100 Cats Who Changed Civilization (3 page)

Physicist Sir Isaac Newton was one of history’s greatest mathematicians and theorists. During his lifetime he made numerous contributions to science, including developing the laws of celestial mechanics, codeveloping calculus, and conducting groundbreaking work on everything from the nature of light spectra to measurements of the speed of sound. But few realize that Newton was also a pet lover—or that sometimes his numerous animal friends could drive him to distraction. For instance, he once suffered an emotional breakdown when a favorite dog knocked over a candle on his desk, burning some of his important research notes.

His dealings with an annoying cat yielded happier results. The world’s felines (and canines, for that matter) owe an everlasting debt of gratitude to this overbearing pet, whose name is lost to history. According to legend, it constantly interrupted Newton with its demands to be let in and out of the house. Frustrated, the scientist quickly designed and implemented a solution—the pet door. Today, every feline blessed with the ability to enter and leave a room without troubling his or her human friends has Newton (and his restless charge) to thank.

TEE CEE

THE CAT WHO PREDICTED
SEIZURES

Were it not for their quirky, independent personalities, cats might be naturals for all sorts of jobs usually done by service dogs. Keenly observant and alert to the slightest changes in their surroundings, felines could make wonderful guardians. So far, however, they’ve firmly rejected any such callings.

All save for one.

The cat in question is named Tee Cee, and he has earned international fame for his uncanny ability to predict epileptic seizures—a skill he’s used to ease the suffering of his grateful owner. Ironically, the English feline had endured quite a bit at the hands of a human, who stuffed Tee Cee and his littermates in a box and tossed it in a river. He was rescued and taken to an adoption center, where he became the pet of Michael Edmonds, a Sheffield man who suffers from an extremely dangerous and unpredictable form of epilepsy. The disorder causes sudden, violent seizures that strike without warning. The problem is so serious that Edmonds can’t leave home unescorted, for fear of having an attack at some unexpected time or place.

Edmonds’s new cat provided almost providential
help. Tee Cee took a great deal of interest in his new owner—particularly, it seemed, when he was about to seize. This was remarkable, because Edmonds displays no symptoms prior to attacks. Or at least, none detectable by humans. “We noticed that Tee Cee began staring at my stepfather prior to a seizure and then ran to my mother to let her know all is not well, acting as an early warning system,” Edmonds’s stepdaughter, Samantha Laidler, told the BBC. “Once assistance arrives, Tee Cee doesn’t leave Michael’s side until he regains consciousness, and his warnings have proved invaluable to the family.”

The behavior was so unexpected that it took a while for family members to make the connection between Tee Cee’s staring sessions and Edmonds’s epileptic fits. But once the link was established, the fame of the former stray spread far and wide. In 2006 he was nominated for a prestigious Rescue Cat of the Year Award—quite an accomplishment for a feline who was once, literally, thrown away as garbage.

CC

THE CAT WHO WAS A CLONE

This cleverly named creature won fame for being both the most unique and un-unique of cats. Born in late 2001 in a blaze of publicity, CC (short for Copy Cat) was the world’s first cloned feline.

The mostly gray calico was the crowning achievement of a research program originally established to clone dogs. In 1997, millionaire entrepreneur John Sperling bankrolled a roughly $4 million effort to develop a replacement for his beloved mutt, Missy. After years of work on what came to be known as the Missyplicity Project, scientists at Texas A&M University learned one key fact about cloning canines: It’s hard. Cats, however, are relatively easier.

Emphasis on
relatively
. The group endured eighty-seven failures before producing CC. In 2000, Sperling and others founded a company to offer the process to grieving pet owners who pined for duplicates of their dearly departed friends—and could pay somewhere in the middle five figures to get them.

The birth of CC seemed to validate the business model of the company that created her. Bereaved but well-heeled former cat owners could turn to an organization whose name, Genetic Savings & Clone, sounded like something from an old
Outer
Limits
episode. The company ramped up its program to something approaching mass production. Clients with an eye toward the future could PetBank some of their cat’s premortem DNA for future use in the Nine Lives Extravaganza cloning program. Then, when the original pet passed away, scientists at the company’s state-of-the-art Madison, Wisconsin, laboratory could use that genetic information to create an embryo to be carried by a surrogate cat mom.

