07.07.06

Cat Trivia of the Week: Behold the eye of the cat

Posted in Cat Trivia at 4:05 am by pawpathblog

Cats eyes shine at night because of the light reflected by the tapetum lucidum, a layer of glittering cells forming a large part of the inner eye behind the retina. Below is a picture of my eyes reflecting the light of the camera flash. When we’re in the dark, and some light hits our eyes, it seems as if our eyes are glowing!

Would you like to learn more?

Read a short excerpt about the tapetum lucidum in cats on science.enotes.com….or check out the wikipedia article.

Or for an in-depth scientific article on the tapetum lucidum, see Comparative morphology of the tapetum lucidum (among selected species).

Here’s a quote from the article: “The phenomenon of ‘eye-shine’ is seen in a variety of animal species, and is generally thought to be related to the presence of an intraocular reflecting structure, the tapetum lucidum…The tapetum lucidum is a biologic reflector system that is a common feature in the eyes of vertebrates.” Read the entire thing >>

Permalink Comments

07.06.06

Cat a la Warhol

Posted in Just For Fun at 3:23 am by pawpathblog

Click to enlarge

Check out my self-portrait, Andy Warhol style! I’m actually quite proud of this. Photoshop rules! Take, that other cats that paint! (See the article about painting cats in our blog) I’m the first cat that I know of that’s mastered Adobe Photoshop. I applied various filters to my original picture, which you can see below. The final steps were achieved with either the notebook paper filter or the photocopy filter.

Andy Warhol actually loved cats and we were a favorite subject of his. Check out a delightful book of his cat art below:

Cats, Cats, Cats