Researchers strapped video cameras on cats and let them do their thing
sciencemag.org
sciencemag.org
I'm wondering if this is related to a TV show I saw tracking household cats in the UK. I can't remember if it was Derby or not. They did a lot of GPS tracking and showed that cats often 'share' territory by time-sharing; one cat's schedule tends not to overlap another's.
There were also TONS of instances of cats going into multiple homes for meals. Sometimes sneaking in the cat door and snacking while the residents were unaware.
One day it came up on our back deck at 11pm at night with a flee collar around its waist really tight. So my dad and Uncle cut it off and have it some left over meat from dinner.
We had a ladder leading against the house near the bathroom (about 4 feet away from the window) which only opens about 2 inches cos of the security latches. This cat went up the ladder and somehow crossed 4 feet of nothing to the window. Climbed in and got caught upside down in the blinds.
Mum said any cat that willing to stay can stay, BUT ITS NOT ALLOWED IN THE ROOM!! It sat at the door and howled and howled so mum said “ok it can stay in the room BUT ITS NOT ALLOWED ON THE BED!!!!”. It jumped on the bed, mum kicked it off, it jumped on, mum kicked it off... after 2 nights of this mum gave up and let it sleep on the bed.
Tiger stayed with us for the next 8 years till he passed. Was my first pet. He was an outdoor cat. But they are smart. If mum came home from work. He wouldn’t be seen till dinner time. But sometimes mum would have a bad day at work. She would get home. And only on the days she had a bad day, he would be home within minutes of mum getting home and he would bump her legs until she picked him up. Always made mum feel better. He knew when something was wrong.
But yeah, a cat sleeping near you or "ignoring" you means he likes you enough that he thinks he can afford to chill out in your presence. He really likes you if he takes over your bed to sleep in. The highest compliments a cat gives are often understated.
Not unlike humans.
STARE
DISPLACE
VOCALISATION (GROWL)
STRIKE
It was like watching Robocat vs. Tooncinator.
I think there's another explanation :they're studying gravity.
Either way it's about a guy who adopts a cat and then finds out, by attaching a camera, that the cat has other lives.
A: Cats are seen as relatively lazy, especially compared to dogs. But we saw that when they were outside, they became superalert. They scanned their surroundings, sometimes for a half-hour or more on end. And even though cats are highly territorial, they didn’t always fight with other cats they encountered. Often, they just sat a couple of meters away from each other for up to a half an hour. They may have been sizing each other up. Sometimes they would engage in a greeting, briefly touching noses.
When they were in their homes, the cats spent a lot of time following their humans around. They liked to be in the same room. A lot of my students were surprised at how attached cats were to people.
A friend once attached a servo to the collar of his appendage-friendly cat with a long carbon rod protruding in front of his cat's head carrying a small cat toy on the end.
The receiver and small battery pack hung from the collar bottom to keep things oriented. It only lasted for brief periods of amusement before the rig would get destroyed in the chaos, but in those short functional windows he could influence his cat's steering by radio control.
I don't think he ever figured out how to add a throttle control.
[1] http://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2019.04...
Unless the study was concerned with environmental impact, that's not something it should necessarily focus on.
For me, the best thing about this person's interview from TFA is their call for others to do the same. Just like me ubering to school or work is not science, the mass collection of data points yields opportunities for better studies down the road.