Day 85: I once saw a cartoon of two cats sprawled on a couch, in which one says to the other, "I don't know how I can get by on just seventeen and a half hours sleep," and Skunk and Tip are both prime examples of the truth of that assertion. They spend most daylight hours sacked out, and a fair portion of the night as well. If you're a cat owner, you know what I mean: they spend 90 percent their time sleeping, with the occasional wake-break for eating or using the litter box. Cats are professional loafers, no doubt about it.
So here I am, on the third day of a three-month physical fitness challenge which is demanding about three hours a day of aerobic exercise to achieve my goal, and a question which has puzzled me for some time has arisen once again. How, I want to know, does a cat who does nothing but loaf maintain the muscle tone necessary to leap to the top of a counter or chair? What cardiovascular secret is there in a cat's physique which allows it to race like fury around the house for half an hour without getting even marginally short of breath? All you weekend warriors out there...you know how they're always warning you about jackrabbit starts? A cat can go from total inactivity to the equivalent of running a marathon without even a fifteen-second warmup and never risks tearing a muscle or falling over with cramps.
Snoozy Suzy here (Skunk) stays in shape by being lazy. Why doesn't it work that way for me?
Which is why Koreans, particularly older women, believe that medicine distilled from cats (think cat wine) is beneficial for the joints and is often used as a tonic for arthritis. Cat wineries are still common in South Korea. I don't know if the elixir works but I assume it must because the practice goes on.
ReplyDelete