CATS IN AMERICA – ILLUSTRATING THE KNOWLEDGE GAP

I admit to not posting to the blog for a few days because we have two new cats, really kittens, in the household. They are as cute as you would expect, and I have been playing with them.

They were obtained from the local Humane Society office, where they had been given up by their previous owners. In the past, we had a cat that lived with us for 19 years until she died. She was a gift when we lived in Colombia. I got to thinking about the difference in the two experiences.

The local Humane Society office handles more than 9,000 animals per year. I know this because the Society’s monthly magazine had the data. When I lived in Cali, I was working on a model of the dog population ( modeling rabies) and had to get information on the number of dogs picked up by the city. I found more information available on entering the Society’s office here as a casual visitor than was kept by the government offices in Cali.

My wife and I were struck by how outmoded the computer system seemed in the Humane Society office here. Of course years ago when we lived in Cali there were no personal computers. But I suspect it is a rare office in Colombia that is as automated as the Humane Society here, no matter that this office’s equipment could be better.

The computer showed that the cats had been immunized against feline distemper and other diseases (the younger kitten still has a course of rabies vaccines to complete, given her age.) Both passed tests for feline immunodeficiency syndrome. Both had flee baths to assure that they were cleared of flees, and had been tested for worms. Among the terms of acceptance of the cats, we had to take them to a veterinarian for a complete physical exam. We took a printout of the medical records and immunization schedule to the vet.

Consider this experience from the point of view of Knowledge for Development. First acquiring a new pet I had many details on its health and immune status. Moreover, the county in which I live has a computer base with fairly comprehensive data each year on 9,000 animals, including wildlife, stray animals, feral members of domestic species, and domestic pets. The costs of the tests were certainly in the hundreds of dollars!

In Colombia I never had as much information on the health of our pet, and I am sure that there were no comparable sources of zoonotic data; what was available was primarily limited to rabies.

In thinking about cats, we found a nice website, one of many that describe different breeds. Since the three human members of this household all have PCs connected by wireless to a broadband connection to the web, there was a lot of information shared.

We found large stores here completely devoted to providing supplies for the pet owner, with staff interested and willing to provide information, and with book departments with useful texts on cats, dogs, etc. As we went further into the process of acquiring the cats, people started giving us booklets and pamphlets on cats and cat care. We also found magazines for cat owners and aficianados at the vets’ and the Human Society Office; these are widely sold. As a result there was no need to go to one of the 25 branch offices of the county library, but I am confident they all have a large section of books on house cats. Nor have we yet hit the large local bookstores, which also have large cat sections.

The cats were temporarily licensed, and have temporary tags. The applications for this year’s license were filed for one, and will be filed for the second when its rabies immunization is completed. Thus the local government will also have records of the existence and location of the cats. We could have had chips inserted under the skins of the cats with detailed information, but chose not to do so.

In short, there is a wealth of information available on cats and cat care, cat likes and dislikes. There are many breeds of cats available, and there is information on the suitability of different breeds for different people. Government and civil society have information on our cats. Their health information is more complete than that for many (most?) human babies in poor countries.

The cost of obtaining, storing and using this information is quite large, but is taken for granted. The average household income in the county in the year 2,000 was $74,280; we can afford it. Of course, this county has a highly educated population that demands information. 30.6 percent of the people have graduate degrees here; 59.2 percent college degrees. (It took my less than five minutes to find income and education statistics for the country on the web.)

When we lived in Colombia there was a shortage of cats. Apparently they were being killed by DDT that was used to control the mosquitoes that would otherwise have transmitted malaria. We were told that the price of a healthy cat in 1972 was US$25-50! The cats were crucial to keeping down rodents in a city with so good a climate that even the most expensive houses were open to the air. People were interested in the health of the animals.

However, the information available on cats, and the ability of the average person to use that information (were it to be available) were vastly different in Colombia than here in our part of suburban Washington. (Colombians probably had more experience with livestock animals than Washingtonians, and a lot with domestic dogs and cats, but relatively little “book-learning”.) I suspect the life expectancy of cats here is several times that in Colombia.

Cats are an interesting example, just because they are so unimportant in the larger picture. No one is concerned about the cat divide. But the disparity in knowledge about cats must be paralleled in almost every field one could imagine. The United States is a relatively knowledge intensive society, and the gap between it and traditional societies is truly immense.

CAT UNITS

Just as an aside, there is a vast medical literature from the 18th and 19th centuries relating to or utilizing “cat units”. At the time, herbal remedies were the stock and trade of the apothecary. The problem with mixing a herbal remedy is that herbs are not standardized. Depending on the soils in which they are grown, the weather conditions, the degree to which the plants receive direct sunlight, etc., the concentration of active ingredients can vary greatly from plant to plant. So every pharmacy had a stock of animals in the back room to test each batch of remedies as it was produced. Apparently these were usually “stray” cats; the profession had decided that testing on dogs would create too much ill will. So the cat unit was the amount just adequate to kill half of the cats on which a concoction was tested. One would then prescribe a human dose in terms of “cat units”. Perhaps that is where the saying comes from – “there is more than one way to kill a cat”.