Look-alike cat story

[Mal7]

I have a slightly weird cat story to relate. My friend went back to Florida 2 days ago. They had a cat, which I had looked after at my house briefly about 1 year ago while they were away. As she went back to Florida, the cat was also to move to another part of town where it would stay with another member of my friend’s family. Yesterday evening, I opened my door and was surprised to see what I thought was her cat on my doorstep. I was almost 100% sure it was the same cat. The cat seemed to know me too, and purred and came inside. I assumed it had run away during the move to a different house, and found its way back to my house which I presumed it must have remembered from 1 year ago. So I set about contacting my friend and getting the other family member’s contact details. They were not missing the cat though. My cat was a different cat, that just happened to look practically identical, and also with a similar personality and behaviour to their cat. Also my cat had a black collar, their cat had a red collar.

The new cat stayed in my house last night, during which time I thought it was their cat. Today I found out it was not their cat, and have let it out of the house, but it hasn’t gone far away. Then it was meowing outside again, so I have let it back in the house for another night. It seems to have made itself at home here from the moment it was just sitting waiting on my front porch.

I have also let the SPCA know it is here.

I emailed a photo to my friend, expecting perhaps she would say “yes it does look similar to my cat”, instead she said “that looks just like [her cat]. Incredible [. . .]”

 

[Mal7]

Here is the combination of three things I find somewhat strange about this story. Points 1 and 2 could be described as coincidences. Point 3 is not really coincidental to anything, just a little strange.

1. The cat looks so similar to the other cat. This is one of those black cats with white underneath and white on the paws. Black and white cats are not uncommon, but I can usually distinguish one black-and-white cat I have seen from another. I had seen my friend’s cat a few times in the previous week. I only realized this wasn’t their cat when I was told that their cat was not missing.
2. The timing, of this cat turning up 1 day after my friend moved and their cat went to a new home. We had discussed whether I wanted to look after their cat when they left the country, but I wasn’t interested in having a cat of my own.
3. This cat was so friendly and made itself at home immediately. It was like it was just waiting on my front porch for me, a couple of feet from my front door, and liked me as soon as I opened the door. I like cats, but normally with other people’s cats they are a little suspicious of strangers at first. Young kittens can be very friendly to strangers, but this cat was probably about 1 year old I would guess.

 

[loreta]

What a coincidence. What will you do? Will you keep the cat till they find his owner? O will you keep the cat because maybe this cat choose you as a owner? Cats are amazing.

 

[Mal7]

It does feel like the cat has chosen me and my home as its new home at the moment.

I will keep the cat for the next few days, but will let it outside in the day so it can wander back to whereever it came from if it likes. At this time of the year in this University town many students are moving into new flats in the area, it may have got lost from some house nearby.

After a week, I might take it to the SPCA to be re-homed, or it is possible I will have formed more of a bond with it by then, and decide to keep it.

A year ago I kept a much younger kitten for a week before taking it to the SPCA. It had been abandoned, and was following people around out on the footpath and street, and also racing around and nearly getting itself run over. That was an easier decision, as it required a lot of attention, e.g. it was hard to type on the keyboard without it immediately jumping up and walking over the keys.

A couple of years ago I had a friend stay for a couple of months, after her house in central Christchurch became unliveable after the February 2011 earthquake there. A stray cat had a litter of kittens in the back garden, and we adopted too of them. The mother disappeared. They were very wary and scared of humans for the first few days, and then they quite suddenly decide humans aren't too bad after all. I didn't keep either myself, my friend took one with her and someone took another.

My other interesting animal experience here was a lost dog. I opened my door one evening and a wet dog ran inside the hallway and shook water everywhere, and a neighbour was asking me if this was my dog? I have a goldfish pond in the front garden. This dog, a labrador, was lost, hot and thirsty, and quite over-excited, and had been jumping into my goldfish pond, climbing out, and jumping back in again.

The two stray kittens, re-socialized with humans:

The recent arrival:

 

[Mal7]

I found the cat's owner today, through a Lost-and-Found on the internet. They have come and picked her up. They lived a couple of suburbs, or a kilometer or so away, and had been putting up notices in their neighbourhood. They had just moved to that house, and had kept the cat inside for a couple of weeks after moving, but apparently it still had some wanderlust.

One more not-too-startling coincidence:

My friend's cat, which at first I thought this cat was, was named Boots. This cat was named Socks.

 

[loreta]

Every time I move with my cats what I do are the instructions of a pal that said to me this: the first thing you do arriving in the new location you take the paws of your cats and put butter on it. It seems that butter take out I don't know what and the cat will stay in the new house without trying to go elsewhere from where he comes. For me it worked but I don't know how scientifically is this tradition.

