Monsignor

Monsignor's cat... test your knowledge!

Test your Fido and Fluffy knowledge
By Janis Fontaine
Source: The Palm Beach Post

1. Cats brains are quite similar to ours, with identical regions dealing with emotion. But their bodies are quite different. Humans have only 34 vertebrae. Cats have

a. 36
b. 40
c. 52
d. 60

2. Cats love to sleep. How much of their lives do cats spend sleeping?

a. one-half
b. one-third
c. two-thirds
d. three-quarters.

3. The cat lover is an ailurophile, while a cat hater is an ailurophobe. Which of these famous people loved cats, and which ones hated them?

a. Abraham Lincoln
b. Napoleon
c. Winston Churchill
d. Julius Caesar
e. Ernest Hemingway
f. Florence Nightengale

4. Cats see better than we do in the dark, and some people are color-blind, making it impossible to tell the difference between red and green. But what about cats. Can a cat tell the difference between green and blue and red and green?

a. yes
b. no

5. Not only do cats feel emotion, they often express it. How many different vocalizations can a cat make?

a. Same as a dog. About 10.
b. 20.
c. 50.
d. 100.

6. It's often debated whether cats are smarter than dogs. The jury is still out on that, but what about memory? How long does a cat's memory last?

a. Half as long as a dog's.
b. About as long as dog's.
c. Twice as long as a dog's.
d. Much longer than a dog's.

7. True or false. Dogs have a discriminating palate.

a. True
b. False.

8. Lassie, one of the great dog heroines of all time, was actually played by a male dog, because male collies were thought to look better on camera. The main "actor" was named Pal. But Lassie was based on a real dog. Who wrote the book 'Lassie Come Home' and what was the name of the dog who inspired the story?

a. Tom Clancy, Sandy
b. Eric Mowbray Knight, Toots
c. John Sanford, Beauty
d. Michael McDonald, Molly

9. A dog's sense of smell is acute. Which of the following medical problems can a dog smell?

a. cancer
b. autism
c. seizures
d. heart attacks.

10. A dog accompanied Lewis and Clark as they explored America. What kind of dog was it, and how far do they estimate he traveled.

a. A Chihuahua traveled who about 200 miles.
b. A Labrador traveled who 1,000 miles

c. A Newfoundland who traveled 8,000 miles.
d. A Dalmatian traveled 10,000 miles.

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Answers:

1. (d.) 60. A cat's arching back is part of a complex body language system, usually associated with feeling threatened. The arch is able to get so high because the cat's spine contains nearly 60 vertebrae which fit loosely together.

2. (c) A 15-year-old cat has probably spent 10 years of its life sleeping, is in deep sleep 15 percent of its life. Is in light sleep 50 percent of the time.

3. The cats lovers and cat haters were:

a. Abraham Lincoln loved cats.
b. Napoleon hated cats.
c. Winston Churchill loved cats.
d. Julius Caesar hated cats.
e. Ernest Hemingway loved cats.
f. Florence Nightengale loved cats.

4. (a) Yes. Cats can see color. Studies have shown that cats can distinguish between red and green; red and blue; red and gray; green and blue; green and gray; blue and gray; yellow and blue, and yellow and gray. Dogs can see color, but it is not as vivid a color scheme as we see. They distinguish between blue, yellow, and gray, but probably do not see red and green. This is much like our vision at twilight.

5. (d) Cats have about 100 different vocalization sounds, but cats don't meow at each other. They probably communicate with each other with sounds too low for us to hear.

6. (d) Cats have better memories than dogs. Tests conducted by the University of Michigan concluded that while a dogs memory lasts no more than five minutes, a cat's can last as long as 16 hours - exceeding even that of monkeys and orangutans.

7. (a) True. Dogs may not have as many taste buds as we do (they have about 1,700 on their tongues, while we humans have about 9,000), but that doesn't mean they're not discriminating eaters. They have over 200 million scent receptors in their noses (we have only 5 million) so it's important that their food smells good and tastes good.

8. (b) Lassie first appeared in a 1930s short novel by Eric Mowbray Knight. The dog in the novel was based on Knight's real life collie, Toots, who was a female, and apparently no great beauty.

9. All of them. Human noses have an impressive 5 million olfactory cells with which to smell, sheepdogs have 220 million, enabling them to smell 44 times better than man. Scientists have discovered that dogs can smell the presence of autism in children. "Seizure Alert" dogs can alert their owners up to an hour before the onset of an epileptic seizure.

10. A Newfoundland named Seaman traveled with explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, whose 8,000-mile trek into the western wilderness in the early 1800s is nearly legend. A few of his feats: he alerted them to grizzlies, helped them hunt for food, and stopped a stampeding buffalo from trampling them in camp.