Cats

Cats as a class are noted for the way they can relax. Even in movement their body and limbs seem free of muscular tension, except at the moment of leaping or making one of their occasional rushes, for safety or to pounce on prey. The lion typifies this ability to relax and at no time is it seen to better advantage than in the siesta.

When not actually hunting lions are the personification of idleness, indolence and lethargy. They doze away the hot tropical days, crouched on the ground with the front paws out in front, or lying luxuriously on their sides or backs. To move from one place to another, a mere few feet away, a lion or lioness will rise lazily onto its feet, slowly walk over the ground in a manner which suggests that at any moment it may collapse, and then sinks gracefully to the ground as if it had no bones in its body.

The favourite place for dozing is in the shade of a tree, but even the ground beneath it may heat up. So we see the King of Beasts seeking a cooler resting place in the branches of a tree, in the sweltering afternoons. The lionesses and the young males will crawl well up the tree and out onto the thick branches. The adult males, being heavier, must settle themselves on the lower limbs, if they climb at all. Once in the trees they stretch their bodies along the branches, perhaps with hind-legs straddling the branch and the fore-legs strategically placed over side branches, to preserve balance. Then they fall into a doze. Their eyelids all but close and their whole body and limbs sag over the branches, a picture of delicious, relaxed dozing, until evening comes and, lethargy gone, they descend to the ground for hunting.

WHEN A CAT UNCURLS

The domestic cat is renowned for seeking out the warm places to sleep. A hot-water pipe under the floorboards may be a favourite place, perhaps on a landing where everyone who comes that way must step over the sleeping beauty. Or it may be on a hearth-rug before a fire, or on a stone wall in a garden in summer. There pussy sleeps, coiled up or luxuriously stretched, changing position from time to time. This change of position, one would have thought, was a matter of easing the muscles or shifting the weight of the body for greater comfort. According to one piece of research, however, it is entirely a matter of temperature. A little over ten years ago, a German scientist made observations on 392 occasions during the course of a year of the way his young cat slept. He noted the cat's sleeping posture and at the same time he took a temperature reading of the surrounding air. When he tabulated these he found that as the temperature rose so the sleeping posture of the cat varied. At the lowest temperatures the cat was curled in what the scientist called a full circle. This hardly needs further explanation. It is a position with we are all fully familiar, when the body forms nearly a full circle with the head and paws in the middle and the tail wrapped round them.

As the temperature rose, by about 1°C for each change of position, the full-circle gave way to the three-quarter circle, the half-circle, fully stretched out and then, what the scientist called the flat curve. The last two come somewhat as a surprise. One would have expected the half-circle to be succeeded by the flat curve, with the fully stretched out as the ultimate. However, there seems to be no doubt about it because this was the sequence recorded in spring, summer and autumn, although in winter the flat curve and the stretched out postures occurred at the same temperature, with the flat curve twice as often. Often a cat will lie partly or wholly on its back, instead of on its side, except in the fully curled position, but will do so at the same temperature. Thus, if the temperature inducing the stretched out position is 18.6°C, the cat may either stretch out on its flank, or partly on its flank (half-rolling) or on its back. Another unexpected result was that the cat being observed chose slightly cooler places in spring, even in a house that was centrally heated, where it could have found warmer spots. Moreover, in summer it took extra warmth to induce the half-circle position than at other times of the year. Consequently, the half-circle indicated an air temperature of 18.1°C in spring, 18.4°C in autumn and 18.5°C in winter, while in summer it needed an air temperature of 19.2°C.

There were many other considerations which only a specialist would be interested in, such as the humidity of the air, the depth of the sleep, the age of the cat and so on. All. these tend to alter the posture slightly. Nevertheless, there was in general a consistent change in position of the cat being studied from the full circle to the flat curve as the temperature rose. It may be that a cat. with very long fur or a cat moulting its fur, might show the changes at different temperatures. The important point is that cats do change the position in which they sleep as the temperature rises, and these changes show an orderly sequence from the full circle to the flat curve.