猫咪的秘密日记

And they all livedappily ever after.G'night, sweetie.In an ordinary houseon an ordinary street... Kyle, are you in bed?...there lived a cat.There's my kitty.You're so sweet.He had everythinga kitty could want...Feed the gerbils, honey? Yeah, Mom....affection, food, shelterand a family who thoughthe was the sweetest kittyin the whole wide world.But this isonly half the story.There is another sideto this contented kittyone his familyknows nothing about.Like his ancestors,he has the heart of a hunter. Well fed andshowered with affection, wildness still courses through his veins.He may look domesticated, but look again.This is a real life Jekylland Hyde.It is the paradox of the cat. There are more than100 million catsin the U.S. alone.What goes on intheir secret world?In the next hour you may learn more about catsthan you ever wanted to know. It's 8 p.m. Do you know where your kitty is? Magnificent,elusive and deadly,the cat family species boasts 38 species of feline ferocity including the diminutive,wild cat.Since prehistoric times,these cats have wandered Africa and Europe.The presumed ancestor ofour domestic cat,the wild cat mightlook like a tabby,but its canines and clawsare as lethalas those of any tiger.In its eyes,there's a haunting familiarity How did this ferociousfeline jump the wild trackand make its wayto our milk bowlsand our beds?Felis catusset out on the rocky roadto domestication more than 3,000 years ago.In ancient Egypt,this hunter extraordinairekept rodents from the granaries In return, he was worshipped as a symbol of life.But history would not always treat our feline friendso kindly.Believed to bethe devil's companion,more than a few were burned at the stakefor keeping wrong company. Luckily, the cat would soon fall into grace once again,for his hunting skills proved invaluable on the open seas.Cats kept the rat in check.Near the end of the road,perhaps the moststeadfast alliancewas forged between the farmerand his beloved barn cat.Now, what you got there?You are a good cat.lronically,the cat's very wildnesswas its ticket to domestication.There's extra milk foryou tonight.Now to complete the journey. ...eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen...ready or not here I come.What lay ahead was one ofthe most complexrelationships nature hasever knownthe remarkable bondbetween human and cat.We were drawn to a creaturewe could never fully tame.Wow! Hey guyslook what I found.We would overlooktheir wildnessand welcome theminto our lives.When the dust of the eonsfinally settled,we found ourselves inexorably linked to the cat.This extraordinary creaturehad found a permanent placein our hearts and our homes. Mama, Mama, Mama, Mom, Mama, look what I found.Can I keep him,please, please?At last, the cat managed to dethrone the dogas the most popular petin the Western world.In the U.S. alone, house cats have doubled in numberin just 20 years.C'mon, chin up.That a good boy.Cat-mania issweeping the country.These are piddle pantsfor cats.The Chaise lounges are a new add- on to our productsthat we're carrying.The Litter Maid Electric Self- Cleaning Litter Box.We probably spend about eight grand a year.$10, $20, or $30,000 a year, just on one cat. Yeah. Throughout the world,cat shows pay homageto our feline companionsin a fury of grooming, primping and keen competition. Through the carefulcoupling of cats,humans have created nearly 50 breeds of domesticated felines Though some might lookto the untrained eye like mistakes of nature...each coupling is carefully planned to make a winner.But a cat needn't be a winnerto be the object of affection. Well, it's Rush'sthird birthday.We have birthday cakes for us, so why shouldn't we havea birthday cake forour four-footed child?The Ross family has takenfeline adoration to new heights They're very much our family. Well, hi, Neut.Hey, Rush,here's some food coming.My husband spoils the cats. Of course, I don't.And so he always has the cats eating with us at the table. One more bite,but don't let it spoil you.You won't get the same thing tomorrow night.They like to have the food that we're eating.And they oftentimes will eat very peculiar things,things they would never eatif you wouldput it in their bowl.As you can see,our cats are very well fed.But well-fed catsstill do hunt.So we keep them inside.And our cats are never bored. Shirley May loves her cats. But even she knows,there can betoo much of a good thing. When I was a child,there was a family downthe street who had some cats. And they didn't havethem altered.And there were kittensborn all the time.Well, of course,I thought that was great, because I loved kittens. Super kittyflying through the air!There are more than10,000 human babies born in this country each day and more than twicethat many kittens.Sheltered and well-fed,cat numbers can soarif reproduction goes unchecked