Original subtitles

Beautiful,

elegant,

mysterious.

They're the most popular pet in the world.

Cute,

cuddly and fun.

But in every way built for the hunt.

One of the big appeals to me about cats

is that they are these little...

little wild creatures that we share our space with.

Is that touch of the wild what we most admire,

or something we want to change?

Can these superlative hunters

ever truly be domesticated?

I think the cat,

if it's gonna persist as a... as a popular companion animal,

is going to have to change in some way.

What do you really know about the lion in your living room?

A solitary hunter.

One of nature's most capable predators.

A symbol of grace,

balance,

and elegance.

It's hard to believe that these clumsy kittens

have inherited the hunting prowess of their wild ancestors.

Kittens play a great deal.

It's one of the things people find...

very appealing about them.

Enchanting even.

- Kitten play is...

is really just a whole load of hunting-type behaviors,

where they're pouncing on things.

In the wild,

play-hunting would soon give way to the real thing.

Powerful muscles,

flexible bodies,

sharp claws,

the sensitive paws,

even the delicate whiskers all play a role

in the graceful movements of a true hunter.

Surprisingly,

the cat's elegant walk is not very efficient

compared to a dog's.

Their gait evolved

not to save energy...

but provide the stealth

to hide

and strike.

The same evolutionary demands

have shaped some of the cat's cutest behaviors.

Like the instinct to find a safe place to hide from enemies,

and to leap out at prey.

Small but powerful,

and average house cat can leap five times its own height.

Some even more.

Climbing a tree in pursuit of dinner

can prove dangerous.

One slip could end in disaster.

Even if they fall upside down,

they can turn and land on their feet in as little as 30 centimeters.

That's not as simple as it sounds.

In fact, at first it seems to defy the laws of physics.

As the cat begins falling,

her legs rotate,

allowing her to perform a seemly impossible midair adjustment,

all in a fraction of a second.

Before hitting the ground,

all four legs reach out to act as shock absorbers.

An ability useful for survival

in forest or high-rise jungle,

where their curiosity can trip them up.

I'm Dr Koharik Arman,

one of the veterinarians here at Cats Only Veterinary Clinic

located in Vancouver, BC.

This is the time of the year now that we start to see

what's called high-rise syndrome.

And what that refers to is cats

falling or jumping off of balconies,

and then ending up with injuries.

Sometimes they come out unscathed, and...

people always joke about those nine lives that cats have,

and sometimes it seems there's a bit of truth to that.

Cats can fall from really quite high buildings

and they've got a very effective, and...

and presumably completely instinctive, spontaneous

and very rapid strategy for dealing with that.

If they are... do feel themselves falling a long distance,

they're actually able to parachute.

They stick their legs out literally sideways,

which then stretches the skin of the belly,

which does slow their progress down.

Like their large carnivore cousins,

domestic cats spend most of their time between hunts resting.

They spend at least half their time asleep.

But when they move,

they can move quickly.

A house cat can run almost 50 kilometers an hour.

At least for a short burst.

And they have some unique physical features

that can get them out of tight spaces.

They have what are called floating clavicles,

so their collarbones are not fixed in place to their skeleton.

They're floating in their muscles,

and that's how they can squeeze themselves

into and out of very narrow spaces.

And also they have a compressible ribcage

which helps in that department too.

A cat's evolutionary history

as a predator that stalks and pounces for the kill,

is evident in how they play,

how they move,

and even in how their senses work.

I'm Dr Kelly St Denis,

I own the Charing Cross Cat Clinic.

It's an all-cat clinic,

which makes a really nice environment for us

and especially for the cats.

So these kittens were born seven days ago.

When kittens are born,

they are able to already smell fairly well,

so that allows them to find the nipples

so that they can nurse and get milk.

They don't really hear very well,

and they certainly can't see at newborn age.

Their ears are flapped down and their eyes are closed.

At about five days of age, they are able to hear,

and very gradually we can see that their ear flaps are starting to come up,

so that they will be able to hear much better by three weeks of age.

Despite being born deaf,

it's their sense of hearing that best reveals their wild ancestry.

A cat's ears can swivel

to help them locate the source of a sound,

pointing backwards,

forwards, or sideways.

Once mature, they can hear two octaves higher than a human,

and a full octave higher even than a dog.

