. They are pressed tightly against the head as a way of protecting them during fights.
    The torn and tattered ears of battling tom-cats are a vivid testimony to the need to hide this delicate part of the anatomy as much as possible when the claws are out. The effect of flattening the ears to the sides of the head is to make them almost invisible when the animal is viewed from the front and to give its head a more rounded outline.
    There is one strange breed of cat called the Scottish Fold which has permanently flattened ears, giving it a continually defensive look, regardless of its true mood. What effect this has on its social life is hard to imagine.
    An aggressive cat which is hostile without being particularly frightened has its own special ear posture. Here, the ears are rotated but not fully flattened. The backs of the ears become visible from the front, and this is the most dangerous ear signal any cat can transmit.
    In origin, this ear posture is half-way between alert and defensive in other words, half-way between pricked forward and flattened backward.
    In effect, it is a 'ready for trouble' position. The animal is saying, 'I am ready to attack, but you don't frighten me enough to flatten my ears protectively." The reason why this involves showing off the backs of the ears is because they must be rotated backwards before they can be fully flattened. So the rotated ears are in a 'ready-to-be-flattened' posture, should the aggressive cat's opponent dare to retaliate.
    The aggressive ear posture has led to some attractive ear-markings in a number of wild cat species, especially the tiger, which has a huge white spot ringed with black on the back of each ear. When a tiger is angry, there is no doubt at all about its mood, as the pair of vivid