Cats are prolific.One female can have as many as 30 kittens a year.In just seven years,she and her offspringcould produce over300,000 kittens!Suddenly, sometimes,those kittens would disappear and nobody seemed tobe able to tell mewhere the kittens went.With such feline fertility, unwanted cats are a sad byproduct of our domestic bond This scene may bean echo from the past,but the tragedy is stillbeing played out today.Even now, hundreds of catsare abandoned each dayin the U.S. alone.What's to become ofa castaway?He is suddenly facedwith the struggleto survive in an alien world. But the cat holds a wild carda gift from his ancestors.He is one of the earth'smost adept hunters.Good news for the cat...but bad for the locals.There's one more predatoron the prowl.And when push comes to shove, he's not a picky eateranother keyto the cat's success.In the face of adversity,the cat often has the advantage Armed with sharp claws,he's not restricted toterra firma.The cat nearly always lands on his feet.This diminutive creature seems to defy the odds.With a flexible backbonelike a cheetah,the cat can run upto 30 miles per hour.His agile bodyis engineered for the chase. But at times,the best strategyis to seek shelter...and wait.For the tables will soon turn for felis catus.Night belongs to the cat.He is a creature designedwith night vision,whiskers to help navigate,a keen sense of smell,and earstuned to signals that mere humans could never perceive. The faintest squeakeven from a distanceallows him to pinpointhis prey...and launch his assault.Only the fortunate manage to escape this master predator. The cat is a marvel of engineering.His supple spine allows acrobatics of whichwe could only dream.His uncanny sense of balance almost always insures a safe landing.With persistenceand precision,the cat gets his mouse.This is a creaturedesigned to survive.He has landed in the most outlandish of placesand somehow managed to endure. Near the Antarctic, temperatures canplunge to 50 below.On a diet of seabirdsand the occasionalpenguin carcass,the cats of Macquarie lsland have persevered sincethey were dropped hereby sealers over a century ago. Half a world away,the volcanic Galapagos lslands offer little wateror prey to its immigrant cats. Though lean,the population persists. Abandoned cats are strugglingto survive throughoutthe world even in the U.S., where there are anestimated 50 million.Here in Miami, Florida, thousands of forsaken felines have landed in the middle ofa raging controversy.Though the dumping ofpets is prohibitedin Dade County parks,it's not uncommon tofind colonies of up to 75 abandoned cats.What are the consequencesof so many predators?Don Chingquina of theTropical Audubon Societyis concerned aboutthe wildlife.You know parks like these are so important to migrating birds,becausewhen you think about it, these birds fly from asfar away as the Yucatan. They come acrossthe Gulf of Mexico,and they're tired,they're hungry.They land in a small, confined place likethis to replenishand they're greetedby 50 to 100 cats.It's a recipe for disaster. Through no fault of their own these felines have stirreda fiery debate.Kate Rhubee is one of many volunteer feederswho have taken pity on these outcasts.She, too, knows there'sno easy solution.A lot of peopleare really concernedabout the impact thatthe homelesscats have on the small birds in the area.In an ideal world,we wouldn't havepeople dumping their pets, and the cats wouldn'tbe outside,and they wouldn't be impacting the wildlife.But in this cycle ofhuman neglect,it's not just the wildlife that's in jeopardy.These cats are at the mercy of world-class hurricanes, aggression withinthe colony and disease.It's really upsetting to me when someone dumpstheir pets here,'cause this is absolutelyno life for a cat.In the lastthree-and-a-half months,we've had 39new cats dumped here.With so many new arrivals, the population is exploding. Spaying and neuteringis critical.But most of the strayshave become so wild,it's impossible toeven approach them. Members of the Cat Network provide the traps,the ingenuityand the sardines.Still, there's no guarantee which cats will ventureinto the trapsif any at all.Only tomorrow will tell. Hey, you guys,we got one already.The night's bountyhas been good.Kate? ls this the orangeyou were looking for? Yes, he is.I'm concerned thathe's really sick,looks like he's gonna have AlDS with all of those marks. Off to the vet you go.Dr. Ted Sanchezworks with the Cat Network at a reduced rate caring for homeless cats.The rest of the funds come from volunteers likeCindy Hewittwho contribute thousands of dollars each year.We're going to be taking a little blood testand we're just gonna try to rule out a couple ofviral diseasesthat they commonly get.It's a male.And these guys tend to be a little bit more prevalentin the males than the females because