Free Catwatching by Desmond Morris Page A

do cats present freshly caught prey to their human owners?
     
    They do this because they consider their owners such hopeless hunters.
    Although usually they look upon humans as pseudo-parents, on these occasions they view them as their family – in other words, their kittens. If kittens do not know how to catch and eat mice and small birds, then the cat must demonstrate to them. This is why the cats that most commonly bring home prey and offer such gifts to their owners are neutered females. They are unable to perform this action for their own litters, so they redirect it towards human companions.
    The humans honoured in this way frequently recoil in horror or anger, especially if the small rodent or bird is still half-alive and struggling. The cat is totally nonplussed by this extraordinary response. If it is scolded for its generous act, it once again finds its human friends incomprehensible. The correct reaction would be to praise the cat for its maternal generosity, take the prey from it with many compliments and strokings and then quietly dispose of it.
    Under natural conditions a cat which has a litter of kittens introduces them to prey animals little by little. When they are about seven weeks old, instead of killing and eating her prey where she catches it, she kills it and then brings it back to where the kittens are kept. There she proceeds to eat it while they watch. The next phase involves bringing the dead prey back and playing with it before consuming it, so that the kittens can see her beating it with her claws and grabbing it.
    The third phase involves leaving the prey to be eaten by the kittens themselves. But she is still not prepared to risk bringing a live or even a half-dead prey to the kittens, because it could easily bite them or attack them if they are unwary. Only when they are a little older will she do this, and then she herself will make the kill in front of the kittens. They watch and learn. Eventually they will accompany her on the hunt and try killing for themselves.
     

Why do cats eat grass?
     
    Most cat-owners have observed the way in which, once in a while, their pet goes up to a long grass stem in the garden and starts to chew and bite at it. Cats living in apartments where there are no gardens in which to roam have been known to cause considerable damage to house plants in desperate attempts to find a substitute for grasses. In rare cases such cats have even harmed themselves by biting into plants that are poisonous.
    Many cat experts have puzzled over this behaviour and some have admitted frankly that they have no answer. Others have offered a variety of explanations. For many years the favourite reply was that the cats use grass as a laxative to help them pass troublesome hairballs lodged in their intestines. A related suggestion claimed that they were eating grass to make themselves vomit up the hairballs.
    This was based on the observation that cats do sometimes vomit after eating grass, but it overlooked the possibility that whatever made the cats feel sick also made them want to eat grass, rather than that the grass-eating actually caused the vomiting.
    A less popular explanation was that the grass aided the cats in the case of throat inflammation, or irritation of the stomach. Some authorities simply dismissed the activity as a way of adding roughage to the diet.
    None of these explanations makes much sense. The amount of grass actually eaten is very small. Watching the cats chewing at long grasses, one gets the impression that they are merely taking in a little juice from the leaves and stems, rather than adding any appreciable solid bulk to their diet.
    The most recent opinion and the most likely explanation is that cats chew grass to obtain minute quantities of a chemical substance that they cannot obtain from a meat diet and which is essential to their health.
    The substance in question is a vitamin called folic acid, and it is vital to cats because it plays an important role