Solar

I was reading my New Yorker magazine the other morning after breakfast…….no, amend that to say, I was reading the cartoons in the New Yorker when I came across this gem.

I glanced up laughing and the first thing I saw was Sasha who strategically had placed herself in a patch of sunlight.

Our domestic cats, Felis sylvestris, are all descendants of small desert cats from Egypt and the Middle East. Like the Egyptians who domesticated them, they are sun worshipers.

With a normal body temperature of 101.5, they can tolerate temperatures up to 124 degrees. Cats do not sense heat the same way we do which explains why we have banned candles from our house and occasionally have to pull a cat back a bit from the fireplace.

Our lovely tortoiseshell cat, Sousa, has a unique way of heating herself. In winter our girl eschews the patch of sunlight in favor of a more direct warming method. She perfectly aligns her body over the furnace vent on the floor. With paws tucked and tail curled around her, she can sleep for hours while the rest of us notice a distinct drop in the room’s temperature. She’s a heat sink.

Last month we noticed that Sousa had abandoned her heat register in favor of a big rectangle of sunlight. She is a far superior predictor of up coming summer weather than any calendar date.

Happy Summer Solstice.

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