365Caws is now in its 14th year of publication, and was originally intended to end after 365 days. It has sometimes been difficult for me to find new material, particularly during the winter months, but now as I enter my own twilight years, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to provide daily posts. It is my hope that along the way I may have inspired someone to a greater curiosity about the natural world. If so, I can rest, content in the knowledge that my work here has been done.
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Cat Nap
Day 98: Years ago, I saw a cartoon of two cats sprawled on the back of a couch. One was saying to the other, "I just don't know how I can get by on only seventeen and a half hours of sleep a day." I was amused by the accuracy of the observation, but it raised a question in my mind: How can a cat who spends 90 percent of life relaxing or otherwise idle still have the muscular vitality to leap three or four feet into the air to catch a fly and then take off running at high speed without a warm-up? It made me painfully aware (perhaps literally so) that as chemical machines go, the human body is astonishingly inefficient. Could I slam-dunk a basketball immediately upon getting out of bed? Could I run a mile at full tilt without first stretching? Certainly not now, not at this age, and probably not when I was in peak form forty years ago. Tippy is no spring chicken. I see signs of his age creeping into his eyes and posture, yet he does dashes like a kitten. Maybe the secret lies in that seventeen and a half hours of sleep he gets each day. Maybe I should give that a try.
Labels:
cat physiology,
Tippy
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