Cats
Cats, Science/Nature
Friday Catblogging: Cats’ Spooky Eyes
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Helen Czerski writes Behind the Spooky Eyes of Cats (‘Like scarier nighttime predators, cats have slit pupils that help them to judge distance and ambush their prey’): Halloween is approaching, and a whiff of ghoulish menace is squatting casually in the darkness of London’s evenings. Ghostly figures, silhouettes of witches and jagged glowing teeth loom…
Cats, Science/Nature
Friday Catblogging: Cats Have Attachment Styles
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In Current Biology, Kristyn R. Vitale, Alexandra C. Behnke, and Monique A.R. Udell have reported their findings on Attachment bonds between domestic cats and humans. Here is a summary of their report, with the full study available online: Worldwide, domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus) outnumber domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). Despite cats’ success in human environments,…
Cats, Science/Nature
Friday Catblogging: Siamese Cats as Heat Maps
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Annie Rauwerda writes Siamese cats are heatmaps of themselves: Siamese cats are walking heatmaps. Their characteristic coloration results from a delightful mutation (maybe I should call it a mew-tation) in tyrosinase, an enzyme that makes melanin. A deleted cytosine amino acid causes a frameshift mutation. The result? Tyrosinase in Siamese cats is particularly sensitive to…
Cats, Sports
Friday Catblogging: Cat-Themed Cleats
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Cats
Friday Catblogging: Cat-astrophe Avoided
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Cats
Friday Catblogging: Miami Fans Use American Flag to Catch Falling Cat
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Doha Madani reports Video shows Florida football fans use a U.S. flag to rescue cat that fell from upper deck: The biggest play at the University of Miami-Appalachian State University football game Saturday night happened in the stands, where spectators banded together to save a feline fan. Video from Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens…
Cats, Nature, Science/Nature
Friday Catblogging: Tabbies
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
James Gorman reports How the Cat Gets Its Stripes: A team of geneticists reported Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications that it had identified a gene in domestic cats that plays a key role in creating the traditional tabby stripe pattern, and that the pattern is evident in embryonic tissue even before hair follicles start…
Cats
Friday Catblogging: Cat Rescues Octogenarian Who Fell into Ravine
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Mira Pitofsky reports An elderly woman went missing after falling down a ravine. Her cat led rescuers to her: A cat in the United Kingdom rescued his 83-year-old owner after she fell into a ravine by attracting the attention of bystanders with his meowing. Police in Bodmin, located in Cornwall, England, shared on Facebook last…
Cats
Friday Catblogging: Cats and Ping Pong Trick Shots
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Cats, Nature
Friday Cat Blogging: Arizona Bobcat Notices She’s Being Watched
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Cats
Friday Catblogging: What’s The Story Behind Japan’s Lucky Cats?
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Cats, Medicine, Science/Nature
Friday Catblogging: Cats’ Genomes
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In One More Thing We Have in Common With Cats, Katherine Wu writes about the similarities between feline and human genomes: Cats, it turns out, harbor genomes that look and behave remarkably like ours. “Other than primates, the cat-human comparison is one of the closest you can get,” with respect to genome organization, Leslie Lyons, an…
Cats, Games/Puzzles
Friday Catblogging: Stray Walkthrough
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Game producer Swann talks about the world of Stray, as well as what to expect with gameplay and characters you’ll come across as a cat. Coming early 2022 to PS5, PS4, and Steam. The good news: it looks exciting. The bad news: it’s not out until early 2022. (Time to revise one’s 2021 Christmas list.)…