Henrietta Hay's Column

I have a friend who is famous in the feline world of Grand Junction. Every cat in town knows that if all else fails, it can find free board and room with her. Twenty years of being owned by my wonderful Siamese, Tiggy, made me a cat person, but I am not in her class.

Her current number one cat is a large yellow tom named Rambo. He was running the household quite efficiently when a big gray male moved into the neighborhood and right into Rambo's house without so much as an invitation. Even though both were neutered, two males who didn't like each other were a bit much for my friend, so she talked her neighbor into adopting Gray. But since both houses have cat doors allowing free access to all small four legged creatures, Gray chooses to divide his time between them. One day a pair of very wild little female kittens showed up, one black and sleek and one brindle and spiky. They were obviously hungry, but not about to be touched by human hands. In fact, if their hostess gets within six feet of them they say, "Beam me up, Scotty," and disappear into thin air. Gray saw the problem and assumed responsibility; he adopted them.

Now he shows up at any hour of the day or night with his two kids in tow, goes in through the cat door and requests food for all of them. The request is, of course, granted, and the kittens' food is put outside. Gray, however, considers himself a part of the family and continues to mooch inside. My friend now has one and a half indoor cats and two outdoor cats, all of which think she is Santa Claus.

Cats understand important stuff, like where to go when the mouse supply dries up and who has cat doors. They are smart animals. As Jeff Valdez commented, "Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through the snow."

But it's more than smarts. They communicate with each other. They have a network. Roger Caras, who has written several "must" books for cat fanciers says in "A cat is watching," "Certain assumptions have to be made when you are dealing with anything as arcane as a cat. The simplest is that a cat has an array of sensors and systems...There is not one whit of logic in assuming there can exist only one sense beyond the five we generally acknowledge. For all we know there can be thirty-six or more." Maybe it is the 27th sense that tells them where the safe house is.

Whether they teach humans, or humans teach them is not known. During the depression there were lots of drifters whom we called hoboes. They had no job, no home and often no food. I was told that they marked houses where they had gotten hand-outs so that those who followed would know where to stop. They left a signature, a line drawing of a smiling cat. It meant, "Kind lady lives here."

I like to think that cats have a system like that. Do they use the same imagery we use? Do they draw a picture of a smiling human? Maybe they scratch a sign, or spray a little, or dig a certain kind of hole. Or maybe it is ESP.

But however graciously it may be offered, cats accept hospitality strictly on their own terms. Another friend who is listed in the Cat Directory has Mama Kitty, who is semi-wild, and two kittens who were born under the woodpile. When it got cold the little family accepted her invitation to use her house for eating and keeping warm and sleeping in a bundle in a favorite chair, but they are a completely autonomous family. They allow themselves to be petted, but not held. There is an invisible sign over their chair that says, "Watch it - we're cats, not people."

For all their imperious independence, cats have a sense of humor, too. You can turn a cat loose in a room with seven cat lovers and one cat hater, and the furry feline will go straight to the cat hater and with a wicked gleam in its eye, climb on the unwilling lap and start to purr. Maybe that sound is really a cat saying "Gotcha."

But when it comes to the really important things of life, like food and shelter, cats knows how to pick the right house. They consult the local Cat Directory and know exactly where to go.