Coming to his senses.

Just after they’re born, kittens are blind and deaf. To orientate themselves, however, they have extraordinarily discriminating sense of taste and smell, as well as a sensitive sense of touch. And before long, your kitten will be operating on all senses.

A nose for everything

A kitten may only have a very small nose but it really is a miracle of nature. Containing about 200 million ‘olfactory’ cells, it makes his sense of smell about ten times more acute than yours. For a kitten to smell something really well, it needs to be dissolved in liquid. That’s why he has glands in his nose which produce moisture and there’s often a drop on your cat’s nose just after he has smelt something really intense. If there’s a particularly interesting smell around, you will notice your kitten push his upper lip up and suck in air through with his half open mouth.

Kittens don’t just perceive smells really well, they also ‘save’ them for future reference. They can even taste solid smell particles by using the so-called Jacobson’s Organ, a collection of cells at the bottom of the nasal cavity which are directly connected to the brain.

All ears

A kitten’s hearing is another small miracle which is capable of perceiving ultrasound frequencies that lie way beyond our own capabilities. Kittens are also very good at filtering and separating specific sounds from a mass of others. Hearing distant sounds is another speciality, made possible by the flexibility and funnel-like formation of their ears.

Ears, of course, are also very important for balance and, combined with a special reflex, enable kittens to turn around in the air and almost always land on their feet.

A matter of taste

A kitten’s sense of taste is also finely tuned but here we have one advantage over them. Although, like us, they can distinguish between sour, salty and bitter, they are unable to recognise sweet things.

A kitten’s tongue is also very sensitive to temperature and he doesn’t enjoy food that’s too cold. That’s probably because his wild ancestors ate their prey straight after the kill, when it was still warm and it’s the reason why you should always serve his food at room temperature.