From at cat's perspective, (and what other perspective is worth contemplating?), Easter is a huge improvement compared to the danish Fastelavn, a yearly carnival taking place a week before Lent, where you masquerade and hit the cat off the barrel. In earlier days, you may have used a real cat, nowadays you use a dummy. Be that as it may, it is still brutal watching small kids pounding the barrel to get to the cat. You can feel their primordial murderous instincts brought up to the surface with a little encouragement from their loving elders. In Easter by contrast, all you get is a peaceful egg hunt and the occasional rabbit or witch hunt. No more of the ugly cat bashing, at any rate.
During this Easter, I had occasion to investigate what cats like to watch on tv. Up til now, I was under the impression, they couldn't care less about tv. Not even the most exciting series like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones, could stir any visible response from my magnanimous and impervious darlings. But then I did something I usually refrain from, namely, watching a nature program. It was a norwegian program about natural life in some remote part of the world, forgot which one it was. The scenery was breath taking as I had precious little air to my disposal, sitting as I was on my stationary bike while watching. Then came some nice yellow birds on screen and a strange thing happened: Norsky attacked the screen, and when he couldn't find no bird nor the banana tree on screen, he went looking for the birds behind the screen. That was pretty shocking to witness on the one hand, but also quite intriguing. The question was whether Norsky is just dumb or is he in fact clever, going after the televised birds. After all, it takes some perceptual acuity to discover the two dimensional birds on the screen to begin with. So I did a little research online and discovered that a good many good people out there have had similar experiences to mine. Cats seems to respond only to a narrow range of noises, usually sudden, high pitch sounds. But what they really like watching is birds on the loose. On Youtube there are several specially made cat-tv vids for cats, all containing delicious birds chirping, hopping around and munching grain. I showed Norsky one of these vids on a tablet screen and bingo - Norsky tried again to fetch the birds from the screen. I had to arrest him to save the poor screen.
This tale is a sobering memento to all you cat people out there: Your cat could in fact enjoy some home entertainment, if you just find the right stuff for it. Doing otherwise is tantamount to spiritual deprivation. So let this Easter be the turning point in your cats life and let the good times start rolling. Bonnes Paques to all!
