Nictitate = wink

Your cat possesses one more eyelid (per eye) than you do. This is the haw eyelid, or nictitating membrane. (The verb nictitate means “to win...

A soft-focus world

vision is superior to ours. Their amazing ability to sense motion (obviously something that would be highly useful to a predator seeking pr...

Focusing on details

Cats amaze people with their ability to focus in on some tiny object—say, a gnat or a tiny lizard crawling on the fence. The retina of a cat...

Can they see in color?

eyes have two types of sensory cells: rods sense shape and cones sense color. (The old memory trick for sorting out which is which is to re...

The vacuum—friend or foe?

groom the cat. This is amazing to watch, but if your cat will tolerate it, wonderful, for it is a tidy way to groom loose and dead hair o...

Making eye contact, George Burns style

human — not an intense stare (which intimidates cats) but unbroken eye contact involving a slow blink (think of comedian George Burns). The...

Cat alarms?

burning house with no thought for us. We tend to assume that the only threat to a burglar would be that he might trip over the cat in the d...