It's A Hard Life
I was marvelling again at the weekend about what a hard life cats have (especially mine), but more on the theory of learned response over genetic or limbic memory. Consider my cat:
He has never, in his whole life, lived in a house with a real fire. He has never, to the best of my knowledge, even seen a real fire. We have a hearth, yes, but it has a (rather nice) electric fire in it that has never been turned on, so he has never even experienced a hearth that radiates heat.
Yet still, he stretches out in front of it at every opportunity, looking like he's blissfully toasting his belly. Have we as a species had cats around now for so long that the memory of fires and comfy fireplaces are recognised by them by instinct?
He has never, in his whole life, lived in a house with a real fire. He has never, to the best of my knowledge, even seen a real fire. We have a hearth, yes, but it has a (rather nice) electric fire in it that has never been turned on, so he has never even experienced a hearth that radiates heat.
Yet still, he stretches out in front of it at every opportunity, looking like he's blissfully toasting his belly. Have we as a species had cats around now for so long that the memory of fires and comfy fireplaces are recognised by them by instinct?
posted by Catherine at 08:42
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