Friday, August 7, 2009

Right Or Left Pawed?


The cat has been revered through history.Some say the world is divided between "cat lovers" and "dog lovers." We had both when the children were small. My oldest daughter Jennifer had a black sat "Chico".He was part warrior and part loving pet.

While watching my little ones go to a few neighbors to Trick or Treat one long ago Halloween.I actually saw him go across the street,get his lady friend ,and go to the door after the children left.Standing tall on his hind legs,he rang the door bell and said "Meow" to the lady who answered.She was so delighted that both cats got special treats...


No longer having a pet, this story was still interesting:

" Right or Left Pawed?
It may not be obvious from the scratch marks cats dish out, but domestic felines favour one paw over the other. More often than not, females tend to be righties, while toms are lefties, say Deborah Wells and Sarah Millsopp, psychologists at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland.

However, these preferences only manifest when cats perform particularly dexterous feats. That's for the same reason we can open a door with either arm, yet struggle to write legibly with our non-dominant hand. "The more complex and challenging [the task], the more likely we're going to see true handedness," Wells says.

She and Millsopp tasked 42 domestic cats to ferret out a bit of tuna in a jar too small for their heads. Among 21 females, all but one favoured the right paw across dozens of trials, while 20 out of 21 males preferentially used the left. One male proved ambidextrous." http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17510-is-your-cat-left-or-right-pawed.html


The illustration is from the Etsy shop FamousFanPulls

FAN PULL - LUCKY Waving Asian Cat Ceiling Chain White
http://FamousFanPulls.etsy.com

Check out the wonderful assortment there.

1 comment:

Lesley said...

lovely story,Chico sounds like my tomcat(who is definitely left pawed!)