This column originally was published in the Tribune on Feb. 9, 2004.
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Angel used to love to watch television. This is not unusual in cats, and for some time now there have been videos available, made especially for cats. I even see them advertised in the New Yorker magazine.
His owner told me about this during Angel's annual physical exam. But she said Angel now seems to have lost interest in television. I told her I pretty much did too, several years ago. Too many commercials.
I don't think the commercials turned Angel off. I think he just came to realize that, as interesting as TV could be, it just held no relevance for his life. We speculated as to whether Angel actually made sense of what he was seeing, and realized they were images of actual things, or if he just liked the changing, moving light and dark patterns.
Vision is more complicated than you may think. We all (cats, dogs, and people) have cells in the retinas of our eyes that are especially sensitive to horizontal motion. The retinas of a cat's eyes are especially rich in these cells, which probably explains why they are so fascinated by things that move, like mice. We also have other retinal cells that are sensitive to vertical lines - like trees - and horizontal lines - like the horizon, or level ground, or the surface of lakes. Those things are important to us in staying oriented as we walk and run through our world.
The image that we (dogs, cats, humans, and other animals) see is also more complicated than the image on the screen of a TV set. When we look at something, our eyes actually scan back and forth and up and down, gathering information. We pick up on the things that are important to us.
We may subconsciously add things that we expect to see. Have you ever looked at an old friend who shaved off a mustache after many years, and not even noticed? And we may miss things that we are not primed to notice. A city dweller may look right at a deer in the woods and not see it. The brain takes all the information from the eyes, from the other senses, and from memory, and creates the virtual image that we "see," consisting only of patterns of nerve impulses. And it continually updates this image as things change.
I think it may be that what Angel saw on the TV screen, as captivating as it was to his cat brain, never acquired any relevance to his day-to-day life, as have the images of Bella, his feline "sister," and Sugar, his canine "brother." He couldn't touch or smell those things on the TV screen. He gradually lost interest. His owner said she was not unhappy about this.
She said she was tired of fighting with Angel for the remote anyway.
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For those of you who remember the column about our daughter's dog, Bob, who was afraid of the automatic water dish, I have an update. I am breathing easier. No lawsuit so far, my daughter is speaking to me and Bob is getting better slowly, though still afraid of that gurgling sound.
So I suggested a new treatment. I instructed my daughter to have her husband Ed demonstrate for Bob the safety of the contraption by getting down on the floor on his hands and knees and lapping up some water out of it himself. I'll let you know if this helps.
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Roen is a retired Clarkston veterinarian whose columns were published weekly in the Lewiston Tribune for more than 30 years. He may be contacted at jazzvet@cableone.net.
