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8 - Orono Weekly Times Wednesday, September 23, 2009 Basic Black by Arthur Black Paws for thought There's a story in my paper about Daisy, a Vancouver feline of dubious lineage who is currently being, no pun intended, lionized for returning to her home without the assistance of a human, a Google Earth download or a GPS reckoning device. Big deal, I say. Daisy's a cat. What did they expect? Granted, Daisy's story is unusual in that she waited a year before coming home, but she was just using her inscrutable feline head. Daisy knew that her owners were traveling the world. There was no sense going back to a houseful of strangers, so she bided her time. Any sensible cat would. Daisy could have told her owners that giving her up for temporary adoption with a friend while they traveled was a bad idea from the get-go, but nobody asked. Not that Daisy didn't try. "From the moment we took her (to her new home), she just ran and hid and it was like 'I just can't stay here'" recalls Lianna Walden, her (smirk) owner. Daisy left in a huff the very next day. Ms. Walden was distressed, but the plans were laid, the house had been sold, the tickets were waiting. After a frantic last minute search, she headed for the airport, leaving her friend's number with the SPCA in case Daisy turned up. Autumn came and went. So did winter, spring and summer. Daisy never showed a whisker. Suddenly last month, a full year after Daisy disappeared, a call from the SPCA. They'd picked up a cat wearing a collar that said her name was Daisy. Ring any bells? She'd been found at the front door of her old house, four kilometres from the house she'd rejected. "She's very happy," says Walden. "She knew this was our house. She's not leaving." I'm sure if Daisy deigned to comment, she'd say "Well, duh..." I am a confirmed dog person, but I never fool myself about the relative braininess of cats and dogs. Dogs will run and fetch a tennis ball until they suffer cardiac arrest. A cat will stare at the ball hurler with a look that says "Who, me? You're joking, right?" As comedian Jeff Valdez said, "You'd never get eight cats to pull a sled through snow." If you want to talk cat smarts, consider the case of Casper, a twelve-year old ball of fluff who rides the city bus in Devon, England every day. By himself. Hops aboard the Number 3 at 10:55 every morning, takes a window seat for the 11-kilometre tour past the dockyard, the naval base, a few suburbs and the town's red-light district until his home stop rolls around again and Casper disembarks. "He usually just curls up at the back of the bus," says a regular driver, "he never causes any trouble." Well, of course Casper doesn't cause any trouble. What did they take him for - a Rottweiler? Cats glide through the world like ballet dancers doing Swan Lake. They avoid friction; eschew awkwardness. They're too smart for that. Or perhaps not. A study conducted by psychologists at Canterbury Christ Church University in Kent, England, suggests that cats aren't as clever as we think they are. The researchers tried to confuse 15 test cats by teasing them with bits of biscuits and fish attached to strings. The bait was placed behind a screen and the cats were allowed to tug at the strings with their paws. The cats were tested with single baited strings, parallel pairs of strings of which only one was baited; and finally a pair of strings which were partially baited, but crossed. Basically, the cats, screwed up. They got the single baited string every time, but when it came to the com- binations they did no better than, well, a Dalmatian, really. Between you and me I'd have to know a lot more about the experiment before I'd give it any credence. 'Fish treats. Are we talking pilchard or sockeye? 'Biscuits' - would that be Fortnum and Mason petit fours or some crumby, off-the-shelf cookie from Tesco? These details matter to a cat. They're fussy. Like the tortoiseshell who died and went to heaven. "You need anything?" God asked him. "Well," said the tortoiseshell, "I had to sleep on a hard wood floor my whole life. A pillow would be nice." "You got it," said God and he turned his attention to a half dozen mice which had just arrived. "What about you guys," said God. "Anything I can do to make you comfy?" The mice conferred for a moment then said. "Roller skates. All our lives we ran like crazy to get away from cats. We'd really like to zoom around on roller skates." "No problem," said God. The mice each got a pair of golden roller skates. A couple of weeks later God checked up on the cat. "How's it going?" he asked. "You got everything you need?" "The pillow is terrific," said the cat. "And those meals on wheels you sent over were delicious."