Cats can hear the squeaks of mice,

and it's probably very useful to them in hunting where they can hear...

what we call ultrasound

which is being generated by their prey.

It enables them to...

track down their prey and locate it better.

Their ability to hear ultrasonic squeaks

too high pitched for human ears,

isn't the biggest surprise.

Based on their physiology,

they shouldn't be able to hear the low frequencies.

To a biologist, the really remarkable thing about a cat's hearing

is not that it can hear the squeaks of mice,

but that it can hear human voices,

in particular, low-pitched male human voices...

Here, Marcel, come. Good boy.

...which the size of its head and its ears

therefore dictates that it shouldn't be able to hear.

It's not only the range of their hearing

that makes cats successful hunters.

Something which I think many people

don't appreciate about a cat,

which is that it has a very good sense of smell.

Everybody thinks dogs are the species with this amazing sense of smell,

and of course that is true.

But cats...

are still about a thousand times more sensitive than we are.

The area inside the nose dedicated to trapping smells

is five times larger in domestic cats than in humans.

While we have perhaps five million scent receptors,

the cat

has sixty million, or more.

What many cat owners don't appreciate

is that cats actually have two olfactory systems.

So you have the regular one

which is the same one that we have,

where the air is drawn in through the nose and over the olfactory membranes.

But also, in common with many other mammals,

cats have a thing called a vomeronasal organ,

which is another olfactory organ.

The organ itself lies between the roof of the mouth and the nostrils,

and... they use this olfactory apparatus, the vomeronasal organ

is used when sniffing other cats.

Smell and hearing are important to locate prey,

but vision provides more detailed information.

In about 7 to 14 days their eyes will open,

and they'll start to be able to see.

They won't be able to see very well until they're about four months of age,

at which point their vision will be approximately as it would for an adult.

They can hunt in the day or night,

but their eyes reveal that they prefer low light.

Cats' pupils have evolved to protect their sensitive retinas.

They also have these vertically constricting pupils,

as opposed to our round ones.

This allows their...

their pupillary size to change very quickly

from contracted to dilated

depending on what they're doing.

These well-protected eyes

look out on a world that's very different than the one we see.

Cats' vision is pretty different from our own.

They don't see as much in the way of color as we do.

They see mostly blues and greys.

They don't differentiate well between...

orange and brown and red and green,

but they have a few advantages that we don't.

They can see colors that we can't,

like ultraviolet, perfect for tracking their prey's urine trails.

And these aren't the only ways in which the cat's eyes

are adapted to hunting in the dark.

Everybody has generally seen those reflective eyes at night,

or in photos,

and that is because of...

a special area on their retina, the back of the eye,

called the tapetum lucidum.

And it acts almost like a mirror.

It's iridescent, and...

basically bounces light off of it,

so that then it has a second chance to go through the lens,

basically enabling kitties to bring more light into their vision

than is actually in the room...

and see in the dark.

The cat's night vision allows it to hunt in the dark.

But their eyes don't work well at close range.

What that means is that things, as they approach the cat,

will go out of focus.

Probably around six to eight inches away from the cat's nose

it starts to go out of focus,

and they lose binocular vision at that point.

They start seeing double,

the things that are close to them.

When the prey is close enough,

their whiskers can feel its exact location.

Whiskers are thicker than other hairs

and are full of blood vessels and sensitive nerve endings.

Each of these specialized hairs

transmits information about how fast and how far it's being bent,

allowing them to chase prey through the twists and turns of narrow tunnels,

even in total darkness.

This is Oswald.

He is neutered male purebred Ragdoll,

and he's been coming to us since he was a kitten.

The whiskers that most people are familiar with in cats

are the ones that are at the sides of their cheeks.

They also have whiskers

or vibrissae, is the other name for these,

above their eye.

Cats also have whiskers on the inside of their paws.

These whiskers also help with their spatial orientation.

It helps them to know where they can move to,

and what types of spaces.

Even the cat's tongue has its secrets.

Elegant creatures,

they don't lap up their drink like a dog.

Looking closely,

her tongue appears to corkscrew

as the liquid is drawn up.

If you've ever been licked by a cat,

you've felt an irritating, sandpaper-like rasp.

It's not the taste buds you feel,

but tiny barbs down the center of the tongue.

Cats spend about 25% of their waking hours grooming themselves.

