25 More Facts About House Cats

By B. J. Deming

How did cats evolve? It's a long and complicated story, but house cats are the purrfect way to get started. This book explores some of their history with us and looks at interesting facts about moggies as well as some a few fancy breeds. It is the companion volume to "25 Facts About House Cats."

• Language: English
• Publisher: B. J. Deming
• Release date: Feb 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393600039

B. J. Deming

Barb is a layperson, retired from medical transcription after twenty-five years, and enjoying a new chance to explore earth science thanks to the Internet and (finally) some free time.  She has been blogging at FlightToWonder.com for years, tweets at Twitter.com/@bjdeming, and is hoping to make this science writing gig full-time in 2021.

Book preview

Forward

This is the second volume of what was originally planned to be a single book containing fifty short nonfiction essays about house cats.

As mentioned in Volume 1, after retirement I set out to write a general-interest book on cat evolution using a 50 Facts About . . . format. 

After finding out more about cat evolution, an eBook series seemed like a better approach, and I decided to start with the domestic cat, both because that's the most familiar cat to us all and also because I'm new to such writing.

I didn't know back then that Fluffy is the most complex of all cats, for it has walked with us down through ten millennia. 

Because of that, it took years for me to grasp even basic facts about domestic cats.   Finally the book has been completed (though it had to be split in two to make things easier for the reader). 

Twenty-five or fifty, I hope you enjoy reading these facts about an amazing feline as much as I have enjoyed looking them up and writing about them.

Corvallis, Oregon

January 2019/February 2021

Fact #1:  Domestic cats can't live on dog food.

Anne Worner, CC BY-SA 2.0

The pet food aisle is one of the most challenging places in the store for cat and dog owners alike.

Decisions must be made.  Conflicting claims must be weighed.  Ads must be evaluated despite their annoying exploitation of a very human need to share our love with Fluffy and Fido through food.

Cost matters, too, but first and foremost is our desire to do the right thing by our beloved companion.

Dog owners get a small break—Fido can eat almost anything.  But Fluffy has some unique nutritional needs.

What's the difference?

Short answer:  Cats are hypercarnivores, while dogs (omnivores) eat a variety of foods.  The need for meat affects feline body processes in special ways that cat food makers take into account with their recipes.

Details:  There's no single way to earn a living in the wild.  Herbivores eat plants.  Carnivores eat herbivores.  Omnivores eat both plants and plant-eaters.

A mostly meat diet (70% or more) has some advantages:

The type of food doesn't change.  As vegetation adapts to climate fluctuations over geologic time, herbivores must come up with new specializations while hypercarnivores always have flesh to eat.

Meat is a high-energy food and easier to digest than plants are.

Certain vital nutrients that the body makes are already present in prey; predators get those with meals, saving their own metabolism some steps.

There are also tradeoffs.  For instance, hypercarnivores tend to go extinct more often than other predators. 

Why?  Paleontologists would love to know.

Anyway, various groups have evolved different feeding styles.  Dogs and people are omnivores—we enjoy meat but also need nutrients from vegetables, fruits, and cereals.

Cats went with hypercarnivory.  And, unless you're the prey, there's nothing wrong with that.  Nature has many niches for predators that specialize in meat.

But such dependence on animal protein has affected feline body processes.

Overall, cats use food in the same ways as dogs and people—for fuel, to grow, and to replace tissues as these wear out. 

And just like us, their need for protein, fat, and carbohydrates varies with age, body size, activity levels, and the environment they live in.

However, cats have evolved some interesting quirks.

For instance, Fluffy—a descendant of the African wildcat—gets most of its water from prey animals. 

Exploiting the fact that the body is mostly water was a good evolutionary move for steppe wildcats living on semi-arid plains.

Prey animals don't contain many carbohydrates, though.  And cats need glucose—it's brain food and also an excellent source of energy for the body.

So, according to Eisert (see source list at chapter's end), instead of developing a taste for high-carbohydrate foods, like we and Fido's ancestors did, cats evolved a metabolic pathway that can convert protein into glucose!

Cats can also make the vitamin C needed to keep skin, coat, and gums healthy.  If people could do that, sailors wouldn't have suffered from scurvy during the Age of Sail.

However, there are always tradeoffs.  Cats no longer manufacture an amino acid derivative called taurine, which is necessary for eyesight.  Dog food doesn't contain this, and house cats fed on dog food have gone blind as a result.

Vitamin A, niacin, and an essential fatty acid are some other examples of nutrients that cats rely on their prey for and that can't be supplied properly with dog food.

What food is good for house cats?

Short answer:  All three forms of AAFCO-compliant commercial cat food—canned, semi-moist, and dry—provide good nutrition.  You also can make cat food at home, but this takes time, research, and the purchase of certain supplements. 

Details:  Everyone tells us to read the label, but did you know that this involves a lot more than what's on the food package?

By law, label also means brochures, store marketing materials, and all other information about the cat food, including what's on the manufacturer's website!

A variety of laws govern pet food labeling, but the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) sets the de facto standards followed by lawmakers in the US and many other countries. 

To make decisions in the pet food aisle a little easier, look for AAFCO on the label.  Before shopping, you can also check out their website  to hone your skills and poke around there for more information.

Snacks and treats aren't covered by the AAFCO's nutritional adequacy guidelines, but the three main types of commercial cat food are. 

These include:

Canned cat food.  With a roughly 75% moisture content, canned food also meets Fluffy's daily water requirement (it's still a good idea to keep that water bowl filled).  Serve it at room temperature, not straight from the fridge.  Cats like their food at prey body temps (from the upper 70s to around 104 degrees Fahrenheit, or 25 to 40 degrees Celsius).  Plan for two helpings a day, since canned food only stays fresh in the bowl for about 12 hours.

