Road Apples
Feb. 19, 2007

Is your cat a creative genius, or is that just an average hairball?

By Tim Sanders

A few nights ago our son David came in from the backyard and told us there was a cat in the apple tree which didn’t belong to us. We were relatively sure that the apple tree in our backyard did indeed belong to us, but he explained that it was the cat which didn’t belong to us, not the apple tree. I went outside and surveyed the situation, and sure enough there was a cat near the top of our apple tree, looking as though it had no idea how it possibly came to be there, and had even less of an idea how to get down.

I’ve mentioned this before, and will most certainly mention it again: I believe that cats are right up there with garden slugs and fruit flies when it comes to brain power. That fool cat in our apple tree is a perfect example. Whether a cat climbs a tree in search of a bird, or to escape a dog, or just because it is startled by its own tail, it always climbs much higher than it had planned to climb. I’ve seen a cat climb thirty feet up a pine tree to escape a basset hound that could never, even with assistance, stand on its own hind legs, let alone leap twenty-nine feet into the air. I once watched a cat loitering in our front yard. It would scratch itself frantically, stop, and then scratch again. Finally it sprang up, looking as though something profound had just occurred to it, and clambered up a power pole. I firmly believe that cat was trying to get away from its own fleas.

And once a cat propels itself up into the stratosphere, what does it do? It looks around, notices that–HOLY CRAP–the ground is WA-A-A-AY down there! Now a more rational creature–a little boy for example, or a housefly–will always know how to get down from a tree he’s managed to climb. It has to do with gravity. But even the brightest of cats finds the concept of gravity confusing. And the fact that climbing down is exactly the same process as climbing up, only reversed, never enters its head. So just what does enter the head of a feline who’s found itself magically transported into the top of a tree? Well, it looks around, thinks very seriously about its predicament for several nanoseconds, weighs its options and says ... meeowrl ... MEEEEEOWRL ... MEEEEEEEOWWWRRLLL! That is the cat’s way of expressing its need for a human being to locate a ladder and fetch it down. That’s what the cat in our apple tree was requesting. I went to search for a brick.

I did that because there were occasions, during my idealistic youth, when I climbed trees to rescue cats. And despite their plaintive pleas for help, every time I risked life and limb and finally got hold of one, it repaid my efforts by scratching several layers of skin off my arm. You’d have thought I was trying to give it a bath, for Pete’s sake.

And speaking of baths and cats, when I was a youngster our family tomcat derived great pleasure from sitting on the edge of the tub watching me bathe. It was a Saturday night ritual. One night he lost his footing and slipped into the tub. He crawled up my back, claws fully extended, and finally perched atop my head. It took considerable time and effort to dislodge him, because of the aforementioned claws and my tender scalp. I would have been safer with a moose in the tub with me. This dramatically altered my opinion of cats.

And it is not just in trees and bathtubs where cats display their lack of intellect. We have a cat, Sylvia, who is dumb even by cat standards. She spends most of her time on our deck, where she is fed, and fed well, daily. But she still finds it necessary to kill birds. Birds to eat? Of course not. On those rare occasions when she does try to digest a bird part, it always winds up regurgitated on our deck. She likes to leave them there as presents for us. Bird part and hairball creations. She’s a regular Martha Stewart, only with a fluffier tail. We don’t support her penchant for bird stalking, especially since the birds she kills are usually the non-pesky varieties, like cardinals and finches. So what, you ask? Well, so there are some really annoying birds, like those starlings which always flock to our yard for political rallies and union meetings and such. We’ve had thousands of them in our backyard, and have noticed that when they arrive, Sylvia shows no interest at all. She could launch herself from the deck in any direction and land on a dozen or so, but no, that would be a useful enterprise, and easy, too. And she is a cat.

Over the past month Alabamians, much like those unfortunate souls in the Northeast, have suffered from extreme global warming. Last week when our temperature shot up perilously into the low twenties, with a wind warmth factor in the mid-teens, we were worried about Sylvia remaining outside at night. We feared we would find her on the deck in the morning, stiff and hard, with frost on her little whiskers and ice on her paws, all globally warmed to death. So we brought her inside for the night to escape all of that bone-chilling warmth.

You would think she’d appreciate her nice, cozy bed in that roomy pet carrier. But no, Sylvia would rather risk the same global warming which has already ruined half the citrus crop in California, closed airports all across the Midwest, and left twelve feet of snow and a whole herd of dead cats in upstate New York. Why? Because she is a cat. And since she is a cat, and not a meteorologist, when we bring her in she persists in squalling continuously, until we either put her back outside or locate the duct tape.

There are cat lovers out there who will insist that the reason cats cannot be trained to do useful things like fetch slippers, sniff drugs at airports, pull sleds, lead the visually impaired, or climb down from trees is because they are too intelligent to bother with such menial tasks. If that is how it works, then I have a piece of plywood in my basement which must be absolutely brilliant. I plan to enroll that board in MIT next year. It could earn a degree in atmospheric science and solve the global warming situation before the entire Southeast is buried under twelve feet of snow. Warm snow.