Cougar Kitties

I ran across several articles about panther-pussycat pals this year. There’s one of a mountain lion allegedly mistaking a house cat for a cub. The writer, a wildlife photographer, claimed that the catamount mistook a mouser for “her lost cub.” Another article has a video of a cougar and a calico “playing a game of patty-cake,” sort of play-punching each other, the cougar all the while purring loudly while the calico meowling forcefully. Another post showed trail cam images of a trio of missing housecats following a male mountain lion. One of the missing-cat owners anthropomorphized, “She’s living her true dream, being a big cat.”

The housecat (Felis catus) was domesticated from Mideastern and Egyptian populations of the African wildcat (Felis lybica lybica). It is generally believed to have domesticated itself, at least initially and at least partially, by hanging out within and near early human granaries. Our ancestors did not kill them because they preyed on grain-eating mice while being nonthreatening toward us.

Everyone knows that story, but I think it is only a chapter in a bigger novel, a missive much larger than a merely human-centered one.

Urban myth tells us that felines are solitary while canines are gregarious. However, researchers well know that the domesticated cat is instead far more company loving than that. Obviously, African lions are not solitary. Sibling kittens of all felid species play together until exhausted, and then snuggle together beside mama. Housecats in animal shelters lay alongside each other in sunny spots, often establishing mutual friendships. Housecats warm up next to their house-humans by day and by night.

Projecting this onto pumas is easy. Imagine a male being run off by mama when she’s about to give birth to this year’s litter. He and his siblings are too many mouths to feed when she needs to make a lot of milk for expected cubs. Cougar scientists have found that dispersing young adult females remain relatively close to mama’s territory, whereas young adult males disperse further away, probably because daddy is not their friend and instinct dictates that they not mate with mama or sisters.

So, imagine this innocent two-year-old catamount man-child getting run off, first by a mama’s betrayal and then a terrifying papa. Imagine he has now lost sight, sound, and smell of his playful, purring siblings. He is all alone, a stranger in a strange land. And hungry. And it’s about to rain, uphill both ways. You get the picture.

Leo – let’s call him Leo – is one of the lucky fellows. He finds a territory not already occupied by a mature male, with a hidey-hole refuge from the rain and easy pickings to feed on. But he’s still relatively young, not yet accustomed, much less resigned, to his aloneness. One fine night while out and about, Leo crosses paths with a young housecat. It is Kitty’s night out, Leo is her first encounter with a serious predator, and she is naïve. Leo has never before seen a domesticated cat, so he’s curious. Fortunately for Kitty, Leo also has a full belly. They approach each other cautiously, just like in the wildlife cam videos, and their separate lonlinesses overcome their predator-prey anxieties. Leo now has a friend and a playmate, his first since his heart-wrenching eviction and escape. Kitty now has not only a new friend, but also a bodyguard and provider.

Imagine eating kibble – hard and dry and made of waste meat and gristle – and drinking only chlorinated tapwater – every day from the time you stop suckling your mama’s teats until you catch your first mouse out. Then along comes a big brother offering venison liver and bunny cheeks. Holy wide-eyed yow! Are going to go back to suburban kibble and a stinky litter box? Duh, only if you’ve been brainwashed, and Kitty ain’t no dummy.

Am I anthropomorphizing, or am I acknowledging the fact that all sentient mammals, by definition, share the same feelings?

So, you might well ask, “What’s the bigger picture?” Yes, wildcats were attracted to our mousy granaries, perhaps long before our own youths adopted and made pets of their young, but the cougar-kitty pattern shows us that felids were adopting friends and commensals long before that. Other species are also known to pal around with non-kind, and predator-warning and parasite-gleaning mutualistic behaviors are abundant in the animal kingdom. It is a lesson in “live and let live.”