Fluffy the CatFluffy was an independent feline capable of creating havoc with the furniture by stretching her claws on the fabric and pulling the strings of sewed couch material to shreds. Her favorite moments were when our daughter, Susan, would call her and sing the song "The little old lady from Pasadena." Fluffy would sing to that tune with loud purrs, whines, and meows. The only way to shut her down was to stop singing.She liked food that had the distinct flavor of fish. Dry food was not her bailiwick, as she rejected most of them unless a fish flavor was present. 
Purring a contented sound after eating she headed for a window sill to rest and think
about capturing a bird or two. Resting quietly on the sill she watched for a while,
twitching her whiskers, and then gave up the idea. We enjoyed her antics
when she found an empty paper bag to hide in. Her idea was to attack it
by scratching and pollinating the inside with her paws to make a lot of noise.Her delicate whiskers
"Cats have three specialized sensory whiskers."
Mystical whiskers, the most prominent, are located on either side of her
muzzle and were used mostly in the dark when her eyes were not as effective
visually. Her mystical whiskers sensed a prey when moving in the
dark. The whiskers would respond to a slight air pressure change; thus preventing
her from bumping into objects or establishing the exact position of a prey.
Another set of her whiskers were the superciliary whiskers
located above her eyes, perhaps placed there to enhance her facial expressions.
The third set were the genal whiskers, genealogically located
to the rear of the her cheek area. All feline's whiskers are specialized sensory
hairs with an extreme sensitivity to air pressure changes due to the proximity
of the object.Fluffy was able to change the position of her whiskers depending upon what she was doing. When she was crouching outside the house her whiskers were elongated at 90 degrees to her head. When she started to walk she tilted them forward to aid in her sensing ability. When we touched her whiskers her eyes blinked, a natural parallelism of mind over matter functioning synchronously together. She didn't say to herself "blink" instead it was a reaction of mind and matter in parallel. Susan's cat had the most beautifully shaped eyes functioning well in the dark as well as the light. In low level light her eyes opened as wide as possible, allowing more light to enter the eye. Usually a cat's lens is more curved enabling sharper focusing even at the edges of the lens. Her eyes would contract to a very small size to protect its sensitive retina in bright sunlight. (In human eyes the size variation of the pupil is controlled by a circular ciliary muscle limiting the amount of size variation). In Fluffy's eyes the process is controlled by two shutter-like ciliary muscles, which gave her the characteristic slit-like pupil in bright light conditions. Glow worms
in the dark? No!
Cats have a little membranous layer called "Tapetum lucidum."
This little device is positioned at the back of their eyes, behind the retina and
acts like a mirror. It reflects light back onto the light sensor cells in the
retina. Low and behold, we wondered why her eyes glowed in the dark when a flash
light was aimed at her head. That's the answer to all of the eyes that glow in
the dark when wild animals turn to look at head lights from cars during the night hours.
Perhaps someday, I will be able to understand why her tail twitched.
Try holding your cats tail when she is excited. There's a lot
of power in the tale of the tail that doesn't meet your eye.
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