My cat stares at the wall and there is nothing, why?
Surely you have discovered on some occasion, that your cat stares at the wall , a nearby door, behind you or a fixed point with an expression of maximum attention, generally upwards and also there, apparently there is nothing.
It remains motionless and its gaze lingers longer than usual.
It does it with great interest and opening its eyes more than normal. What happens? Are you planning something? See something we can’t?
The keys to vision, hearing and smell of cats
First of all, you have to know some peculiarities of the vision of cats that are quite different from ours.
For example, their visual field is wider than ours. As long as we get to 180º, they can reach 200º.
Moreover, these animals see up to eight times better than we do at night. What is the reason for this advantage? Basically, because their vision was adapted, as felines that they are, to hunting at night.
In this sense, their eye cells can capture images more easily under dimmer lights. However, this uptake becomes, due to a question of ocular structure, more blurred throughout the day.
Finally, forget that false myth that cats see in black and white. There are simply some differences in the composition of the color-catching cells.
Cats, in the same way that it happens with dogs, do not have red cone cells, so they do not perceive red and pink.
They also have trouble distinguishing color saturations and intensities. Remember that these cats do distinguish between green, blue and yellow.
When it comes to hearing, the cat is capable of picking up frequencies of up to 65,000 hertz thanks to more than 40,000 cochlear nerve fibers.
All with a much wider dynamic range of detection than usual, such as signals, sounds, vibrations and radio waves of very low intensity.
They also have a highly developed sense of smell, much more so than ours.
When they inhale air through the nostrils or nostrils, it reaches the turbinates, where nerve cells transform them into chemoreceptors and from there to the brain to be processed. Their communication is largely based on “smelling” and “being smelled.”
So why do cats stare?
Broadly speaking, it is a state of maximum concentration of all your senses. Unlike in our case, we maintain a more relaxed attention towards the environment, they are able to fixate on very specific stimuli, and not necessarily on the flight of a mosquito, but on an imperceptible sound to our ears, changes in temperature or detection of chemical components in the air.
In a way, this habit brings balance to your body and mind, as it is instinctive.
So do not be scared if your cat is a little spellbound, staring at the wall or above your head, it is not that it has seen a ghost or an entity from beyond … (sometimes it seems).It is simply that your senses work in unison, perceiving an external stimulus, on which you put your full attention.
