Friend Fact or Furball
Tamaiti whangai is the Maori term for a foster or adopted child. ‘Tamaiti’ means child and ‘whangai’ (said like, far-nigh) means to feed or nourish in the narrow and broadest senses, so a tamaiti whangai is a child who is nurtured or raised by someone other than his or her birth parents.
The practice of whangai is very ancient in Maori culture and I wondered if it was sacreligious of me to think about our family cat in the same vein. Maori have no term for the nuclear family as it applies in the European sense: two parents and their children. The most restricted term in Maori for ‘family’ is ‘whanau’ which applies to the extended family and even then the whanau is not an isolated unit but part of more inclusive units, extending even beyond the tribe.
I was thinking about this while looking at the bundle of fur at the end of the bed. His name is is Furball Frazer (hereafter referred to as FF) and he’s been whangaied in our family for the best part of five years since my younger sister and her partner went to live across the ditch in Sydney, Australia.
Now whangaied or not, you still have to pull your share of the weight around the place but I’m telling you FF doesn’t lift a paw. No dishes, no taking out the rubbish, no dishwashing though he’s actually quite adept at this, it’s the dish wiping he has a hard time fathoming! Ever seen it? That feline look of derision? Well, his categorically states, “and the point of it is?” I tried explaining it to him once, that it’s a human thing. Again, the look. Dismissive and ‘tell someone who cares!” Can’t say I didn’t try!
FF is 63 human years old so I suppose he can be forgiven for being a little slow on the uptake of domesticities though he has a particularly annoying habit of leaving his fur everywhere since he falls into the category of LHDT, that’s vet speak, for Long-haired Domestic Tabby. American University researchers carried out a study that found that owning a cat can reduce a person’s likelihood of having heart attacks and strokes by more than a third. The research team looked at 4,435 adults aged between 30 and 75. About half of whom owned a cat.
While presenting the study’s findings at a Stroke Conference in America, the head researcher said that 3.4 per cent of the cat owners died from a heart attack over 10 years. Moreover, that the death rate from heart attacks was 5.8 per cent among the group who had never owned a cat. He expressed surprise at the strength of the effect that owning a cat appeared to have on the risk of heart attack and strokes. He went on to say that the logical explanation may be that cat ownership relieves stress and anxiety and subsequently reduces the risk of heart disease.
As to why owning a cat reduced this risk the researcher said that stroking the pet perhaps reduced the level of stress-related hormones in the blood which in turn lowerd blood pressure and the heart and thereby prevented heart disease. The rationale is perhaps pawsible. I’d ask FF but he’s a man of very few words and he doesn’t suffer fools gladly!
Scientists in London, England have found similar results relating to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma which strikes 9,000 Britons a year.
Experts believe owning a pet helped to boost the immune system. Previous studies have shown that children who owned pets took less time off school through illness and were less likely to suffer allergies or asthma. That last one is highly speculative if you ask me and probably sold a few more papers on the day.
For those of us who love animals, we know that it’s virtually impossible to stay in a bad mood when a pair of loving eyes meets ours, or when a super-soft cat rubs up against your hand. Research supports the mood-enhancing benefits of pets. A study several years back now found that men with AIDS were less likely to suffer from depression if they owned a pet.
(According to the press release, men with AIDS who did not own a pet were about three times more likely to report symptoms of depression than men who did not have AIDS. On the otherhand, men with AIDS who had pets were only about 50 percent more likely to report symptoms of depression compared to men in the study who did not have AIDS.
It’s true that while ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme) inhibiting drugs can generally reduce blood pressure, they say they aren’t as effective at controlling spikes in blood pressure due to stress and tension. However, in a group of hypertensive New York stockbrokers who owned dogs or cats were found to have lower blood pressure and heart rates than those who didn’t have pets. When they heard of the results most of those in the non-pet group went out and got pets!
Pets can be there for you in ways that people can’t. They can offer love and companionship, enjoy comfortable silences, keep secrets and are excellent snugglers. And they could be the best antidote to loneliness. In fact, research shows that nursing home residents reported less loneliness when visited by dogs than when they spent time with other people! All these benefits can reduce the amount of stress people experience in response to feelings of social isolation and lack of social support from people.
While we all know the power of talking about your problems with a good friend who’s also a good listener, recent research shows that spending time with a pet may be even better! That same research showed that when conducting a task that was stressful, people actually experienced less stress when their pets were with them than when a supportive friend or even their spouse was present! This may be wholly in my opinion due to the fact that pets don’t judge us; they just love us. I’ve had some fabulous feline friends in my life-time: Emma, Banjo, Molly, Furball and Motty. I’m softer because of them and by the sounds of things I’ll live a bit longer too. I’m lov’in them.
