Cats are composed creatures, once in a while given to emotional crisis. Get a feline wet, though, and you are prone to witness a wild surrender of any form of self-restraint, with the cat going from submissive to a windmill of paws, teeth, and flying fur.
As indicated by John Bradshaw, Ph.D., the Foundation Director of the Anthrozoology Institute at the University of Bristol and the creator of Cat Sense, there’s a whole other world to the fear than simply tangled fur: Cats might have a genealogical fear of getting wet. “Local felines actually come from Arabian wild cats,” he says. “Their predecessors lived in a zone with not so many large amounts of water. They never needed to figure out how to swim. There was no point of interest to it.”
A feline’s dismay stretches out to the physical sensation of being soaked. As indicated by Shaw, a slick coat doesn’t shed water effortlessly, making it hard for them to come back to a dry, warm state rapidly. Felines are likewise used to feeling agile—in water, their movements are slowed down.
Not all types of cats abstain from swimming, though. The van cats that live close to the Lake Van in Eastern Turkey are raised to make the plunge as little cats, with their moms pushing them in.
In any case, it’s not by any means the water that the feline is keen on. “That glinting example, the light falling off the water, is hard-wired into their mind as a potential indication of prey,” Bradshaw says. “It’s not on the grounds that it’s wet. This is on account of it moves and makes intriguing commotions. Something moving is a potential thing to eat.” As far as cats are concerned, a little water goes far.