Semi-moist cat food.  This has less than half the amount of water that's in canned food.  While more nutritious than dry food, it may need to be supplemented with canned or fresh food, especially for kittens.

Dry cat food.  The big advantages here are lower price and the exercise that kibbles give to a cat's teeth and gums, which could cut down on dental plaque formation.  Dry food also keeps well in the bowl, so you can serve a whole day's portion at once.  However, it only has about 10% water content.  Fluffy will need to get at least 7 ounces of water (207 mL) from some other source.  This is important—if cats don’t get at least that much water daily, they're at high risk of ureteral stones and related problems that are difficult to treat and could be fatal.

Some owners skip the store completely and make cat food at home.  But this is not as simple as it sounds.

For one thing, there aren't very many cat food recipe books.  And you will need a recipe because cats get their nutrition from the prey's entire body, including the bones and offal.

House cats get sick if fed just meat.  Other nutrients are needed, and some of these must be given as supplements.

The general idea is duplicate the nutritional status of a mouse, but even the experts disagree about exactly what that requires.  Fluffy's food requirements are that complex!

Internet information doesn't make the cut; if making cat food at home interests you, talk it over with a veterinarian and get some other reliable information sources, too.

Then invest some time in getting the right materials, and in learning how to process raw meat and handle fresh pet food safely.

Whether you carefully wend your way down the pet food aisle or stay home and make your own, it's a lot of work.

But feeding pets the right food is a wonderful way to show them our love.  It also helps them live longer, happier lives. 

And that's everyone's ultimate goal.

Sources:

American Association of Feed Control Officials.  n. d. https://www.aafco.org/Consumers  Last accessed December 31, 2018.

Carter, N.  2017.  What do I need to know to make my own cat food?  https://www.latimes.com/style/pets/la-hm-pets-cat-food-20170923-htmlstory.html Last accessed December 31, 2018.

Eisert, R.  2011.  Hypercarnivory and the brain: protein requirements of cats reconsidered.  Journal of Comparative Physiology B, 181: 1-17.

Holliday, J. A., and Steppan, S. J.  2004.  Evolution of hypercarnivory:  the effect of specialization on morphological and taxonomic diversity.  Paleobiology, 30(1): 108-128.

Van Valkenburgh, B.  2007.  Déjà vu: the evolution of feeding morphologies in the Carnivora.  Integrative and Comparative Biology, 47 (1): 147-163.

Wright, M., and Walters, S.  1980.  The Book of the Cat.  New York: Summit Books.

Fact #2.  For over half a century, German Longhairs had breed standards but no cats

Margarete1959 at Pixabay, Public domain

Few breeds show the complex human side of the cat fancy more clearly than the longhaired cat of Germany, whether you choose to call it a German Angora, European Longhair, Traditional Longhair, Original Longhair, or its official registry name—the Deutsch Langhaar.

For convenience, let's just call it a German Longhair.

What's a German Longhair?

Short answer:  A large, friendly pedigreed European house cat with beautiful high-boned cheeks and long fur that often forms a natural part on its back.  Its history goes back centuries and was complicated by war and political turmoil during the 20th century.  The breed standard was first set in the late 1920s and has survived into the 21st century, although German Longhairs themselves apparently disappeared for a while during World War II.

Details:  The early history of German Longhairs is tangled up with that of Angoras and Persians.  All three arose from the first longhaired cats, commonly called angoras (small-A), that were imported into Europe during the 1500s from the eastern Mediterranean.

Angora is an old name for Ankara, Turkey, which was an important center on the Silk Road trading network.  And Asia Minor is where the longhair mutation in cats is suspected to have first happened.

In Europe, these feline beauties were symbols of luxury and wealth.  For a very long time, aristocratic taste in cats was the only standard European angora breeders needed to follow.

What are known today as Persian cats also appeared around this time.

Their origin is unclear.  Some authorities say the breed is descended from a separate line of longhairs imported from Iran; others believe that Europeans developed Persians from angoras.

In any event, after hundreds of years of breeding, Angoras finally got their capital A as the cat fancy developed in the late 19th century.  Both they and Persians were very popular back then as separate breeds.

British nature illustrator Harrison Weir—the father of the cat fancy—set up a point system for judging all existing cat breeds (not just Persians and Angoras) in the 1880s. 

He drew a distinction between Persians and Angoras based on fur quality, calling it Fine, silky, and very soft in the Persian, with a slightly woolly texture in the Angora . . .

Sadly, it would soon become unnecessary to spell out differences between these two longhairs.  Many cat fanciers went wild over Persian cats, abandoning the Angora to near extinction.

The modern Turkish Angora fancy-breed comes from a few original Angoras that the Ankara Zoo has saved and protected.

German breeders didn't get into this Persian-cat mania.  As late as the 1920s, they still focused on angoras, classifying them by fur color and length just as Weir had done 40 years earlier. 

Meanwhile, British and French cat fanciers were intensively breeding the modern Persian cat (though without the flat face, which initially appeared as a mutation in the second half of the 20th century).

This is where a key person—Friedrich Schwangart, politically connected and a cat fancier—enters the German Longhair story.

Schwangart liked this new high-bred British Persian (except for what he called its stumpy face).

Schwangart considered angora cat breeding old-fashioned, and he was in a position to do something about it.

Born in Munich in the 1870s—the decade of the first London cat shows—Schwangart became a naturalist: getting an influential government position at age 28; joining the German Zoological Society the next year; and eventually becoming a full professor at Dresden in 1914. 

Along the way, he pioneered