From the vantage point of our garden patio each summer night, we watch a half dozen or so domestic cats, some feral, some with collars, slowly patrol our alley just off Fourteenth Street in northwest Washington, DC. Some walk by a few minutes apart. Now and then, two will stroll by together. Many usually pause briefly at the gate and check if we are sitting out or not. Our garden pond with its goldfish and our garden birds are a big attraction when we are not around. We have been fascinated with cats, watching them for our professional careers and even before that, but we are reminded each evening of Niko Tinbergen’s lament in The Herring Gull’s World: “Even an hour’s careful observation of the goings-on in a gullery faces one with a great number of problems—more problems, as a matter of fact, than one could hope to solve in a lifetime” (Tinbergen 1970, xiv). So it is with cats.
People love cats, or respect them, or loathe them, or are terrified of them, depending on cat and circumstance. Cats have been used as a model biological system to help us better understand disease, morphology, physiology, and behavior in various other species. We have studied cats’ neuro-function to better understand how animals perceive the world. Biologists have teased apart the social lives of cats to help us better understand complex cooperative and competitive strategies. How the presence or absence of different wild cat species alters the composition of local ecological communities and the patterns of biological diversity across broad geographical ranges is the focus of a growing number of biological reports. We are learning how human-caused stresses on ecological communities result in the decline of populations of most species of wild cats. We sense that, as a result of this scientific activity, the awe, fear, and mystery that once surrounded wild cats are rapidly being replaced with appreciation. Our e-mail indicates that people have increasing numbers of questions about cats in general and about living with cats. We wrote this book to enable people to look at cats more closely, ask questions, and find accurate answers to their questions so that they can better enjoy and appreciate cats.
This book is arranged like the others in the Smithsonian Answer Book series. We start with “Cat Facts,” a chapter that answers questions about cat biology, physical features, senses, diet and predation, social behavior, and cat life. Chapter 2, “Cat Evolution and Diversity,” discusses the origin of cats, cat evolution, the diversity in cats, including descriptions of all the cat lineages and of all 40 species, and an explanation of how more than one wild cat species can live in a particular area. Chapter 3, “Cats and Humans,” answers questions about the decline and recovery of wild cat populations, the domestication of cats and their various relationships with humans, cats and human culture, cat attacks on humans, and cats and science. Appendix 1 provides common and scientific names of the cat species, appendix 2 outlines information on the conservation status of wild cat populations, and appendix 3 lists some Web sites that offer more information about cats. The references include both general works on cats and specialized scientific references on individual topics. Art Wolfe’s spectacular photographs bring even the rarest cats up close. Please note that wherever “John” is mentioned in the book, this refers to John Seidensticker, one of the two coauthors.