Smart Cats

Are Mississippi Cats Smarter than the Average Cat?

Note: This is woefully out of date but I have left it here for a reminder of when rescues were rare.

November 2013

I have been musing on the above recently, as the cat fone refuses to ring. Oh-where-oh-where are the Mississippi Cats-Stuck-in-Trees to be rescued? I have some theories:

  • Theory A: Mississippi cats are smarter than other cats and refuse to get stuck in trees. I have some proof for this, as I have my patented "CatFind" Facebook app that searches public posts for 'cat stuck tree' keywords and returns me a list of such cats every day (yes, I am a cat-stuck-in-tree Facebook stalker!). From this tool, I know that the stupidest cats in the world live in the Pacific Northwest, as they are constantly getting stuck with owners posting to Facebook for help. I have yet to find a single stuck cat in Mississippi via Facebook. Via my Facebook app, I have seen cats stuck in the forests of Georgia, the mountains of Tennessee, the hinterlands of Bama, the swamps of Louisiana, and in many other states, but all have been 5+ hours away (and were all eventually rescued anyway without my help, yay!). Maybe Mississippi Cats have all decided to watch SEC football instead of climbing trees, I dunno.
  • Theory B: Cats get stuck in trees in direct proportion to the number of people around to rescue them. From Dan Kraus's cat rescue directory, there are a bazillion tree climbers in the Pacific Northwest, and cats there know it, and so are emboldened to climb trees to their heart's content knowing that if they get stuck, there will be a nearby hero to rescue them. However, there is only one person listed in Kraus's directory for Mississippi, which is yours truly, and cats around here decide to forgo climbing trees as they don't want to take a chance on me rescuing them and hence dropping them out of the tree! My wife likes this theory.
  • Theory C: People in Mississippi are generally confident, competent folks, and if their cat gets stuck in a tree, then it is no big deal. They just whip out a ladder or rope or a bucket truck or a climbing tree stand and go get that poor kitty out of the tree and thus, they don't need me. This makes me both happy and sad.
  • Theory D: It is a simple matter of population; Mississippi has the lowest population density of any state east of the Mississippi River, and with fewer people, there are fewer cats, and thus fewer cats-stuck-in-trees. Bummer, science sucks.

Oh well, I will continue to await the ring of the Cat Fone and diligently train in the meantime. Maybe I can convince one of our house cats to get stuck in a tree so that I can get some practice in.