they tend to have more sexual contact.We're just going totake a little blood.Cats are vulnerable totwo lethal viruses.Feline leukemiaand feline AlDSare both highly contagious and deadly.It's not a pretty death. Cindy, I think we may have a positive here.You can tell here.We'll see what the test comes out.But you see the gums? They're real, real red.He's got a pretty good gingivitis here,which is one of the common things we see with feline.. plus the fact thathe's a male.So we'll wait.He's got a couple of variety of skin lesions as well,so he's not inthe greatest shape.He's been eating well,he's not too thin,but this is a bad sign.It really makes me sadthat the animals suffer.And anytime I have toput a cat down,it really bothers me.But, if you leave him,then he's gonna infectthe others.It's the right thing to do, unfortunately.And he'll also havea really miserable death.If they go through the course of this illness,it's not fair to them.They suffer too much.Cats that test negativefor diseasemight be candidatesfor adoption.But first they must be spayed or neutered.I don't think it's the solution to the problem.But at leastwe are controllingthe population somewhat. Thousands of cats are being put to sleep every year, needlessly,because owners arejust not complyingwith spaying and neutering. We have to tell these people that are abandoning cats, this isn't the way to do it. Spayed and neutered cats have the tips ofthe ears clipped,to serveas a permanent record.This kitten has becometoo wild for adoption.Once she's recoveredfrom surgery,she'll return to the colonyto face an uncertain future. You doing alright?Alright.It's a dismal solutionfor the catsand a precariousone for the wildlife.Well-fed and spayed,a cat can still hunt.But where are the thousandsof homeless felines to go? Until an answer can be found, migrating birdsmay come face to facewith yet another predator.But it's not justthe homeless that hunt.There are more than 60 million house cats in the U.S. and many are on the prowl night and day.What is the impact ofthese unleashed predators? The answer is clear at the Wildlife Center of Virginia. Dr. Gentz, cat attack comingin from Harrisonburg.Many of the patientsare casualtiesof ordinary house cats.We have two injured bunnies. Most are mangledbeyond repair.Cat attack coming in from... Each day brings new drama for Dr.Ned Gentz and his team, as they try to piece together the victims of cat attacks. Well, I think this one'sgoing to make it...although probably half don't. Casualties pour into the Wildlife Center night and day. Pet owners are often shocked to find that their well-fed cats are killers.Though some have beende-clawed,the attack is oftenjust as gruesome.This one was injured onit's eye right here.And it was bleedingthis morning.And this one was injured... ...on his leg......right there.Oh, you betterput it back in.The hospital recovery room is filled with creaturesthat fell prey to the claw. Most require intensive care. But for everyrecovering patient......there are four othersthat didn't make it.This represents two weeks of cat attack victimsbrought here to theWildlife Center of Virginia the non-survivors.We probably have anequal number ofanimals in theintensive care unitstill being treated nowthat we hope will do better than these,but statistically about80 percentof the cat attack victims that we see here don't survive. Cats are incredibly efficient hunters and predators.This poor bunny was effectively disemboweledby the cat that caught it. Creatures lucky enough to survive an attackface yet another peril.Cat saliva isalmost toxic by itself. Getting bit by a catis like injectingpoison into a wild animal.A wild animal with a catbite that doesn't diefrom the trauma will die of an infection within24 to 48 hours.As a wildlife veterinarian,it's my jobto take care of sickand injured wildlifeand I like to do that,but this is a waste.These animalsdidn't have to die.If people would keep their pet cats indoors,these animals wouldn't end up in my wildlife hospital. What's a cat owner to do? Just three hours from the Wildlife Center of Virginia, on 25 acres ofrolling woodland,lives a catnamed Ting Tang ll. lronically,he lives with a biologistwho's specialty is birds.As a devoted cat owner, Ruth Beck has been grappling with a personal dilemma.I specialize in ornithology and I'm very interested in birds.But I also love cats.Ting Tang ll is a hunter.It is not the cat's fault,it's what he does and whathe does successfully.He has some basic equipment, just as everyfirst of all,you can look at thesenice teeth.And then we havean excellent setof switchbladesand they indeedcan inflict quite a wound.C'mon, breakfast.Ting Tang ll is a well-fed cat. But breakfastnever puts a damperon his favorite pastime.He's an avid bird watcher and hunter.Each morning,after a full can of food,Ting Tang is