Is it possible to put a price tag on such a miracle? Actually, yes. Cat owners can make a deposit in the PetBank for around $1,000, and get a copy of their kitty for roughly $32,000.

Unfortunately for the company’s backers, not enough people wanted carbon copies of their deceased kitties. Genetic Savings & Clone went out of business in late 2006. Interestingly, even though the firm trafficked in clones, it couldn’t guarantee that the cats it created would be exact copies of the originals. Nature, it seems, hates to repeat itself. Though the company’s clones carried the same genetic code as the original animals, environmental factors sometimes introduced slight—or not-so-slight—variations. For instance, while CC is an exact genetic duplicate of her DNA donor (a calico tabby named Rainbow), her fur is a different color.

ACOUSTIC KITTY

THE CAT THE CIA TURNED
INTO A BUG

The mysterious world of espionage reached its pinnacle during the darkest days of the Cold War. As the Soviet Union and the West struggled for worldwide military and economic supremacy, no intelligence-gathering scheme seemed too wild or harebrained if it offered a chance, however small, of gaining vital information.

Yet, even in the context of those desperate times, the CIA’s plan to turn a stray cat into an electronic intelligence gathering platform still sounds rather, well,
nuts
.

The project was revealed to the public in 2001, when it was mentioned in a passel of heavily censored documents declassified by the CIA’s Science and Technology Directorate. According to experts, the scheme, hatched during the 1960s, was to wire felines with listening equipment so they could eavesdrop on conversations. The prototype, called Acoustic Kitty, was surgically implanted with microphones, batteries, and a radio receiver, along with an antenna running up its tail. The $16 million project came to an abrupt end, however, during field trials. The bionic cat was released near a park and was promptly run over by a taxi.

It was a merciful finale for the poor creature.
Perhaps God—or Mother Nature, or simply fate—realized that a bunch of idiots were tampering with biology’s most elegant design and decided to stage an intervention.

ALL BALL

THE CAT WHO PLAYED
WITH A GORILLA

Scientists once believed that the ability to make and use tools was a skill reserved only for humans. Now they’ve realized that creatures from chimps to certain kinds of birds can master this trick. So are there
any
behaviors that set us apart from the “lower” animals? Perhaps our inclination to keep other species as pets makes us unique.

Or perhaps not.

If the behavior of Koko the gorilla is any guide, other creatures crave this sort of companionship, too. The Woodside, California, resident, born in 1976, is world famous for her “speaking” ability. The scientists who care for her assert that she’s learned more than 1,000 American Sign Language symbols and uses them to communicate everything from her physical needs to her moods.

In 1984, Koko reportedly told her keepers that she’d like to have a pet cat for her birthday present. Shortly thereafter, a litter of abandoned kittens was brought in for her to inspect. After carefully examining each one, she chose a tailless gray male who she named All Ball. Though Koko was of course far larger and much stronger than her fragile new charge, she treated him with great gentleness.
All Ball was cuddled, kissed, and allowed to ride around on Koko’s back like a baby gorilla.

Sadly, All Ball escaped from the compound in December 1984 and was killed by a car. Koko was inconsolable. She cried for days and tried to express her loss to her keepers through sign language. When someone asked what happened to her pet, Koko responded by signing “Sleep cat.” And when she was shown a picture of a kitten that looked like All Ball, she signed, “Cry, sad, frown.”

Can a gorilla really communicate using language? Maybe, or maybe not. Some scientists wonder if Koko truly comprehends what she’s doing, or if, perhaps, the words she uses are merely wishful thinking on the part of the handlers who interpret for her. But what’s harder to dispute is the depth of the gorilla’s reaction to her small friend’s death. Koko may or may not be able to sign the word for grief, but she certainly seems to feel it.

SCHRÖDINGER’S
CAT

THE MOST ENIGMATIC CAT IN
OUR UNIVERSE. OR ANY UNIVERSE,
FOR THAT MATTER