God made the cat in order that man might have the pleasure of caressing the tiger – Fernand Mery from The life, History and Magic of the cat, published 1967.
Cat is famous about its fur softness. Actually, all mammals have fur in contrast to reptiles and amphibians that have dry and rough hairless skin and birds have feathers. Humans are mammals too but we have less hair than other animals except nude animals like sphinx breed cat and somewhere is longer than the others: scalps, armpits, eyelashes, eyebrows and pubes. About softness of fur, Chinchilla has been accepted for its softest fur in the world due to the fact that it has 50 hairs outgrowth from one hair follicle, so its hair is very dense and soft, in contrast to most animals including humans that only one hair outgrowth from a follicle.
It seems that softness is a subjective quality, but there are many ways to assess it quantitatively and that are used in fabrics and materials industry. Normally, it depends on flexibility and size of the fibre in our case, fur. We can sense the difference of softness or touch if we use different rate of touching it but this cannot be counted as its unique characters but this last factor make it subjective and so there is a need of standard methods or protocols for measuring or assessing its softness value.
Why softness is matter? Think about when we were children, we love to play soft toys. When we grow up, we still need soft surfaces to sit, and sleep on for comfortable. Soft clothes are needed for comforting the wearers. So softness is the pleasure sense that is rewarded and is preferred by every average people. Humans and animals also need softness physiologically. There is an experiment studying monkey babies rearing with warm wired with bottles of milk compared with rearing with wired wrapped with soft garments. The latter group monkeys are more playful, learnable, joyful and growing with better temperaments. This explained why humans need hugs and love cuddle from parents. This is some reasons that humans keep pets especially the furry one. So can you think about animal with appropriate size to hold and hug in our arms, with its tameable, adorable and soft quality? Yes, Cats! No animals defeat cats. Dogs have varying sizes and in general, their hairs are larger and rougher than cats. Rabbits are small but don’t love to be held and cuddled. They will kick you with their hind legs. Chinchilla is a small rodent from South America and that’s too small to make you feel warm when cuddle it. But to hold a cat needs some skills. Don’t let your kids encounter the cat and hold it. You need to come in front of him when he is attentive. Petting and slowly hold him with one hand under his fore legs at his chest and the other hand hold his butts and hold him against your chest tightly but not restraining. You can then pet him to purr. Treat him with some bites. He will be OK for a while until he thinks that it’s time to go and your cat will tell you by his activity. Let’s them go or you get hurt. Use that quality time to give him your love and warm sense as his mother gave him when he was a kitten and feeling the love back from your beloved cat. Good luck.
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