He's actually washing himself, or trying to wash himself, on his paws.

Cats have...

papillae on their tongue that are quite rough,

which will help them with their grooming to keep their coats healthy,

and mat free.

These act like combs when the cat is grooming,

or like knives when stripping the last scraps of meat from a bone.

The cat's sense of taste is similar to ours in some ways,

because it's basically the same mammalian pattern of taste.

They taste with taste receptors on their tongues.

But in many ways it ends there.

The kinds of things that a cat's tongue is sensitive to,

are really quite different to ours.

And those differences are because this little lion

is a hunter who has evolved to need only meat in her diet.

They absolutely don't have the capacity to taste sweets.

Because they are obligate carnivores,

they really aren't meant to ingest anything that has a sweet taste to it.

So it just doesn't serve a purpose for them.

It turns out that even cat's reputation for being a finicky eater

is about being a hunter.

At first it may seem like a bad idea

for a wild creature to be picky about food,

especially an animal whose diet is so restricted.

We now know that our domestic pet cats do have nutritional wisdom.

They are capable of picking out

which of a number of diets has the best protein content,

because cats needs a great deal of protein in their diets,

far more than almost any other animal.

Um, and they also have a strategy for addressing...

potential future nutritional imbalances which is to...

go out and look for something to eat that is not the same as the last meal you had.

That's partly behind the cat's kind of notorious fussiness.

Rescued from a life of hunting and scavenging,

this cat remains very picky about the treats that she selects.

It's much more exaggerated,

much more easy to detect

in cats which have had to live on the streets, if you like,

that have had to select a balanced diet in order to survive and breed,

rather than simply being offered nutritionally complete food by their owners.

They are much fussier about what they eat

than pet cats would, if you can believe that.

Born deaf, blind and helpless,

in the wild, all that keeps them from becoming prey to larger predators,

is their mother's care.

Getting that...

can sometimes prove difficult.

Accidentally pushed out of the nest,

this kitten instinctively cries for help.

Fortunately, her mother notices.

Whether lions or leopards,

it's only the very young in most cat species who meow,

and then only to their mothers.

But domestic cats use this sound in other situations,

when they want attention.

Mostly when communicating with humans.

Come one Jesse, Jack!

Jesse...

I have a treat for you. You want that?

All meows are not equal.

Jack.

Every cat has their own.

Ying and Yang, you want some din

These are sounds that can have many meanings.

Each cat and their humans must somehow agree on definitions.

Some develop a large vocabulary.

So they'll have one meow for "I'm hungry, feed me",

and another one for "please let me out the door",

and so on.

And... these seem to be private languages that develop between the cat and the owner.

And we know this because if you record these different meows

and then play them back to different owners,

the owner of the cat, of that particular cat,

will instantly recognize them.

That's the meow he makes to be let out.

That's the one he makes when he's hungry.

But play them to other cats' owners,

even the owners of cats which have a repertoire of meows,

and they can't identify which is which.

Beyond meowing,

cats have a number of vocal signals.

Not that we always understand them.

This cat has no need to hunt for a meal,

still, the old urges are there,

and they occasionally surface in surprising ways.

Some cats make a special chattering sound when they are hunting,

or thinking how much they'd like to be.

It's not known exactly why some cats chatter.

Whether it's frustration,

anticipation of the kill,

or an attempt to lure prey by imitation.

Other sounds they make are less mysterious.

When they're quite unhappy, we can see growling and hissing.

Also certain vocalizing

that... that sounds almost basically like a caterwaul, a yowl, essentially.

That's a very unhappy and very stimulated cat.

But fortunately for us, Sybil right now is...

is very content and purring away happily.

Purring is another sound we associate with cats.

Strangely, we know little about it.

Most people think that purring is an expression of emotion

as far as the cat's concerned. The cat is happy.

And...

nine times out of ten that's true,

but it's not the reason for the purring.

It's doing it to... to try to get you,

or another cat indeed,

to do something for it.

Kittens... purr in order to get their mothers to settle down and nurse them,

and so that piece of communication goes on... is carried on into adulthood.

Large members of the cat family,

like lions and tigers, can't purr.

The roaring cats don't purr,

but some of the smaller cats purr.

I mean, in fact, the ability to roar sort of...

Uh...

produces a change in the... in the vocal apparatus,

which means that you can't purr.

