cats

Harmon Seaver hseaver at cybershamanix.com
Tue Sep 9 20:04:14 PDT 2003


On Tue, Sep 09, 2003 at 12:40:57PM -0700, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
> At 08:12 AM 9/9/03 -0500, Harmon Seaver wrote:
> >On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 11:15:31AM -0700, Tim May wrote:
> >> "Dogs can't conceive of a group of cats without an alpha cat."
> --David
> >> Honig, on the Cypherpunks list, 2001-11
> >
> >
> >   Cats always have an alpha cat. And they often have pissing contests
> to
> >determine the pecking order. This is just as true of house cats as it
> is of
> >lions.
> 
> First, many cats (e.g., mountain lions) do not form social groups beyond
> 
> the mother raising the cubs.  Female African lions reportedly do hang
> out together.
> 
> Second, if you examine the context of the original post, the statement
> was a metaphor about leaderless ("anarchic") assemblies such
> as this list.  In particular, the Feds (dogs) haven't historically
> understood
> that this list is the equivalent of a grad lounge or spontaneous beach
> party:
> there are multiple conversations, no one is moderating or otherwise
> choreographing
> squat.

   Yes, I'm well aware of what it's trying to say, but it's really a very poor
analogy based on a faulty premise. 

>  When cats encounter each other by chance, they may assert
> dominance,

   Not "may" -- they always do, just as dogs do. And not just in first meetings,
it continues virtually forever, including sometimes all-out fighting, but
sometimes too subtle for most humans to even be aware of. 

> (linguistic pissing contests are not unheard of here :-)
> but their lives are not structured around following, or smelling the
> higher-up's ass.
> 

    We have three or four distinct groups of cats living here that we feed. Two
in the house, two in the garage/greenhouse who once lived in the house but could
not resolve the dominance issue between one male in the house and one alpha
female now in the greenhouse. Then there are the more or less permanent two
females that live on and under the front porch, who also have serious unresolved
issues with the Mama Fritz of the greenhouse (who does get outside during the
day). Dominance also goes down the line, watching the 3 young offspring of one
of the porch ladies makes that pretty clear, one of those bosses the other two,
but all are subservient to the two older females, and their mother, Shy, clearly
bosses Bobbette, the other older female. Neither of them take crap from Mama
Fritzi, in fact one day I watched Bobbette whup Mama's butt, but that hasn't
deterred Mama one iota.
    And then we have the feral toms who come to the permanent bin feeder on the
porch as well, who have their own inter-relationships. 
    If you read any texts on cat behavior, you'll find dominance a well studied
attribute. Most say there is *always* an alpha cat, even if it isn't apparent to
the casual observer.


-- 
Harmon Seaver	
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com





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