Heads up : 'The Secret Life of Cats' - BBC 2 Thursday 13 June @ 9pm

Alun

For all the cat lovers here, Horizon has an episode entitled 'The Secret Life of Cats' on this Thursday. It's not an entirely new title, I'm sure there have been a good few programmes with the same title before, but this one uses some new technology, i.e. GPS collars and CatCams to provide some new insight into what our feline friends get up to when we're not watching

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b02xcvhw

kittycati

Anyone else watch this ? What did ye think?

gazzer

Really enjoyed it. I have always thought it would be a great idea to put cameras on my 3 cats when they go out at night to see what they get up to (especially the one who vanishes for days at at a time).

MurdyWurdy

I really enjoyed it too - very interesting to see what the cars got up to and how they share territory etc. I giggled a lot during it too

We're dying to put a GPS tracker in our cat now and see where he goes. I suspect not very far!

Alun

I thought the most fascinating bit was how cats that live in close proximity 'time shared' their use of their common territory to avoid conflict. A real-life example of evolution in progress.

tk123

I loved it! I was worried my dog would bark at the cats (2 hours before we had seen a cat when we were in the car at lights and he barked out at it - much to the amusement of the people in the car behind us but he got bored and went to bed with one eye on the TV. :P .... My favourite was when they had the map with the dots and cats names moving around!

MurdyWurdy

I liked the cats that went into other cats homes and ate their food - so funny!

tk123

MurdyWurdy wrote: »

I liked the cats that went into other cats homes and ate their food - so funny!

Or the one who moved across the road when the owners got a dog lol! :P

darlett

I liked it in general and it seemed like an interesting study-but...

I felt they spent too long talking about the techniques and the technology they would use and how they would monitor the cats from Cat HQ and how they would film them and how it had never been done before on such a big scale. They kept repeating these facts in a very un-BBC way when I wanted to see more of the study, more results. I understand the technology was tricky but I don't think the footage from the cat-cams was very successful, all we seemed to see from that was blurring footage of one cat vaguely running off against another. There were lots of beautiful montages of cats sitting outside or setting off from house, but very few actual action shots-perhaps they needed many many more cameras outside-and cost and permission and privacy issues would have blocked as much.

I think its something with a lot of potential, but was frustrated with how light in content the coverage was. Then in the last 5 minutes they raced through the family home of unrelated cats that live happily together-multiple cats living together in homes and indeed with other pets such as dogs is a big topic which should have been examined in more than those 5 minutes.
I was also bemused by the conclusion that cats are almost suddenly evolving to become the pets 'we want them to be' in the last few decades. For a pet that first became somewhat domesticated 9000 years it was frankly laughable to say (a) that only recently will unrelated cats have faced living together, and (b) that in a few sort generations theres perhaps some sort of genetic change to allow cats to evolve as such.

Overall yes, it made for nice viewing. But having made the show, I wish they had made it better.

Alun

There's a follow-up programme on tonight on BBC 2 at 10pm called Little Cat Diaries where they go in to some more detail about individual cats. You can also find more information in individual cats on the BBC website http://bbc.co.uk/horizoncats

Pumpkinseeds

I really enjoyed the programme. Felix had an anaesthetic at the vet yesterday and was a bit wobbly and sleepy for most of the afternoon/evening but as soon as he heard the caterwauling he was in like a shot to see which other cat was invading his living room:D I'm looking forward to the 2nd part tonight.

ferretone

darlett wrote: »

I liked it in general and it seemed like an interesting study-but...

I felt they spent too long talking about the techniques and the technology they would use and how they would monitor the cats from Cat HQ and how they would film them and how it had never been done before on such a big scale. They kept repeating these facts in a very un-BBC way

Sorry, agreed, but I can't see what's un-BBC about that - they've been driving us nuts doing that in their documentaries for years now :rolleyes:

Totally agree about how annoying that babble about "newly evolving" behaviour was too.

FloatingVoter

Spooky (my cat) was checking behind the TV for cats all through the show. She got hungry and needed feeding when the lady opened the catfood to elicit a solicitous purr.
Wouldn't mind a show on inner city cats (like mine) and see how they settle the lack of space for personal territory.

Morf

I love cats, have two myself but I couldn't face watching the shambles that Horizon has become. It used to be about pure science rather than pop-science.

I'm sure if it didn't have the Horizon name I would have approached more fairly on its merits.

anniehoo

Morf wrote: »

I'm sure if it didn't have the Horizon name I would have approached more fairly on its merits.

I actually agree. The programme was interesting, but a bit "dumbed down" if you know what i mean. Anyone who used to watch Horizon years ago, watched it for the scientific value.It's not that anymore. Weak science.

I thought it was good in that it showed cats have a personality,territory and do react to many more stimuli than us owners see,but,lack of empathy by humans for cats is still a massive problem.

It didn't take into the equation that A LOT of cat owners don't let their cats roam now anymore. The 50 cats that "volunteered" were majority free roaming cats, with no mention of the equally healthy indoor cats who also have " a patch" of their own i.e their house.

I thought it was okaaaay, but nothing i didnt already know. It was flawed from the point of view that it only took outdoor cats into the mix, so it would have been interesting so see from both indoor and outdoor cats POV.

I was irritated with the end bit with the 6 cats in the same house, 5 stuck close together and 1 roamed a bit. The logic was "domestic evolution"?!!! I just thought they were lazy cats tbh.

The Sweeper

anniehoo wrote: »

I was irritated with the end bit with the 6 cats in the same house, 5 stuck close together and 1 roamed a bit. The logic was "domestic evolution"?!!! I just thought they were lazy cats tbh.

I agree. That's just responding to a created environment. My six stick together - but if they could roam, four of them would. Of that four, one would be kilometres away by noon.

rannerap

Watched it there. My kitten was glued to the screen for most of it! enjoyed it but I too thought they talked too much about how they were going to do it etc instead of showing the results!