Can Cats Predict the Weather?

This photo of Mouse was taken with the iSight camera on my MacBook
using an automator script on November 10, 2006 at 9:40 PM.

I have been thinking about when the cats go out on a rainy, snowy day, cold or damp day. They come in fairly discouraged and hunker down in a warm part of the house. The next day they won’t go outside, even if it is sunny. Buddy will show up at home two hours before a thunderstorm. I use his predicting powers to prepare for storms. (The other cats are transplanted city cats and must have lost their innate weather abilities.)

I read once that if weather forecasters used yesterday’s weather to predict today’s weather, they would be accurate three-quarters of the time. That is pretty good forecasting.

My thought is that cats can predict the weather as well as we can if we use today’s weather to predict tomorrow’s weather. Getting a reliable cat for prediction is a problem. It would have to be a cat used to being freely outside without restrictions. My barn doesn’t seem to hinder Buddy from coming into the house for thunderstorms. He prefers the house. If a cat preferred a barn, though, you would have difficulty harnessing his meteorological powers.

I had a weather stick that I nailed to the house to predict tomorrow’s weather. Amy ripped it off of the house because she thought it was something growing out of the house! I got another one last March in St. J. But it has a knot or burl two inches from the end that tip the end of the stick perennially up....which distorts it’s prediction (in other words, it is difficult to tell when it sticks up when it always sticks up!).

Winter is coming soon so I am obsessing about weather.

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