Karen McComb studies animal communication in large animals,

like elephants and lions.

Then her own cat peaked her interest

in this apparently simple sound.

This came about simply because my own cat

was very adept at...

soliciting food from me,

and, in particular, he had this sort of wake-up purring routine,

where he would start giving this very insistent...

purring in the morning.

And I thought why is it that this particular purring

is so sort of unpleasant to the ear.

Why is it that it's...

it does sound urgent,

and it's so difficult to ignore.

Prof McComb compared the purrs of a number of cats,

including her own.

So this is the non-solicitation purr from my cat,

and you'll... you'll see that it's actually...

it's...

a very regular, um...

purring, classical purring type sound.

In fact, this purr was rated as one of the most pleasant of all the cats.

So, what I'm gonna do is play you the solicitation purr from my own cat,

and you should be able to hear that...

within the purr there's a sort of a slightly whinny element.

Incredibly,

Prof McComb discovered that this solicitation purr

was at a similar frequency to the cry of a human baby.

So it's got this sort of slightly manic element to it,

and if you, um... look at the screen here,

you'll see there's a dark band...

at, in his case it's a bit over 400 hertz,

but that is the sort of, um... cry...

uh...

like frequency.

And it's there...

very strongly in each of the main beats of the purr.

So that there is a frequency

that's sort of jumping out of the rest of the sign spectrum,

at the point of, um... this cry.

And the cats have somehow...

tapped into this sensory bias that we've got,

and are using it to improve the level of care they get.

Solitary hunters

who can get another species to do their bidding.

Their dual nature fascinates us.

We watch them contentedly rolling at our feet one moment,

slinking off who knows where, the next.

Unlike dogs,

cats have another life usually hidden from us.

Now, thanks to modern technology,

we are getting a glimpse into the secret lives of cats.

Studies reveal that most have a pretty defined turf,

an area that they patrol on a daily basis.

Often not much more than a few blocks.

There you go, buddy.

Off to the races.

This is Orby Jones.

Of course there are exceptions,

brave explorers who travel great distances.

This is our kitty, Kinder.

He lives with a dog, Ruby.

We've been tracking Kinder's adventures.

Sometimes they need to go no further than a neighbor

to get an extra treat.

He comes here and visits us almost every day.

Really Yes. We love him.

Sleeps with my folks. Really?

It's amazing! He sits with us...

takes his little nap and...

and we give him a piece of cheese or bacon.

Honestly, every day.

A cat's daily patrols are anything but random.

It's a way for them to mark and guard their turf.

Even if you've never seen what happens when there's a conflict over territory,

you've almost certainly heard the results.

Studies find that cats often share the same,

or overlapping territories.

They simply avoid patrolling at the same time.

Like feline timesharing.

Running into rivals isn't the only danger facing cats living on the streets.

The survival of great numbers of stray cats,

and feral cats that have never known human companionship,

proves their wild nature has been preserved.

These undomesticated domestic cats

give us the best vantage point

for understanding how

these once wild animals

adapted to life with humans.

Cats certainly are not domesticated completely.

They are... They are like little wild creatures,

and they still have the capacity to exist without us.

You would be hard-pressed to find a Maltese

or a teacup Chihuahua who could make it on its own...

on the street and forage for food

and seek shelter and reproduce and all the rest.

But cats are a whole other story.

Many cities are struggling with large populations of cats

that live all, or some of the time, on the street.

Dealing with a feral cat explosion

is often left up to concerned neighbors.

The thing that means the most is...

the feeling when you bring a cat off the street

that you see has been either lost, abandoned,

shoved aside, pregnant, because they didn't want her.

Um... Bringing that cat in,

seeing it in a home,

flourish,

respond to love and affection,

that's the best thing in the world.

We do a lot of work with the City of Toronto and other organizations,

Toronto Humane Society,

and we have to figure out how to deal with the feral cat overpopulation in the city.

Come, mew-mews.

They visit the feral cat colony,

get to know who's who and how they relate.

Come on, guys. Breakfast.

We were called to this colony by a gentleman who was feeding cats in a field,

and we were called out to help.

So when we came here, when we came to the site, we found...

way more cats than we ever imagined.

Now, there's probably 15 cats left, give or take.

When we got here, there was probably closer to 40,

45 with kittens,

and we started trap-neuter-return.

