Our family cats have historically divided into two types: those who knew the squirrels/ birds/ chipmunks through the glass were real (and who yowled to be let out to get 'em) and those who watched it with interest but with no apparent sense that it was interactive, the way I watch The Sopranos.

I dubbed the latter phenomenon Squirrel TV, as in "Benna isn't interested in catnip right now; she's watching Squirrel TV." It's better than Animal Planet!

Cats are assholes. Short if physical torture, they have it coming.

(We have 4, and in the birth-death cycle, we have never had fewer than 3, so I am an expert on cat behavior.)

My cat seems to have the window and the tv flipped in her mind. She seems content to sit and watch the outside world, but when there are dogs or birds on the television, she gets into attack mode.

I think it's mainly because she is not a sophisticated enough media consumer to understand close-ups. The creatures outside seem far away. The creatures on the television screen are RIGHT THERE ABOUT TO ATTACK US!!!

Lucy's hobby is ornithology. She watches from the patio door, then goes outside and sits next to the fence, watching and waiting. But because she's a brightly marked calico, and also because she's a bit dim, she hasn't figured out yet that she's not invisible and after a while she'll come in, bored, because there's no birds, and two minutes later she's at the patio door watching the now-reappeared birds on the fence and bird table.

Also, she doesn't realise it's my that's my foot moving under the covers. But then again, my old cat, Ricky, still didn't manage to work that out that over the 19 years I had him.

My cats are not fans of MGM movies in Dolby 5.1 that start with the roaring lion. Scares the crap out of them. That's as close to the wild as they want to go.

I don't have a cat but I have a cha-hooah-hooah who goes bonkers when the dog barks at the beginning of Jane's Addiction's "been caught steelin" comes on...even when its on in the car