Tortie temporal theory

A few years ago, I became step-dad to Megan's two cats, Cookie and Mocha. Well, this is my personal perspective, but I suspect that the cats simply see me as an additional (for want of a better word) dogsbody. I'm usually first awake in the mornings so am therefore prime candidate for duties as commissionaire, butler, concierge, waiter, doorman, doorman and dunnekin attendant. Oh, and not forgetting doorman.

Cookie and Mocha are sisters, which may or may not have a bearing on their combined behaviours. However, if I am reading things correctly, the cats only really have common purpose at meal times, and at other moments are content to ignore, taunt or use each other as a test swab to see what it smells like outside. I am particularly careful to avoid nose contact after this latter interaction.

I am aware of the common myth that cats have nine lives, which seems to date from Ancient Egypt, and is explained nowadays as a reference to their ability to escape tight scrapes due to their heightened senses and lightning fast reflexes. Whilst not particularly qualified to comment upon feline behaviour, I do have another theory (let's face it, it would be a short blogpost if I didn't).

Wherever I walk in our home there will be a cat under my feet. Initially, I put this down to coincidence or happenstance, but the longer it went on, the more I became convinced that there was another mechanism at work. Now, I will readily admit that I am of an age where I arrive in a room and don't always know why I'm there, let alone whether to turn left, right or go straight on. So, intriguingly, how do the cats know and thereby be in my way?

Last night there was a full moon and also a partial lunar eclipse, enough to make any cat a bit jumpy, eh? And indeed, when we returned home from an evening meal with Megan's folks, there was something decidedly up with Cookie and Mocha. It seemed that open warfare had been declared in the few hours we'd been away, and now there were ambushes and pawsicuffs breaking out every few minutes. It wasn't a situation which leant itself to cosy feline snuggling on the sofa, let alone to administering prescribed medications.

Of course, there was also another situation in play last night, the change from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time, when the clocks go back an hour for some archaic purpose possibly linked to deliberately messing around with a cat's mealtime.

I am now wondering if cats have an ability to see into the future. Nothing mind-blowing like coming up with the lottery numbers (though that would be useful for paying the vet's bill), predicting the share price of Nestle Purina Pet Care, or when the next visit to the V. E. T. might be. No, something a little more short term, from a few seconds to an hour, and within their immediate vicinity. This would allow for avoidance of immediate existential harm from our gentle and kind postie, or detection of imminent (and starvation-inducing) clock changes, or accurately knowing where I am going to be in a second's time when even I don't know yet!

There could be a research paper in this... or perhaps just some used cat litter.