I'm not sure if cats can count or not, but here's an odd little story for you.

I once had a farm cat named Terror who was an expert and ferocious hunter of mice. Her big thing was to lay out her conquests in my driveway in *meticulous* little rows! What's weird is that the rows always made mathematical sense; e.g., if she'd bagged 9 mice that night, there would be 3 rows of 3, not (e.g.) 1 row of 4 and 1 row of 5. If she hit a prime number like 7, there would be 3 rows of 2 with one mouse "marching" at the head of the line in the center. No, it wasn't fun making the cleanup part of my morning routine, but to this day I would love to know how she did it. Did she organize them "correctly" the first time or did she have to play with it to get it right? I kind of suspect the latter - it must have been her equivalent of a human playing with toy soldiers.

This story would certainly suggest to me that if they *can't* count, cats do have a sense of symmetry/orderliness. They are, after all, very methodical creatures.

Copyright © Liz Viola
May 8, 1999