We are feline good

“Hits…we need more hits.” A cry oft heard from our Editor. Far from developing some kind of ‘Cowell complex’ as a string of terrified pop-wannabes are paraded in front of him – he is, rather more aptly, referring to online hits.

It is a fact of the modern world that your online presence is an important part of your identity. As it is for a magazine like Laboratory News. And, always the first to offer up sensible, practical advice, we on the Science Lite desk sprang into action with two surefire hit generators.

“Pornography or cats!” We say. Awkward faces stare back at us. Pins drop and, inexplicably, tumble weed rolls past. Yet the logic, surely, is sound? Nothing seems to be more ubiquitous online than those two disparate (…we assume, and indeed hope, they are disparate – for should their paths ever cross then I’m afraid we shall never be the same again) topics.

So for the sake of modesty we shall eliminate the former, but cats…we think we are on to something with cats. Give the people what they want they say – and what the people want, apparently, is cats. Funny cats doing funny things filmed by funny people and put on YouTube. It really is something of a phenomenon – cat videos have been known to clock up nearly 80 million hits.

Clearly our feline friends are a powerful cultural force, so much so that trendy online marketing types have now begun to talk of an ‘economy of online cat videos’. Seriously – this stuff is now worth big money, there is even an Internet Cat Video Festival which attracted 11,000 real life, non-virtual, visitors.

So, it is high time we jumped onto this particular bandwagon. And so, without further ado we are proud; well, that may be overcooking it slightly…indifferent? Apathetic? Mildly ashamed? Yes, we are mildly ashamed to present the Science Lite top five Cats In Science run down!

• First up – how could it not be? – it’s that marvel of mind games, that mysterious wonder of theoretical physics, yes its Schrödinger’s cat. Not a real cat of course, but rather the most famous thought experiment in the world. Devised by Erwin Schrödinger in attempt to highlight the problem with the so called ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ of quantum physics, this particular feline has a very tentative existence. Erwin invited the world to imagine a cat in a box – alas for the poor thing, it was not an empty box. It also contained a contraption which may or may not – depending on the quantum mechanical whims of said contraption – kill it. The only way to find out which had occurred was to open the box and see. Until you did so it could be said to be in a ‘superposition’ of dead and alive. Of course this is impossible, and that was the point. Rather than being something which offered an insight into the quantum world, really Schrödinger was suggesting a problem with its relation to the macro world we – and indeed cats – inhabit. Schrödinger’s cat is in fact quantum satire!

• Next up is Little Nicky – the first commercially produced cat clone. Not shy of controversy this little fella, he was ‘produced’ by US-based company Genetic Savings & Clone. Potentially one of the world’s most expensive cats, his price tag was a cool $50,000 – paid by a Texan lady to the company to clone her 19 year old cat, Nicky. Presumably she was happy with her investment, unlike the Humane Society of the United States and other animal welfare groups who severely denounced the cloning, saying that the $50,000 could have been better used to save some of the millions of animals euthanised each year. Blissfully oblivious, Little Nicky himself showed no negative side effects from the cloning.

• Then there is Oscar the therapy cat. Adopted as a kitten by the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre in the US, which specialises in caring for people with severe dementia – Oscar found fame in 2007. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested he had an uncanny ability to detect when nursing home patients were about to die. According to David Dosa, a geriatrician and Assistant Professor at Brown University, Oscar spent its days pacing from room to room, rarely spending any time with patients except those with just hours to live. Explanations as to how he managed this seem to include the simple lack of movement in such patients, or that he could smell ketones – biochemicals released by dying cells. So confident was Dr Dosa of Oscar’s accuracy that he actually alerted family members when he jumped on to a bed and stretched out beside its occupant.

• Next up – nice and simple this one – Electronic wizz Nikola Tesla had a cat. The cat was called Macak.

• Less cat, more cat accessory this one. In a story that seems too neat to possibly be true, it appears that science superhero Isaac Newton may have also invented the cat flap. In an anonymous article published in 1893 it was suggested that to stop his cat interrupting his work, Newton made a large hole in the door for his adult cat and a small one for her kittens. However – many sources claim this to be an early form of urban legend with two Newton biographers citing passages saying that the great man kept “neither cat nor dog in his chamber”. Yet in a tantalizing twist, it has also been discovered that one of Newton’s university cronies – J. M. F. Wright – in his 1827 memoir, wrote: “Whether this account be true or false, indisputably true is it that there are in the door to this day two plugged holes of the proper dimensions for the respective egresses of cat and kitten.”

And there you have it – Science and cats in one handy list. All that’s left to do now is sit back and watch the hits roll in. The great unwashed of the internet don’t fail us now…because if the hits don’t come, we WILL be forced to do another run down based on science and porn…and nobody wants that.