Cats are unique pets. Everyone knows that these animals express their affection very reservedly towards their owners. However, breeders and experienced cat owners who have experienced the birth of kittens often describe cats separated from their babies as feeling restless and even sad. So, does a cat really miss her kittens, or do we attribute purely human feelings to our pet?
Mother cats: healthy instincts
But does a cat remember her kittens all her life? A positive answer will be given only by those who unreasonably reward animals with human feelings and emotions. Of course, the vast majority of cats are wonderful mothers who devote all their strength to caring for their babies, and often risk their lives to save their offspring from danger. But, alas, at these moments the murkas are guided only by instinct and nothing else.
And the same instinct tells the cat that kittens need her care not throughout their lives, but only for a few months. It is believed that by 12 weeks a good mother will give the kitten everything it needs - both a sufficient amount of her healthy milk and skills that will be useful in life. From this age, the kitten can live independently in a new family.
Who are we to our cats?
We consider mustachioed animals to be members of the family, but, alas, they do not share our family feelings. For a cat, a gentle “mummy” is just a giant, but not hostile cat, with whom you have to share territory.
No matter how much we pamper our pets, they still remain not completely tamed. Anthrozoologist John Bradshaw, author of The Secret Life of Cats on BBC Two , argues that cats (even the most purebred ones!) are much closer to their wild ancestors than dogs, and are not so attached to humans.
Their emphasized independence is explained quite simply: a person has never particularly strived to achieve mutual understanding with a cat. All that was required of her was to protect the house from mice and rats, and for this she was allowed to lie by the fire. It didn’t even occur to people to feed cats on purpose - why, after all, they get their own food!
So there is nothing strange in the fact that they do not feel sincere affection for us. Despite the fact that cats have lived side by side with us since time immemorial, they still walk on their own.
Cats and adult kittens: rivals?
If there is no need for separation, the cat continues to live with the children until they are six months old. The mother cat ceases to perceive a sexually mature individual as her child. Yesterday's kitten becomes a rival - an unnecessary contender for territory and food, and during the period of sexual heat - a potential partner, because cats are unknown to the norms of human morality.
Of course, cats do not always quarrel with their former kittens: often in homes, especially among professional breeders, representatives of several generations of the cat family coexist quite peacefully. Do cats remember their kittens in this case, do they sense related blood? Of course not. The guarantors of peace and harmony in this case are a well-fed life, good care and a sufficient amount of master's love.
Will an older cat recognize its mother and brothers and sisters after they were separated in childhood?
Most likely he will find out. Cats generally have excellent memory by the standards of predators, worse than dogs, but still (Note 11/18/16: By the way, I recently learned that cats have better than dogs - so...). Cats manage to remember people by smell, what can we say about their relatives?
Read more about domestic cats. From the fact that a cat-daughter and a cat-mother can be in chronic conflict relationships, and a cat-son can regularly mate with both his mother and even his great-grandmother, it does not follow that all the animals described above are not aware of their relationship.
Firstly, when a kitten grows up, the mother cat, in principle, ceases to have maternal feelings for him. She is going into heat and is planning a new litter of kittens. The cat-daughter becomes a direct competitor, the cat-son becomes low-ranking and potentially weak, and also a relative (i.e., by default, a less attractive partner), and the mother tries to drive the offspring away from her, no matter what gets in the way. But if it suddenly turns out that there is only one male, albeit a relative, and there is enough territory and food for several females, and the daughter and mother themselves managed to become friends and, in principle, the animals are not conflicting, then they can all exist together.
But cats living in colonies are usually grouped together based on the principle of kinship - usually all more or less adult males in the colony are descendants of local females, there are just so many young people and they are so “harmless” that they don’t have time to drive them all out. Foreign males trying to mark the territory belonging to the “colonists” are usually driven away. Perhaps it is also due to the specific smell of the marks, which is similar to close relatives and does not cause rejection.
With very limited food sources and territory, the oldest and strongest females actually control everything. Younger females usually “attack” to their mothers, as do low-ranking weak males, who may not be allowed to breed anyway. But strong males from outside visit and mate with local females, sometimes also beating local weak cats and killing other people’s kittens.
Now about incest, or rather, inbreeding - I don’t think that for cats this moral problem, in general, is as acute as for people. A cat can give birth to several dozen kittens during her life, most of which will die without leaving offspring. Why is incest dangerous for people? Humans have a different reproductive strategy. Each human child is 9 months and a huge amount of resources, not to mention the risk for the mother. A negative mutation enshrined in the genes of a sibling/child and mother will most likely be passed on to the child, and so on, until all children are born with the defect. And they will nurse each child, spend energy on him, and then take him and die, or suddenly it turns out that he can no longer give birth to a healthy one, even from someone else’s. It's different for cats. Weak kittens will die anyway, and the cat will give birth to others instead. At the same time, mating with a strong relative will make it possible, with a high degree of probability, to give birth to kittens in whose genes strong traits are enshrined, as well as her “own” smell. Of course, it’s not as cool as offspring from a stranger, but without fish it’ll do just fine. So I think there is simply no evolutionary need for cats to develop a strict instinctive prohibition against inbreeding. But in normal life the principle “a son is still weaker than a stranger” and “a young alien female is more accessible than a mother” works.
Those. As a result, we return to an important ethological principle that animal lovers always forget about - one cannot transfer the peculiarities of human perception and human values to animals.
But everything is for the better...
However, nature, as always, arranged everything in the best possible way. Imagine what it would be like for the unfortunate kitty who remembered and loved all the kittens she ever gave birth to? After all, the official cat-mother (heroine named Dusty) gave birth to more than 400 babies! Yes, her heart would burst from worries and worries.
