How about the senses? More specifically, the cat senses. This has to do with seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. We’ll review these one-by-one if you don’t mind.
Do you remember those incredible protractible claws that we talked about before? Yeah, we can spring them out and put them back in our paws, even one paw at a time!
Well, there’s more. We were blessed with outstanding night vision too! And best of all, it’s 100% natural since we don’t have to use those special, infra-red, funny-looking goggles the human warriors have to put on their heads so they don’t bump into trees or buildings when wandering around during a really dark night.
You see, us cats have this device that reflects the light that passes through our retina back into our eyes instead of allowing it to wander around in other parts of our head, probably like what happens to the humans. As a result, this greatly increases our sensitivity to even very low light levels, providing us with night vision at about one-sixth of what is needed for our two-legged friends to see “in the dark.”
Pretty cool, huh! Yeah, I’m Freddy the Night Hunter, tracking down mice and other moving food items that might foolishly assume that I will bump into trees or buildings like the humans do without their special gear. Gotcha!
But there’s more to this amazing vision we have! Our relatively bigger and more expandable pupils play a positive role in our more advanced abilities in this area too.
You might have noticed with your own kitties that at times their pupils become so enlarged that they cover most of the surface of the eyes themselves. I’ve heard commented that this makes us look kind of spooky when we’re into night vision mode, but don’t pay any attention to those remarks, okay?
We’re not being transformed into supernatural monsters or anything like that. Instead, we’re just making some automatic adjustments so we can carry on with little problem in the dark without bumping into trees or... well, you get the picture, don’t you? Once again, pretty cool, huh!
On the downside, the humans have got us beat on color vision since we’ve got only two types of cones in our eye structure. Hmmm… That makes me think of vanilla ice cream that I can lap up as it melts, but no relation, okay? Yeah, we’ve got double cones, but no double-dip.
Anyway, with our two types of no-ice-cream-in-them cones, we’re good at the blues and yellows, but the reds and greens that you can easily see are pretty much limited for us.
Ya win some and ya lose some, right? That’s the way it goes.