Liz, the lastest Larry rescue pet

 

Larry, the Downing Street Prime Cat, has a new rescue human called Liz. It is his latest attempt to find a pet worthy to live in Downing St.

It's been really hard to find one that hasn't got behaviour problems. It started well with Dave, who seemed to understand his role as companion animal to Larry. 

The only problem was that there were three in the relationship - Cleggie being the third. Admittedly even Cleggie seemed to realise this menage a trois wasn't working out so he left for the USA.

Larry and Dave settled down well - until Dave disappeared. So next time Larry tried to find a better rescue and came up with Theresa. She had a taste for leather trousers, and two unfortunate human pals, but she too disappeared.

The worst pet of all was Boris. There were terrible behaviour problems - drinking in number 10, caterwauling in the  Downing St flat, lack of truth in the meows. It was chaos and, to make everything worse, a dog with a personality disorder.

Now Larry is trying again. Will Liz become the purrfect pet? 

I can only cross the digits on my front paws and hope.

What my ears hear....

 

My ears are the amazing. I can hear more from low to high- pitched sounds than any other warm-blooded animal that human scientists have tested. My hearing range is remarkable.

At the low range my hearing is about what would be expected from a small animal. But what is unexpected is the high pitched sounds that I can hear.  I can hear the tiniest little squeaks of small rodents and insects. 

What usually happens to animal hearing is that the higher an animal can hear, the less it can hear at lower pitch.  But that's not happened to us cats. We can hear low and we can hear high.

It's obviously why we need to hear high pitched sounds. These are the sounds in the undergrowth that alert us to mice, rats and other rodents. These are our prey in the wild.

But why do we need to hear the relatively low sounds? That may be because we have a dual role in life. We are hunters and predators but we are also prey to larger animals. We may need to hear the low sounds to keep us safe from animals like coyotes and dogs. 

We are both prey and predator.