And this is how cats love us most and remember us, their owners, best of all. It’s easier for cats and, whatever one may say, it’s nice for us!
Svetlana Mosolova
But do they even know what their names are?
But of course! Researchers at the University of Tokyo found that cats react to their name more actively than to other sounds of the human voice: they move their ears or tails, turn their heads, sometimes even “respond” by meowing. However, there is an important nuance: this only happens if the cat’s name is pronounced by the owner. Or rather, “he-who-gives-food.”
Most likely, this sound vibration is associated for them with the expectation of pleasure. If you have several cats, you've probably noticed: as soon as you call one, they all come running. Or none. Because they don't want to. In fact, cats remember commands no worse than dogs, it’s just not beneficial for them to show their owners that they have learned something.
When the owners are remembered...
There are also very exceptional cases. In one family, during a divorce, the cat stayed with the man, and the woman and children moved to another apartment, half an hour’s drive from their previous home. Some time later the owner died.
Imagine the surprise of the first owner when, a few weeks after the death of her ex-husband, she found a pet at her door. In this case, the cat found the people, not the house. Of course, the question of whether cats remember their owners is not worth it in this case.
Quite often, cats do not find their way home, but return because they remember the people who cared for them. One silly girl ran away in the yard, frightened by a passing car. Several months of active search yielded no results - the owners despaired of finding their favorite. But one day the cat itself saw its owner at a bus stop several blocks from the house and rushed to her with loud screams.
Another timid pussy escaped from the owner's hands in someone else's entrance and seemed to disappear into thin air - it was not possible to catch it. But when, a month and a half later, her owners came to visit this house again, she, hearing her family’s voices, ran out of the basement to meet her “relatives.”
Out of sight, out of mind?
But it also happens differently. It seems that the cat was kindly treated by the person and even felt sad for him at first, but years later he pretends that he doesn’t know him. “Pulking!” - people think, attributing human feelings to a cat.
In fact, over the past time, another owner has taken on the role of breadwinner, drinker and protector, and the animal’s memory has erased unnecessary information about what happened before. The returning cat will take him back to his place - and after a while he will get used to him again.
Let’s make a reservation once again - these rules apply to most cats, but each case is individual. In general, when getting an animal, you need to understand the full extent of the responsibility that you take on, and try to avoid situations that can result in enormous stress for both of you. As they say, don’t part with your loved ones!
Svetlana Mosolova
Cats are mysterious creatures. If everything is clear about their internal structure, then such an abstract concept as memory raises many questions among people. Do they have such a property? What kind of memory do cats have? How does it work? How many days, months or years is it designed for? How many events and people can a cat remember? Can she forget her home and owner after a long separation?
Stories about a cat's memory
There are many stories about the incredible capabilities of a cat's memory. Here are just two of them:
- A cat named Karim lived in Uzbekistan. When he was already 9 years old, his owner’s family decided to move to Russia. The long journey might have been beyond the strength of the middle-aged animal, and it was decided to leave it in Gulistan. However, Karim did not want to part with his loved ones. After 20 months, having covered 3 thousand km, he found his owner Ravilya at the market in Liski, Voronezh region.
- A 13-year-old ginger cat, picked up in a parking lot, was taken to an American veterinary clinic with kidney failure. He was treated and left in the facility. Three years later, a man and a girl—father and daughter—came into the same clinic and were struck by the resemblance of the saffron milk cap to their cat Tuffo, who had disappeared during the move. Seeing the people, the mustachioed old man jumped over the table separating them. The man, to make sure that it was really Tuffo, brought his second pet to the clinic, with whom the missing cat was familiar. After a joyful meeting, Tuffo was taken back to his family.
The fact that cats have both short-term and long-term memory is evidenced by the very existence of Yuri Kuklachev’s Cat Theater. Mustachioed performers have been delighting audiences for years with tricks they couldn't learn if they didn't have the ability to memorize.
Who is calling?
By the way, many people use the ability of cats to recognize a familiar voice to maintain a connection with their pet at a distance.
Calling from afar, they ask you to put the phone receiver to the cat's ear and say various endearments to your pet. Many cats clearly understand who is talking to them, listen, rub against the phone and meow in response. And some even run to the phone for every call.
“Time is evil for my memory...”
The first is, of course, time. The shorter the separation, the greater the chances for a cat and a person to remain “family.” Of course, a cat will not forget its owner in a week or two, if before that it lived with him under the same roof for a long time in love and harmony.
And, although there are unique people who, in a completely human way, yearn for their suddenly missing two-legged friend, look for him and call him, such a separation will not cause serious damage to the cat’s health. If, of course, the cat is left in good hands.
Does the cat remember what happened to it many years ago?
Cat old age: what to change in the conditions of detention
Cats are very good at remembering past events if they aroused strong emotions in them. For example, a cat that was thrown into the bushes by its ruthless owners right in its carrier will be terribly afraid of carriers and all closed spaces all its life, because it received truly unforgettable emotions during its stay in it.
There is also the so-called memory of ancestors, when a cat, no matter how domesticated it is, will always hunt birds and mice that come into its field of vision. This is due to the special instinct of the hunter, which is inherent in every cat by nature and is unlikely to ever be eradicated.
Duration of information storage
Experiments with cats and other animals made it possible to identify 2 types of memory in them:
Short-term. This mental function allows you to perceive any events, but retains information for only a short time (no more than 27 seconds). If the event is not repeated, then the “record” loses its relevance and is erased under the influence of a new piece of information - this is how the brain protects itself from overload and “cleanses itself.”
Long-term. The long-term “imprint” of events is very selective, but resistant to influences that destroy short-term memory
This mechanism records a single phenomenon or incident that is of increased importance for an individual and stores it for a long time. This is why long-term memory in animals is called “specialized memory.”