 

[Mal7]

I googled that idea about the butter. Some people do seem to think it works. Other people think it does not. Some people advised against it on the grounds that is not healthy for cats to eat butter or margarine.

I found 3 possible explanations offered for why it might work:

1. When you let the cat outside for the first time, with butter on its paws, it will be so busy licking the butter off, that it will have time to adjust to the new outdoor environment it is in.

2. When you let the cat outside for the first time, with butter on its paws, little bits of dirt etc. from the new environment will stick to the butter, and when the cat licks the butter and dirt off, the taste of the dirt will help imprint the cat's sense of its new environment.

3. When you let the cat outisde for the first time, with butter on its paws, if it wanders off to its old territory, it will be able to find its way back to its new home by following the scent of the butter.

I am not sure if it really works either. I think explanation 2 seems the most likely, if it does work.

Can you imagine the kind of scientific testing you would have to do to prove it scientifically, with a statistically significant sample size? Moving 200 cats, 100 with buttered paws, 100 without, fitting radio-tracking devices, seeing how many cats get lost and how many do not. . .

 

[Nienna]

I googled that idea about the butter. Some people do seem to think it works. Other people think it does not. Some people advised against it on the grounds that is not healthy for cats to eat butter or margarine.

I found 3 possible explanations offered for why it might work:

1. When you let the cat outside for the first time, with butter on its paws, it will be so busy licking the butter off, that it will have time to adjust to the new outdoor environment it is in.

2. When you let the cat outside for the first time, with butter on its paws, little bits of dirt etc. from the new environment will stick to the butter, and when the cat licks the butter and dirt off, the taste of the dirt will help imprint the cat's sense of its new environment.

3. When you let the cat outisde for the first time, with butter on its paws, if it wanders off to its old territory, it will be able to find its way back to its new home by following the scent of the butter.

I am not sure if it really works either. I think explanation 2 seems the most likely, if it does work.

Can you imagine the kind of scientific testing you would have to do to prove it scientifically, with a statistically significant sample size? Moving 200 cats, 100 with buttered paws, 100 without, fitting radio-tracking devices, seeing how many cats get lost and how many do not. . .

I was told that you put the butter on the paws because while the cat is licking off the butter, it also licks off the scent of the old place it lived. Then, once the butter is off, you let it outside and it will not want to get back to its old home.

I have no idea if this is right or not. I always kept my cats indoors for a couple of weeks after a move. Then, if they wanted out, I'd let them out and they always stayed around.

Maybe I was just lucky.

 

[Mal7]

I'm inclined to think maybe the idea doesn't work at all, and it is just a cultural meme, generating a placebo effect whenever people try it and their cat doesn't run away.

The front garden probably smells different to the back garden, and different surfaces and different plants probably all smell different. On the other hand, one garden might have a similar assortment of smells to another garden at the other side of a city.

There are stories of cats making remarkable journeys, but I think of such journeys as being based on a sense of geography and direction finding not directly related to the sense of smell. Even a bloodhound follows a trail of scent, it doesn't just smell something 3 km away and hone in on it, although maybe I am wrong - I have heard moose can smell people from miles away if the wind is blowing in the right direction, and bears can smell honey from miles away.

Another cat I gave to a friend with instructions to keep it inside for the first week, but they ended up letting it out in their back garden after only a couple of days, which was a little negligent of them, but in the event they didn't have any problems with the cat running away. It probably depends on the individual cat, just like some travel in cars better, and some really don't like being moved around to different territories.

A related story:
I saw a clip on tv about a dog caught stealing a doggy-treat from a supermarket. The family used to give the dog this treat on a certain day and time, and when they did not produce the treat when expected, the dog made a trip of a couple of miles across town to the supermarket, walked straight to the pet food aisle, grabbed the doggy-treat, and exited the supermarket, caught on the store's security cameras. Previously the dog had only been to the supermarket in a car with the family.

 

[Mal7]

But then again cats do mark their territories with their own scent glands, behind the back of the neck etc. Maybe they can actually smell their own territories from a long distance away.

Also maybe the purpose of the butter isn't for old smell's to be licked off the cat's paws, but just to dampen the cat's sense of smell temporarily, making it unable to follow its nose, and putting the butter on the paws is just a method to get the cat to injest some butter into its alimentary/olfactory tract as it licks it off.

I still wonder how the first person to try this method came up with it though, before anyone knew of the idea.