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Cats

Friday Catblogging: Calicos

Mary Johnson lists 5 fun facts about calico cats you should know: Cats come in a variety of colors and coat patterns, ranging from solid white to jet black and everything in between. For a cat to be considered a calico, three different colors must be present in her coat: black, red, and white. Tortoiseshell cats,…

Friday Catblogging: A Computer-Animated Cat from 1968

Over at BoingBoing, one reads that “Kitty” is an early realistic computer animation from 1968: Kitty is an early computer animation, created by a group of Soviet physicists and mathematicians in 1968. It was made on a BESM-4 computer. The computer used alphabetical characters (similar to ASCII art) to make the images, transferred the resulting…

Friday Catblogging: Cats’ Spooky Eyes

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…

Friday Catblogging: Cats Have Attachment Styles

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,…