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Ideas, like cats…

Have you ever wondered whether cats have mental maps? Have you ever wondered whether you have any for that matter? I will admit at this point that I had to Google ‘mental maps’ in case I was already disqualified because I sometimes use the GPS in my phone.

I would also like to take the opportunity of burdening the reader with yet another confession: I, unlike many of the contributors to YouTube, am a dog person, although I have occasionally kept cats as paid companions for the dog. It is a transactional coexistence, though: I feed the cat, and it comes back whenever it sees its bowl and no dog on the porch. It pretends to like me, but I can tell I am merely tolerated for my role as food-giver; Rugal, the dog, however, remains on my side as long as I take her for walks.

Rugal, even if over-enamoured with her own food -any food, actually- is capable of a sort of egalitarian love and unfettered loyalty. She is a trustworthy and eager trail guide, and almost always wanders deep into the bushes to do whatever it is they do in there. Having said that, I did have a cat, Smoky, that also used to follow me (although he hated crossing streams and usually remained meowing on the wrong side). He was a rag-doll cross and one of the reasons I liked him was because he would retrieve any balls I threw and drop them at my feet; and I could roughhouse with him like a dog without getting scratched or bitten. But that, I suspect, was the reason I enjoyed him so much: he was like a trans-dog.

But getting back to mental maps, they are apparently mental representations of where and what is in the world. For example, knowing where -and if– something that is out of sight still exists, is an example of object permanence. And if it is a pet, maybe what it is remembering is its ‘owner’s’ location, which is known as socio-spatial cognition [i](I put quotes around ‘owner’ because nobody ‘owns’ a cat -they merely feed it and repair the claw marks on the furniture).

Anyway, I don’t think we humans should be surprised at animal cognition; there have always been clues that we simply refused to see. In terms of cats… well, okay they’re always either pretending to be asleep while purring on the couch, or outside killing mice to bring in through the kitty-door and play with on the carpet. But if we weren’t lulled by their maddening ability to curl up anywhere we might be planning to sit, we might have noticed an interesting auditory feature: they seem to have separate brains for each ear -or at least they want you to think that. They can move and point one or both ears at anything that is trying to hide.[ii] I think I understand why mobile ears might have been useful in the woods or wherever they evolved, though -in the forest, everything there is trying to hide from everything else and apart from the inevitable ear fatigue, I suppose mobile appendages would serve a useful function. But for the average domestic cat, I’m rather surprised that evolution allowed them to keep the ear-pointing thing. Noses maybe, but moveable ears? I mean I find mouse droppings under the couch sometimes, and have on occasion caught the unmistakeable whiff of mortality above the ceiling tiles downstairs; mobile eyes and noses would be better, I think. At any rate, my own ears remain glued like posters on each side of my head.

But I don’t want anybody to think that I actually watch cats, or anything -Smoky, the rag-doll cross, died a couple of years ago- and I suppose I used to watch him… well, actually, come to think of it, he watched me. Maybe he was watching my ears and trying to figure out if I knew he was hiding under the table with a mouse. Or he would wait for me on the mat outside the shower each morning, no doubt hoping I might know how to retrieve his bowl from where the dog had shoved it sometime in the night.

I’m hopeless at pointing my ears, however, but I suspect he figured that out, because as soon as I dried myself, he seemed to realize he would have to lead me to the whereabouts of the now-inaccessible bowl. Uhmm, I don’t wish to imply that the cat had outsmarted Rugal, my decidedly unpedigreed dog, but merely to observe that Smoky kept track of that bowl with his night-vision -not his ears. It was actually getting at it that sometimes confounded him. Rugal was a Day dog, and only used her nose at night; the rest of her was actually quite clumsy at pushing things anywhere in the dark. I’ve often wondered about her mental maps, quite frankly. But, as usual, I digress.

Exactly what cats are mapping is hard to know, I expect. But locating voices?[iii] Any fool could spot the direction a voice is coming from, but even a suspicion that cats can do it is somewhat reassuring: it suggests that I, the custodian for the cat, actually exist for him despite my absence, and that I am a part his world if only as an un-hired hand. However, it would be harder to prove -except, perhaps for Smoky- that a cat really gives a toss about where I am. I exist merely as the filler of the food bowl and the emptier of the litter box; I am hardly worshipped for anything else, and like the sheet-changer in a rent-by-the-hour motel, am otherwise invisible.

But I mean, come on, eh? My dog can read tree-trunks and telephone poles like books; she knows who has visited where and maybe even when; show me a cat that can do that -ears or no. My dog also knows where to find her leash, and points at objects she finds interesting with her nose and maybe her leg as well, although she usually puts the seat down first.

Of course, I don’t mean to denigrate cats as a species, or anything -they can’t help their evolution, let alone their proclivity for night life. It’s just that cats don’t seem to need me the way dogs do, and I don’t think they smile as much, either. When push comes to shove, I suppose I prefer something that loves me for who I am, rather than what I do for them. For that matter, that’s what I prefer in humans, too, even if they complain a lot when you take them on walks…

[i] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/your-cat-knows-where-you-are-even-when-they-cant-see-you-180979059

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

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