Do cats make sense?

Abstract

For far too long, the behaviour of our pets has been seen (at best) as unconstrained by comprehensible evolutionary processes, or (at worst) entirely constructed by anthropomorphism. John Bradshaw’s Cat Sense is a welcome attempt to challenge this status quo by demonstrating that science can help us understand why domestic cats do what they do, and how they inveigled their way into our homes. Compared to their rival, the dog, however, we know very little about our cat guests, a fact that permeates through this book loud and clear. Our understanding of the domestication of dogs has progressed rapidly in recent years [1,2], mainly due to genetic discoveries and good experimental paradigms to test their cognition. Cat Sense, therefore, should be seen not only as an interesting read, but also as a call to arms for scientists interested in how domestication has (and has not) shaped the cat. The