They feed them regularly,

trap them,

have their injuries treated,

and most importantly,

have them neutered.

They may be same species as the animals who live in our homes,

but if they aren't exposed to a human touch early enough,

they will remain untamable.

Cats who have not had socialization with humans

prior to 14 weeks of age,

they are much more prone to be very fearful,

um... not want to approach humans,

take a very long time to establish trust,

and are also more prone to being...

fearfully aggressive.

It's not that they can't learn to trust humans,

that capacity is still there,

and they still do retain some behavioral plasticity,

but it can be a very long road.

We do have patients who were feral cats.

Then, when they were rescued and taken in by their people,

took a matter of months to years, actually,

before they established trust with their owners.

Those who can learn to tolerate humans,

can be put up for adoption.

Like these looking as domestic as can be,

successfully adopted from a feral colony.

Cats that live without humans for too long

don't easily adapt to life with us.

One solution is to give them shelters

where they can receive medical attention

and live in relative comfort.

My name is Janet Reed, and I'm the manager here

at the here at the Number 6 Road Shelter for the Richmond Animal Protection Society.

And what we have here is about 500 cats

that we take care of...

because they're homeless.

They were cats that were born in the wild,

have never had a home,

or maybe were dumped and were living in the wild.

We trap them, we spay and neuter them,

and we make sure they have their shots and vet care,

and then we bring them in here so they have a place to be.

We put them in colonies.

If they come 10, 15 at a time, which has happened to us,

it's a lot of cats to deal with, but we keep them together.

They know each other and we don't have to adapt them to the rest of the cats.

And despite what everybody seems to think of this as a cat Club Med,

uh... cats don't necessarily always get along with each other.

When the environment enables them to, um...

they will live together and establish a hierarchy.

And generally that does mean that there's some...

some hissing and posturing and fighting for a while

until that has been established.

Then if new cats try to enter,

it's possible for them to integrate themselves,

but there will be a few tests along the way.

But then other times a new cat is completely shunned,

and doesn't manage to work their way into a colony.

Observing feral colonies

tells us about the nature of these very territorial animals

and their social lives.

Maintaining limits and alliances requires constant communication.

Messages of all kinds being sent and received,

displays of warning and acknowledgment.

One key social signal is the straight-up tail.

We think that the tail-up signal evolved from a signal that kittens use

to signal to their mothers.

They use this at weaning, and it's seen in a number of wild cat species

not just the wild cat that's the ancestor of the domestic cat.

They they're probably using this as a way of greeting their mother

when she returns with food for them.

And it may be one of the ways they have of persuading her to feed them.

But in all those other species they then stop doing it

once they reach adulthood.

Domestic cats have taken this kitten-to-mother signal

to a whole new level.

When two cats approach each other,

one may raise their tail straight up.

If the other is willing to coexist,

it will respond in the same way.

So, it's meaning two things.

It's meaning friendly intentions,

"I'm approaching you in a friendly way.

I'm not about to attack you."

And it's also acknowledging...

a difference in status, if you like.

I'm not saying that cats have a...

mental conception, and abstract conception of status,

but they clearly do need to indicate

the type of interaction they want to happen.

So what they're saying is, "I'm friendly towards you, and I acknowledge

that you are in some way bigger or smarter than I am."

Studying feral cats has given us more than new insights

into their social relations.

Comparing DNA from various species of cats,

wild, feral and domestic,

large and small,

from all over the world,

helped solve the mystery of how cats evolved

and eventually became domesticated.

So a wildcat, the ancestor of the domestic cat,

is a species called Felis silvestris.

Felis silvestris is a very broad-ranging species that...

ranges all the way from the tip of Scotland down to...

the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa,

all the way from Portugal out to the center of China.

And there are five different wild subspecies

of Felis silvestris, the wildcat.

One of those subspecies,

Felis silvestris lybica,

lived in the Near East,

and it's that subspecies that gave rise to the domestic cat.

Prof Driscoll pinpointed this part of the Mid-East

as the center where Felis silvestris lybica

gradually transformed into the familiar kitty,

Felis catus.

[birds chirping, insects buzzing]

Domestic cats of every breed,

friendly or feral,

wherever in the world you find them,

have their genesis here.

Their wildcat ancestors can still be spotted outside the cities.

But since they prefer to hunt in the dark,

it's a lot easier if you have local biologists to guide you.

