Julian's Second Update

[Pajarita]

What worried me about the picture is how close the cat is to the bird and how intensely it's looking at it. All it needs is for the bird to suddenly open his wings for the cat to instinctively 'paw' at it and give it cat scratch fever -which, by the way, would NEVER in a million years be diagnosed as such if the bird comes down with the infection.

[Roonil Wazlib]

Explanation behind the pic is that my cat got on the ledge and immediately realised he couldn't balance properly because he didn't have the space to spread out because the bird was in the way.

I snapped the pic as he was using all his power and brain process to stay on the ledge - personally, I don't view the photo as my cat "Intensely looking" at the parrot. IMO he's not even looking at the parrot. I don't know what your experience is around cats, but that is not a cat with his attention caught, ready to pounce or swipe, - when cats intensely look at something, they are focused, faced on, and following the thing with their eyes. In that photo, that is a cat that realises he has made a mistake, and is looking for a way out. Seconds later he turned wobbly around and stood on the light you can see behind him (and broke it ) and if he hadn't, there was NO way I was going to leave him up there with the parrot because of the reasons you stated. This whole scene literally played out over about five seconds. I know that they can't be fully trusted - i am not delusional.

As wolf said: "need to be around our birds enough to be familiar enough with them to be bored with them and to find them generally uninteresting."
I think you misunderstand me when i say I let the parrot and cats in together. I DON"T DO THIS OFTEN, nor do I often let them get this close to each other - usually Julain will sit with me, and the cats will be snoozing on the end of the bed. I don't have them out often together like this anyway, just often enough so the cats don't find him interesting enough to want to "play" or "hunt" with.

I don't want to fight about this - we each have our own opinions. And that is okay - but like i said before, I feel it's safest to have a little interaction now to save a malling in the future if i kept them separated and then somehow they managed to get out together. They cats wouldn't be "Bord" or "Desentized" to him, as they are today, and that would be his death right then and there.

[Wolf]

Here I thought that I had said all that I had wanted to say about the cat and bird picture, but I was apparently in error.

So here goes...

It does not look to e as if this cat is thinking a whole lot about the bird as he is clearly uncomfortable and off balance, look at his feet and this is very obvious, or at least I think so. My initial reaction to the photo was that I hoped that the cat did not slip as he could seriously injure the bird if he did. A cat trying to keep from falling will grab onto anything at all in the attempt to not fall and that normally means full use of the claws. That is the danger to the bird posed by this cat at the time the picture was taken, and it was, a very real and present danger. Until just now, I did not know how the picture came into being and was hoping that it happened in the manner that was just described to us and not one in which either the cat or bird were placed where they are in the picture.
As dangerous as the circumstances actually were it was a chance encounter and really a fluke that the picture could have even been taken.

Going by Pajarita's comments, I don't think she is trying to cause a ruckus, I don't think that she noticed the gat's feet and how they are placed or how tightly it is clinging to the ledge. She is just concerned for the bird. By the way these last few sentences is why I went into such detail about what I see in the picture. Some of it is easy to miss or overlook and I thought a description of what I see in it might prove helpful.

[Roonil Wazlib]

Yeah, it was a complete fluke that I had my phone out, ready to go, if I didn't have it ready to take a picture within two seconds, I wouldn't have taken the picture. And as soon as i snapped the pic he turned around and got on the light and i got him down.

And yeah, with the danger of him falling would have put Julian in harms way, which is definitely why I wouldn't have left him up there. I was actually sitting on the loo with the cat out of the room when he came in and I was on the toilet when he jumped up :/ that ended quick XD I had no intention of them being up there together like that.

[liz]

Liz, your story warms my heart. Really wonderful to hear. If I could give Fancy a high five and a scratch behind the ears I totally would. XD

She would have loved that. She was as social as a dog and when someone came over she would come from where ever to see who it was. She got feline corona as a kitten and was on interferon all her life. The vet was amaze that she even made it to an adult. She would have been 19 this year and though feeble she kept on keeping on until she got the tumor in her mouth. She was so old and I could not let her suffer surgery at her age. I had to let her go. The vet was good and she felt no pain. I know it was the right thing to do for her but I really miss her.

[Pajarita]

I actually have a bit of experience with cats. I've never had less than 7 for the last 15 years or so -had 12 for many years with the most been 26 at one time, all indoors, and have 9 right now which soon will be 10 (as a matter of fact, on the 12th) and have managed a shelter with 30 cats for 6 years and feral colonies since 1999. Cats can walk on a wire without a problem so I doubt that bar was giving him any trouble. I had a blind one that used to sleep on the top wire of the door of a large dog crate - we never could figure out how she kept her balance while asleep but she did.

[Wolf]

I guess that some cats are better at the balancing act than others. I currently have 7 indoor cats, well mostly indoor as 5 of them go outside to a fully enclosed pen that I built for them, during good weather. Still this cat was afraid of falling, which is easy to tell if you look at the feet. Perhaps it was due to the bird being so close or maybe just inexperienced on such a narrow place, I really can't say much about why. I know that cats can do some pretty amazing balancing tricks, for lack of a better term.

[JessiMuse]

Well Paj, I believe that like humans, a cat's balencing skills comes with practice. Her cat might not have as much practice as those strays. Kinda like how birds have to practice flying to get really good? They don't become skilled flyers right when they leave the nest.

[Pajarita]

I guess practice does make perfect but cats are anatomically built for balance so they are kind of born with the ability... It starts in the way their shoulders and collarbones are placed so that their feet are aligned to walk in a perfect line to their long muscular tail... but it's their outstanding vestibular system that makes them exceptional and what allows them to twist in the air and fall on their feet! Most mammals have it, humans included, but none as perfect as cats. Now, this doesn't mean that there are no clumsy cats because there are! I've had two myself but, in both cases, their problem was with depth or distance perception (they would jump from point A to B and miscalculate the distance) and in both cases it was because of poor vision. But, incredibly enough, the blind one had no such problem! Well, she would not blindly jump, of course, but she would come running down the stairs and turn about half an inch from the wall! How she figured out where the wall was, I don't know...

[JessiMuse]

You know, I made a long-ish post about how the same can be argued with birds, and about how my currently unweaned cockatiel had trouble with his aim when it came to flying at first and got better over time, but then the post disappeared. So I'm gonna say this:

Cats are not born able to walk, let alone jump up to high places. They are born blind, deaf, and would have to crawl before they gain the strength in their legs. So while they may be born with the ability to balance, they still have to practice, in order to become skilled at it. If a cat doesn't have enough opportunities to practice, I don't think they would be as good at it as cats who have the experience. Just like how birds that are clipped before they're weaned won't be as good as flying as birds that have stayed flighted long enough for their skill to develop.

On top of that, the cat in the picture looks fairly young to me, and that might have a factor in how well a cat can balance. Balance might not even be the issue. It's possible that when the cat jumped on there, it just couldn't get a good grip once it jumped up there, and was focusing more on keeping it's feet from slipping than balancing.

As for the blind stray cat: when you're born without one of the five senses, you spend your entire life learning how to get by without it. That cat was most likely born blind, and so he finds other ways to get around. I've also heard a story where a blind man developed a bat-like sense of hearing, and could detect objects based on echoes. Though that is not a trait within all organisms, it is something to consider. Cats can be quite an enigma, sometimes.

The problem with cats and birds is that cats haven't been domesticated as long as dogs have, so you can't quite train them like dogs. They're more in tune with their wild instincts than some dogs are. As long as you're there to separate them, and they're at least a safe distance from each other, than they should be ok, but be prepared for anything, because anything can happen.