This story is a couple of days old — and if you’re a cat lover, you’ve probably already seen it. But it’s Saturday, a notoriously slow news day, and how many times can you write that Obama is a poopie head without it getting old and stale?
A cat from the Kaluga region of Russia has become an internet sensation by supposedly saving the life of an abandoned infant.
The story being told by residents is that the fat and happy Masha, a cat taken care of by an entire neighborhood, came across a cardboard box left in an entranceway to an apartment building. The cat heroically jumped inside, her mothering instincts taking over, and kept the baby alive until health arrived.
One of the building’s residents heard the cat and the baby’s cries. At first, Nadezhda Makhovikova just thought she was hearing Masha in some sort of distress. “When I went down, I saw it was a baby crying,” Makhovikova told REN TV earlier this week.
Reports said the baby had been left with a pacifier, bottle and diapers, and was dressed warmly, wearing a little hat, as residents described him – though he likely would have had difficulty staying warm enough to survive a whole night in the sub-freezing temperatures in the area.
Residents called an ambulance, which whisked the baby away to a local hospital – but not before Masha would try to accompany the baby on the way.
“She was so worried about where we were taking the baby,” Vera Ivanina, a paramedic who responded, told REN TV. “She ran right behind us, meowing. She seemed quite intelligent.”
Doctors determined that the child was about 2 ½ months old, and was well-fed, clean and clothed, showing no signs of abuse or neglect – save, of course, that he had been left out in the cold to be found by a concerned cat. The child is staying at the hospital while police search for the baby’s parents.
But the humans in the story are crediting the cat for likely having kept the baby alive during the crucial hours it spent in the cold.
I have been kept by cats for more than 40 years and can tell you that this is one smart feline. The ability of Masha to manage her environment — including the people within it — is incredible. Take a look at this picture of Masha, a cat without a home:
Masha is by far and away the best-fed stray I’ve ever seen. This is a cat whose survival instincts are so finely honed that her ability to tap into the human heart and manipulate each and every individual she comes in contact with may be without equal. Cats are expert at this, of course, which is why the smart human realizes the extremely subtle ways in which cats seek to get their way. A certain lilt in the meow (different meows for different people), the uncanny ability to read human body language and know when to press their advantage and when to back off. This is part instinctive but mostly learned behavior.
I suspect that Masha heard the baby, looked inside the box, and correctly sized up the situation. This is Russia, it’s winter, it’s cold as hell, and this little human probably won’t mind if I snuggle real close to keep warm. This was the extent of Masha’s “heroism.” Not very romantic, but a lot closer to the truth than a human baby bringing out the cat’s “mothering instincts.”
We can’t help but anthropomorphize the behavior of our pets. My father used to say that someday our golden retriever would start talking to him, she was that smart. But the reality is a little more mundane. After tens of thousands of years of dog domestication and probably not more than 5,000 years of cat domestication, these wonderful animals have bonded to humans in mysterious and unknowable ways. Part of it is certainly their unreal ability to manipulate our feelings to their advantage. Those animals with this innate ability were able to survive and pass on their genes to the next generation. After a thousand generations, the technique of being able to tug at the human heart has been perfected as much as the stalking ability of lions, or the speed of the cheetah.
And Masha? Perhaps some day she will settle down and become the companion of some loving little Russian girl, whom Masha will no doubt find to be a pushover when it comes to getting her way.
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