readyfor his favorite sport.But he has to comply with the rules of the house.Most bird species feedearly in the morning.So just by not letting him out until 10 or 1 1 o'clockand for just a few hoursmid-afternoon,when the birds are less active...will certainly helpto prevent the catfrom capturing the birds. Ruth has found a compromisethat gives the cat some freedom, but gives the birdssome protection, as well.Ting Tang ll must makethe most of his hoursin feline paradise.He is a cat with a curfew. When day is done,he'll be called indoors.I think that true cat loversdon't see their pet as killersI'd like to see usmake everyone aware of the fact that our pets arealso predators.If we come to termswith the factthat our cats do hunt,How much are they hunting? That's just whatthe British Mammal Society set out to discoverwhen they launchedtheir survey called,''Look What the Cat Brought ln'' ...a bit ghoulish, really.This is brilliant.Yes, it's good, isn't it? Excellent...The Society has found itself buried beneath a mountainof responses.For Michael Woods, processing the resultshas been daunting.C'mon, I can't have yousitting ontop of all my work.Well, I have a very ambivalent relationship with cats.I love the waythat they move and I thinkthey're beautiful animals,but I just hate what they do to the wildlife.The Society invited the public to register their catsfor a five-month period, detailing every creaturetheir kitty dragged home.The amazing thing is we've had the results from 750 cats, which is a huge amountand much betterthan we'd expected.We've got a lot ofthem analyzedand it's giving us somereally good answers.And some of themare real big killers,they're some big killercats out there.And they're causing quitea lot of mayhem. Remarkably,almost as you'd expect,the traditionalprey of the cat,the mouse,has come out much the highest. If you extrapolate upto the numberof cats we have in Britain, which is around aboutseven millionand that's just the tame ones the wild ones areon top of thatthen we are looking at something around 200,000 mice are killed every year by cats. And then we have voles,and then after that, shrews. The mice are interesting, because a lot of people think we don't need mice,you know, because they can bea pest and a problem, particularly if theyget into the house,but mice are very important, along with the othersmall mammals,as prey species fornatural predators.Then,if we turn to the information we've got about cats,we find that a third of them, approximately, wear bells. Wearing bells seems to make almost no differenceat all to the amount ofprey that they catch.They still go out and catch just as much.And color of cats seemsto make a difference.White cats appear to catcha lot less than some of the other more camouflaged cats, and I guess it's colorthat does that,particularly at night,if they're hunting at night. The survey's certainly shown that howevermuch you feed a cat,it makes no difference at all and the cat feedsand is just as likely tostart hunting immediately. Out of 750 cats, one of the biggest killers is Missy,a female catwho lives down in Dorset, and who has killedover seven pagesworth ofsmall mammals and birdsfor us to include in the survey.So she's a real, you know, wicked thing tohave out there.Knowing her record,I thought it would be interesting to enter herand I was really surprised myselfwhen I started to fill inthe form and found outhow manythings she did bring in. Hilary and Jim Pikehave become accustomedto Missy's daily offerings. For Jim, the rabbitsare the worst.They all start from the skull and eat the head firstand all we get leftare two earsand four little paws......which is not avery nice thingwhen you come homeand it's on the middle of the mat or stuck on the tiles. There must be some sortof driving force thatmakes her do it all the time... ...nothing to do with hunger. They obviously just do it because they love it.The spot you see along here, she lays in therein the summer time,and the swallows zip along, come down to alongthe top of the pond to drink, and she just leaps up and grabs them clean out of the air And, you know,just a big snatch,and they're just stunnedthe moment she's got them.The two sucker fishthat we boughtspecifically to take outall the algae,within two weeksof us buying themand they werequite expensive...We paid 40 pound for the pair. And in two weeks they'reon the kitchen mat.We found them on the grass.So that was a waste oftime and money.Well, I've been collectingwhat Missy's brought infor the last two weeks, approximately.So, would you like meTo show you justa few of the itemsor bodies, I should say?It was a little bird,I'm afraid.Just looks to be asleep, but unfortunately,there's one gone.And then this is one of the many mice we have around here. This is what Missy's broughtin in less than two weeks.She's quite a hunter.She's