Fox. Fox.

This fish farm is a popular hunting spot,

but tonight there are no wildcats to be found.

These are jungle cats,

the largest member of the family that includes both the domestic cat

and their ancestor, the wildcat.

They're drawn here by the promise of an easy meal.

Last night, on some fishponds here bordering the Jordan,

we say Felis chaus, the jungle cat.

And we saw how they're becoming habituated,

they're accustomed to human presence.

And they're following a path similar to what the wildcats did,

where... they're moving in out of the wild,

and they're utilizing human habitats,

and human resources in a way that's probably very similar

to what the wildcats would've done thousands of years ago

in their early stages of domestication.

The first step in cat domestication

happened here thanks to a unique combination of a small wildcat

that could tolerate people,

and an abundance of wild grains.

This is the habitat where...

plants and animal were domesticated

prior to what we see now.

Something around 15 000, 16 000 years ago

till 10 000 years ago,

people were hunter-gatherers.

They had enough to collect, and use it for their own use.

Right.

Once people became settled,

that's when cats began to move into that environment,

and began to adapt themselves to that human environment,

and then from there they eventually evolved

into the domestic animals that we have today.

So in that sense you can make... you know...

you can say that cat domesticated human.

- He came over to...

to where the humans were, and took advantage of what they...

Of the environment that we have made.

Some people think we domesticated cats

so they could control the rodents that ate our grain.

Prof Driscoll doesn't agree.

He doesn't believe it was mice and rats that drew them into our homes,

it was our garbage.

The scene we see here has played out here in Jerusalem

and other cities of the ancient Near East

many thousands of times over the last tens of millennia.

You have cats that are making use of human waste and scraps,

essentially being fed by people.

It's by this process that the wildcat was brought into human civilizations

and developed over time into the domestic cat that we have today.

Cats found our settlements a profitable place to hang out.

So, do cats catch mice and rats?

Yeah, certainly they do,

and some of them are not bad at it,

but that's not why they were domesticated.

They were domesticated accidentally.

When people at a later age

decided they really wanted to get rid of mice and rats,

they used dogs as specific hunters of vermin.

But what did we gain from this arrangement if it wasn't vermin control?

Cats didn't have a purpose then,

they don't have a purpose now. I'm not sure they'll ever have a purpose.

But they're good pets,

and that seems to have been enough to bring them all the way around the world.

Perhaps we'll never know,

but those initial interspecies contacts

grew into admiration and more.

The ancient Egyptians adored and even worshipped their cats.

Egypt... was the first place where cats were bred in captivity.

It was a place where domestic cats lived in high enough density

that they're well represented in artwork and...

archeological remains throughout common people's houses.

When cats were first domesticated,

probably for half of their domestication,

maybe the first 5 000 years,

they would've all looked like wildcats.

That is the striped tabby.

That's the wild-type coat color.

The first changes in the cat's coat color

were probably the appearance of black cats,

which is just in fact the absence of color.

The coat goes black because the genes creating the tabby pattern

don't work properly anymore.

And that probably occurred in Egypt early on.

So you find very few cats, or records of cats,

outside of early Egypt at that time.

However, the city of Alexandria was a very large port city in the ancient world,

and cats were able to spread from ancient Egypt

throughout...

all of Europe and North Africa

in a very brief period of time.

And so domestic cats boarded ships

that would carry them from their Mid-Eastern birthplace

to every continent on the planet.

As they spread around the globe,

new coat colors appeared.

One of them, closely linked to, of all things,

the Vikings.

Somewhere along the line

some population of Vikings decided they liked orange cats.

Why orange cats were favored is not clear.

They're not any better mousers,

they're not any more adept at living on boats.

But what you find is that the frequency of orange cats

is higher where the Vikings were trading.

Ginger or orange cats

are still most common exactly in those areas

where the Vikings most frequently made landfall.

Over time, new coat colors appeared and spread.

Most often by ship.

I think one of the best coat-color variations that we know about,

where there is an association between trade routes and a coat color,

is with the blotched tabby.

And we know that that mutation arose in Great Britain in the early 1800s.

That was the beginning both of modern cat breeding

and the cat show.

Cat breeding has been going on for over a century now,

of actually breeding true,

so crossing like with like, forming breeds which...

essentially where the offspring looked just like the parents.

