Thinking about your cat thinking

My weekly newspaper column for 11/15

also available online at:
http://cumberlink.com/articles/2007/11/15/editorial/rich_lewis/lewis50.txt
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Talking with a philosopher about cats
By Rich Lewis, November 15, 2007
Last updated: Thursday, November 15, 2007 9:48 AM EST

You couldn’t pick up too many newspapers yesterday without reading about the trial of the guy who shot the cat.

James Stevenson, the founder of a birdwatching society in Galveston, Texas, admits he used a .22-caliber rifle last November to shoot a cat that was living under a toll bridge because it was snacking on some endangered birds. He’s accused of animal cruelty and faces two years in jail and a $10,000 fine.

According to the New York Times report, the key question is whether the cat was wild or someone’s pet.

Stevenson claims the cat was wild. The prosecutor says the toll collector on the bridge was feeding the cat, gave it toys and named it Mama Cat — so it was his pet.

That’s a pretty interesting question: When does a wild animal become your “pet”? Are the birds at my feeders my pets?

The other odd detail, the Times reported, was that, “The prosecution and defense wrangled repeatedly about whether witnesses could accurately assess the cat’s state of mind.”

Stevenson’s lawyer, Tad Nelson, objected when a police officer testified the cat was in pain when he arrived on the scene.

“He’s not qualified to know what the cat was feeling,” Nelson declared.

That’s also an interesting question: Who is “qualified” to know what any cat is thinking or feeling?

I called my friend, Thomas Nadelhoffer, a philosophy professor at Dickinson, who teaches a course on animal rights, to get some expert advice on that question.

He says it would be a mistake “to attribute complicated thoughts or beliefs to the cat, like, ‘What a mean guy he was to shoot me,’” but cats have nerves similar to ours and so we can legitimately infer that a shot cat is feeling pain.

“We think a cat sees things because they have eyeballs and we have eyeballs. We don’t know what the cat sees, but clearly it sees something,” Nadelhoffer says. “So since it has nerves, we can say it feels pain.”

Sometimes I can tell my cat is thinking about throwing up on the rug. And she usually does.

Anyway, I thought I would write a column about this. But then I thought, “Wait a minute. What if there are more cat stories in the news right now? If I’m going to write a column about cats, I should pick the best story.”

But, really, how many news stories about cats could there be this week?

Well....

• EL PASO, Texas, Nov. 13 (UPI) — A Texas animal control officer apologized for ticketing an El Paso cat owner whose pet scratched a veterinary assistant while receiving treatment.

• MANAWATU (NZ) STANDARD, Nov. 14 (editorial) — The Manawatu District Council is pondering introducing a bylaw that would limit the number of cats to three per household. It should race ahead and install the new bylaw as quickly as possible.

• KITSAP SUN (Bremerton, Wash.), Nov. 12 — A 46-year-old South Kitsap man was arrested on suspicion of voyeurism early Friday after an 18-year-old neighbor spotted him peeking in her window. He told sheriff’s deputies he was looking for his cat.

• KCRG (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), Nov. 12 — A Cedar Rapids woman is crediting her cat with possibly saving her life from exposure to carbon monoxide.

• ROME, Nov. 14 (UPI) — The Italian Association in Defense of Animals and the Environment has set Saturday as the nation’s first Black Cat Day, ANSA reported Tuesday. The group is encouraging owners of black cats to bring their pets to Rome and Milan for outdoor picnics.

• BBC (London), Nov. 12 — A man who put his ex-wife’s cat in a tumble dryer and switched it on has been jailed for six months.

•- NBC-10 (Philadelphia), Nov. 13 — There is an update on Heathcliff, the South Jersey cat that hit the road three weeks ago.... The far-flung feline disappeared from his home in Sicklerville, N.J., and three weeks later mysteriously turned up in Lawrenceville, Ga.

• CHRONICLE-TELEGRAM (Elyria, Ohio), Nov. 14 — NORTH RIDGEVILLE — Bear the cat, who spent 12 days in a tree in Eaton Township, was listed in critical condition at Northview Animal Hospital....

Most cats will come down on their own in three to five days and the record is 21 days for a cat in a tree, according to Nancy Peterson of the Humane Society of the United States....

• WKMG (Orlando, Fla.), Nov. 13 — ST. JOHNS COUNTY — Authorities in Florida launched an investigation into what they called one of the strangest accidents they’ve ever seen. Investigators said 32-year-old Charles Tucker Jr. was using the cat door early Saturday morning as a way to get back into his girlfriend’s St. Augustine home after she kicked him out. Deputies said several hours after Tucker’s girlfriend told him to leave she found him stuck in the cat door, dead.

Now how am I supposed to pick among those stories? Every one of them is deserving of a column, and maybe even a movie-of-the-week.

Maybe cats are just trouble and it would be better to go with the eight cows who escaped from a truck parked at a McDonald’s in Utah, or the teacher in Arkansas who killed a raccoon with a nail gun at school, or the man in India who married a dog.

You just have to wonder how the dog feels about that.

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Rich Lewis’ e-mail address is: rlcolumn@comcast.net

because of the dynamics between endangered birds and pets. Potentially it could be a big case.

that has been done before in GD, could get ugly.

IMO, the cats are a minor problem compared to the human devastation of endangered bird's habitat.

How is what this guy did any different than what they are doing to the cats in JFK Airport....?
It might even be worse since he actually shot the cat and did not bother to catch it and turn it over to a shelter...even a kill shelter.

a hairball or toss their cookies?

If he did, he'd have to go upstairs to do the deed, and generally, he just isn't willing to expend that effort before he expels that hairball on my terra cotta downstairs floors.

spelling.

:rofl:

That's exactly the reason Ginger does it downstairs. I'm only upstairs to sleep, so Ginger knows that the terra cotta living room, dining room and kitchen floors are _the_ primo places for expelling hairballs. He's never done it on the larchwood floor of my studio, but that's only because the thought has not yet occurred to him. :scared:

The wouldn't be very useful on a leash.
My cats love to hunt rodents, and I see that as a good trait. AFAIK neither of them has ever gone after a bird.

Rodents have rights too.

;)

Rural human societies actually adopt out cats to be "barn cats" and act as rodent control.

a mammal such as a cat CAN FEEL PAIN??????? WTF??????

Of course they feel pain. And they feel fear. And confusion. That they cannot comprehend the issues addressed in literature such as Proust, or discuss the virtues of certain behaviors like opening doors for women, or whatever, is beside the point.

Jeebus.

I didn't have space to mention this in the column, but Texas law was changed, as a result of THIS case, so that it is now illegal to shoot any cat, feral (wild) or tame (pet) in Texas. But the shooting happened before the law change and so the trial goes on. It is illegal in most states to shoot ANY cat.

they don't think like dogs do.

and cats do revenge

meerkats (TV reality show) are very like domestic cats.

of course they feel pain!

and they can flirt, be coy, pout, etc.

(raised cats and dogs for decades)