really surprised us onthe amount of carnage.I've got to say thatit's really shocked mewhen we startedcounting them up.In the last two weeks she's brought in maybe 30, 36...plus maybe a dozen or so thatwe've let go. And I think that's a littlebit too much, really.Well,I'm quite proud to thinkthat she was one ofthe top cats.But knowing how much stuffI didn't write downBecauseI wasn't here to see it,um, I think she's actuallythe top cat.For many a cat, such extraordinary hunting prowess at one time translated into a ticket to travel the world.They kept stowawayrats at bay...But not all the catsthat left portmade the long journey home. Some jumped ship and soon had a foothold in a new frontiert New Zealand is a unique place. Like many islands,its wildlife evolved withfew natural predators. Today, rare shore birds stilllay their eggson the sandy beaches completely exposed. Attentive parentstend to their chicks,but their nestsare vulnerable.Until recently,the system worked fine.But today, New Zealand's shore birds are in trouble.Here atMangawhai Wildlife Refuge, the fairy tern is down toless than six breeding pairs. Each chick represents thefuture of the species.With theDepartment of Conservation, Richard Parrishand Leigh Honnorare part of a team trying to save the last ofthe fairy ternsand Mangawhai's other threatened species.Five years ago,they found themselves Something waskilling the chicksand no one knew what.The team had to do a little undercover work.One year we lost a lot of nests of the fairy ternsand we didn't knowwho was doing it,so we decided to set upan infrared camera24 hours a day on the nests and try and work out who was taking the eggs and the chicks The new lens is good,isn't it?The wide-eyed angle lens... Oh, it is...taking in a much bigger field of view.Well,those chicks will probably stay here another day.You think so?lnitially, we set it up on a Caspian tern colony,just to get used tothe equipment and ironout the problems.What they discoveredwas both alarming....and macabre. We ended up catching a cat on film,and over four nights,that cat took out 40 chicks. The interesting thing for me was that the catonly ate the heads.They left the bodies behind. Over the next four years, they trained the cameraon various nests and found more gruesome evidence against the alien predator. As a result, feral catsare now being eradicatedin Mangawhai Park.New Zealandis just one exampleof what can happenwhen a cat comes to stay. Here, in a land where temperatures can soar to 120 and there's oftenno water in sight,it's hard to imagineany creaturesurviving for long...but the cat has adapted once again. In the middle ofAustralia's Outback,it must eatwhatever it can findbe it road killor Australia's endangered wildlife. Bilbies, bandicoots,and other rare marsupials have been pushedto the edge of extinctionby a barrage of pressures, including introduced species. One of the culpritsis the cat.For at least a century,feral cats have roamedthis harsh expanse.And yet they remain elusive... ...even to thosewhose ancestors werehere long before them.In an effort to unlocktheir secrets,Parks and Wildlifebiologist Rachel Paltridgehas enlisted the helpof experts.Searching for a catin the Outbackis like looking fora needle in a haystack.Yet these Aboriginal trackers are able to read eventhe most elusive signsin the shadows of the sand.So the pussy cat,him sitting down,jumping here, jumped there, jumped there, and over there.. With their extraordinary expertise,Rachel has begun to unravel the secrets of the catWhere's that pussy cat now long ways?Must be a long ways off.With their greater insight,she hopes that, someday,cat numberswill be controlled.They're a pretty amazing animal you have to respect them.But they just don'tbelong out here.They didn't evolve out here. The native animalsdidn't evolve withthem and just can't really tolerate their predation. Hopefully, this work will lead to a better understandingof feral cats and eventually lead to better management. To reveal the patterns of these elusive predators, Rachel uses radio telemetry, tracking individual catsover time.Finding them isonly half the challenge. Feral cats are as ferociousas any wild animal.Before handling one, Rachel must first anesthetize it.Cat bites are not only dangerous to prey,they can infecthumans as well.We caught this catabout four months ago, using the Aboriginal trackers to catch it,and radio collared it,and we've been followingits movement patternsin those last four months. This cat normallyonly roams over abouttwo or three kilometers a day and he has a fairlytight home rangethat he lives in.He's lost about 300 gramsin the last four months.I don't know if its maybe times are getting a bit tough there may be a bitless food around.I just wanted to check that his collar was still okayand not rubbing on his neck and just check。