And these have been essentially formed

from a number of different street cats

from different parts of the world.

Unlike dogs that were bred for a wide range of jobs

and so come in all different sizes and shapes,

cats didn't have any special tasks to accomplish.

And the variation has really just been in appearance.

Some of it's the head shape.

Obviously, you have some of the breeds, like the Persians,

with the very flattened face.

You have a great number of variations of coat color and length.

So many of these breeds are really superficially different

from your average pet cat,

rather than being...

very different functionally.

Some of us prefer a particular coat color,

thinking it's linked to certain behaviors.

Many believe that orange cats are easygoing and friendly,

while white cats are lazy or shy,

and calicos are thought to be feisty or difficult.

Calicos are... are somewhat renowned for their... their temperaments.

They make wonderful, wonderful pets,

but they don't tend to adjust very well to new environments and new people.

But the connection between genes, coat color and behavior

is far from clear.

There is some genetic link.

The genes haven't been isolated, so nobody knows for sure.

But the hows and whys of temperament are increasingly important.

Cats are instinctively solitary predators

who patrol the hunting ground around their homes.

Now we want them to stay indoors,

not hunt, and to live with other animals.

Perhaps the most serious misconception that people have of their cats,

at least as far as its impact on the cat is concerned,

is this idea that...

cats get along,

that... that having one cat is good,

that having two cats could not be anything but better.

Now it may be better for the owner,

but... the likelihood is that it won't be better for the cats.

That, uh, if they're not introduced to one another very carefully...

then those two cats will end up being...

more stressed for the rest of their lives

than they would've been if they lived apart.

For every household where cats happily coexist,

there are many others where our pets suffer

because of the proximity of rivals.

Living with other cats is not the most difficult demand

we are suddenly placing on the instincts of our favorite pets.

There's no doubt we love them,

but there are some behaviors that most of us could do without.

Where we once took pride in their talents as hunters,

now we are ashamed of their seemingly ferocious nature.

It's certainly true that cats have been getting bad press recently

in terms of their role as hunters,

as surplus killers, as animals which go out and kill for the fun of it,

as... as people would have it.

Firstly, they're not doing it for the fun of it.

They're doing it because...

it's a piece of very instinctive behavior

that they've inherited from their wild ancestors.

And more than that... during domestication,

we've actually encouraged them to continue to do that.

And there is concern about the long-term effects

of our cats on wildlife populations.

However, Bradshaw thinks that our pets are only a small part of the problem.

He believes a larger part may be due to feral cats.

But nevertheless, a dead bird is a dead bird.

I think you have to admit that cats are doing something which is unnecessary.

It may not be permanently damaging to the populations,

but if... if you are concerned for the welfare of wildlife,

and many people are,

then cats are not really doing the right thing.

A lot of slaughter or a little?

Can't we just eliminate it by keeping our cats inside

where they will also be safe from predators,

fights and traffic?

There's a big debate

on whether people should keep their cats indoors or outdoors

and certainly outdoors

will provide the cat with more environmental enrichment

in terms of being able to explore the outdoor environment.

The problem with being an outdoor cat

is that there are significantly more health risks out there,

so they are more likely to get attacked by other animals,

they're more likely to get into fights with other cats,

they can get hit by cars.

Asking our cats to stay indoors

is not as straight forward as it seems.

We expect them to be happy,

and the reality is because they are hunters,

they need to have stimulation,

they need to be doing things,

and what's happening now is we're starting to recognize

that they're anxious or bored in their indoor environment.

For thousands of years we had a mutual understanding,

a contract.

Suddenly we want to rewrite the terms.

We are asking these territorial creatures

to tolerate other animals,

live happily inside,

and abandon hunting.

We're expecting the cat to make a big change

from being essentially a predator

that we kept in our homes

and got some companionship from as a secondary function,

to... being an animal which is first and foremost a companion,

and really nothing else.

We don't want it to go hunting.

I think the cat,

if it's going to persist as a... as a popular companion animal,

is going to have to change in some way.

The key to the survival of the domestic cat

may already be in their genes.

If their wild nature is hardwired,

so is their adaptability.

It's made our 10 000-year-long journey together possible.

They've thrived under our thatched roofs,

in our palaces, barns and apartments,

and it will guarantee these little lions

a comfortable place in our lives for a long time to come.