Is it suitable for cats to wear shoes?

In addition to dressing cats, some owners also put shoes on their cats. There is a very popular cartoon called "Puss in Boots", which is about a smart cat who wears boots and is brave. Invincible, looks very handsome and free. At first, there seems to be no objection to this matter. For example, owners like to be tidy, and some cats like to run around outside. In order not to make the house dirty, the owners will put shoes on the cats. Sometimes the cats’ feet are injured. In order to heal, some owners also Will choose to wear shoes for cats, but are cats suitable for wearing shoes? Some people came forward and said that cats can no longer walk after wearing shoes.

If we think about it carefully, it seems that we have never seen a cat in shoes. There are many stores selling dog clothes and shoes, but there are no stores specifically for cats. So are cats really not suitable for wearing shoes? Hangzhou Zhangxu Animal Hospital conducted an experiment on the problem of cats wearing shoes.

The subject of the experiment was a one-year-old American shorthair cat named "Galaxy" who had never worn shoes.

After putting on the shoes for the cat "Yinhe", as soon as he put them on the ground, he "petrified" instantly and almost lost the ability to walk. Even his coordination became extremely poor. When walking smoothly, he will accidentally step on himself, which is very funny. After the same 5 minutes, "Galaxy" still couldn't adapt.

Could the cat not be able to walk because the shoes are not the right size? The experimenter wrapped the cat's paw with a towel and tried again. As a result, although "Galaxy" became much more natural, it still danced crookedly and kept shaking its legs, as if trying to get rid of the towel on its paws.

So why? Generally speaking, people mainly define the outer central space through vision and hearing. You can dance and sing with your eyes closed, but you will stagger when you walk, and you might fall down. As for the sense of touch, people don't seem to use it much. At most, they can just feel "where the wind comes from." Judging from these videos, the cat seems to be different. It seems that it relies heavily on mechanical sense to perceive the position of the outer center space. This is quite obvious, because it is dark and windy in the middle of the night, and it can't move without relying on mechanical senses, let alone catching mice.

To analyze it more specifically, these cats are "glued" to something, which is not the same as "glued" to something. Although the cat's overall behavior is to stay away from the sticky direction, it cannot be analyzed specifically whether it is because it feels that the hair is stuck (different hairs receive different vectors, with different directions and sizes), or whether the skin is subject to a general pulling force (this is a same vector) and it goes away from this pull. Considering that a cat will walk on its stomach after the adhesive is stuck on its back, and it will walk astride the adhesive on its chest, the movement trend of the tape relative to the skin in these two cases is opposite (on the back it is pressed down, on the chest it is pressed down (before pulling it off), but the behavior trend of cats trying to get rid of the tape is consistent. So we can conclude that the cat wants to stay away from an external thing that invades its egocentric coordinate system.

In addition to reacting like this to shoes, cats will alsoThings will make you feel uncomfortable all over.

The experimenter repeatedly stuck the tape on himself several times to reduce the stickiness of the tape, and then stuck it on the cat. Sure enough, when the tape was affixed to the abdomen, the cat walked on tiptoes and arched its back; when the tape was affixed to the left and right sides, the cat walked sideways in the opposite direction; when the tape was affixed to the top of its head, the cat did not dare to go any further. I moved forward and kept retreating.

Cat behavior is very different from human behavior. For example, if a fly is stuck on the body, people will basically feel that this is "the body is stuck on the fly" rather than "the body is stuck on the world". Like the above-mentioned cats' frightened reactions to foreign objects such as tape and shoes, especially when they have tape on their heads and shoes on their feet, we can think that they feel something is wrong in the outer center space, so that It needs to "exit" or "step over".

So we can immediately draw the conclusion that there is some limitation in the cat's perception of the outer central space, which prevents it from correctly distinguishing the sources of influence on it in the outer central space. When it feels an external force, it cannot determine the source of the force or cannot get rid of the influence of this force. Then it will think that there is a problem with the entire outer central space, and then it will try to solve the problem by leaving this space. So we see such hilarious behavior.

Similarly, in the pet hospital, after putting an Elizabethan circle on a cat, the cat will keep retreating and trying to run out of the circle instead of scratching the circle. Therefore, after putting shoes on cats, it is not difficult to understand why they feel that something is wrong with the outer center space. In order to stay away from external things that invade the egocentric coordinate system, it is not difficult to understand.

In addition, some researchers have found that claws may also be the reason why cats don’t like to wear shoes. We know that cats’ meat pads are one of the sensory organs that maintain balance. When the meat pads are wrapped, , the cat’s balance system will be affected. Normally, when a cat walks, it needs to stretch out its claws to scratch the ground, and when it puts on shoes, the function of its claws is lost. Each hair of a cat is connected to a hair follicle and is a sensory organ. As long as there is a slightest disturbance, the cat will become alert, so the cat will not wear clothes.