PBS’ ‘Cats’ Lands on All Fours : Television: Cat fanciers will love this engrossing ‘National Geographic,’ which juxtaposes domestic cats with those in the wild.

The great thing about having a television column is that, because TV is so eclectic, you eventually get to write about everything.

Thus, I’ve been anxiously awaiting tonight’s “Cats: Caressing the Tiger” on PBS not only because I’m a sucker for animal programs, but especially because it gives me an opportunity to write about our own cat. She’s enigmatic, neurotic and utterly despotic.

So, naturally, we call her Snoopy.

First the program, a flat-out engrossing “National Geographic” hour airing at 8 p.m. on Channels 28, 50 and 15, and at 10 p.m. on Channel 24. Cat fanciers should love it. And if you don’t fancy cats, the heck with you.

There are about 58 million cats in the United States, but the numbers are not necessarily a happy story. It’s said that up to 10 million unwanted cats are euthanized annually. Millions more are abandoned or are feral, and thousands also end up in laboratories.

“Cats: Caressing the Tiger” examines the “complex relationship” between humans and house cats. As for Snoopy and me, it’s not complex, only frustrating. I stroke her, feed her, dote on her, baby talk her, coochy-coo her, bow down to her, let her in and out, serve her every need, and for all of this she rewards me with absolute, unequivocal, unmistakable . . .

Hatred.

Yes, first-class loathing. But on with tonight’s show, a regular kitty condo of house cats, working cats and farm cats. It may also be TV’s first-ever truly cerebral look at domestic cats--which are said to have supplanted dogs as our favorite pets--and their place in feline hierarchy.

That man for all species, famed veterinarian Michael Fox, observes tonight about domestic cats:

“They’re independent, they’re affectionate, they’re loyal, they’re beautiful, they’re sagacious, they’re mysterious, they’re ineffable, they’re inscrutable.” Especially inscrutable.

Written and produced by Barbara Jampel, the program uses exquisite photography in juxtaposing domestic cats with those in the wild in order to note their many common denominators. These include not only grooming, but also heavy-duty sleeping to conserve energy for the stalking of prey, ranging from mice to wildebeests.

What most separates this hour from countless other TV programs about animals, though, is its focus on scientific observations. These are not exploitative lab experiments that cruelly inflict agonizing pain on cats, allegedly on behalf of humans, but tests that monitor behavior in ways that seem to be as benign as they are beneficial.

For example, we learn from research at Florida State University that cats can pierce low light levels with vision at least six times that of humans. We hear from the Animal Medical Center in New York that cats that have fallen from seven to 32 stories were somehow able to use their bodies as “parachutes” and sustain only minor injuries. And we learn from an Oxford study that domestic cats, through predation, can have an ecological impact on their environment.

Somewhat tainted, though, is a segment purporting to show that communal living--by both barnyard cats and lions in the wild--may shield the young from adult males that want to kill them. Although an especially brutal sequence appears to show an adult lion attacking and killing a cub, a barnyard kitten described as being killed by a male cat is clearly breathing, raising questions about the truthfulness of the entire segment.

The kitten shown is merely sick and not the one that was killed, Jampel acknowledged by phone. “The incident that was described to us happened two years ago, and we didn’t have our cameras there,” she said. Although small, this deception makes you wonder about other elements of the show as well.

Meanwhile, everything on the screen affirms that domestic cats, although infinitely less friendly and slobbery than dogs, are infinitely more interesting. We’ve had dogs. We love dogs. But there’s something quite different about cohabiting--as we do in our house--with a pet that is also a stealthy, slinky predator.

Narrator Joseph Campanella says that cats cannot differentiate human faces, which many cat owners would dispute. In any event, cats are especially discerning when it comes to human feet.

Ours jumps onto the bed on my side, then walks across my feet to get to the other side so that she can sleep on my wife’s feet. Not mine, my wife’s!

But at 5:45 a.m. each day, she wakes me up. Not my wife, me!

Well, what can you expect from a child? Without hearing ourselves do the same, we ridicule people who address their pets in goo-goo talk. At our place, we not only talk baby talk to Snoopy, we also speak for her as well.

“Mommy, I just love my little foodings,” Snoopy said recently in her squeaky little voice.

“Doesn’t she talk cute?” my wife said.

“But that was you talking,” I reminded her.

“Oh, yeah,” my wife said, before continuing. “Mommy, I want more foodings.”

This cat didn’t merely want more food. That predatory glare told me she was demanding it or else.

There’s just something about cats. . . .

I remember once walking alone through sprawling Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris at twilight and eerily feeling another presence, then wheeling around and seeing that I was being observed by perhaps a dozen cats sitting on and among the gray tombs and gravestones.

As I’m writing this, I’m feeling a similar cold gaze. I’m turning around. It’s Snoopy, The Tabby From Hell. Now I hear myself squeaking in my own high-pitched baby’s falsetto to this cat, which, in feline years, is nearly old enough to be my grandmother.

“Has Daddy’s little girl come in to watch Daddy work? Look, Daddy’s writing about little kitties just like little Snoopy. See, Daddy’s writing about you, too. What does Daddy’s little girl think about that? Do you love your Daddy? Show Daddy. Come on. Come to Daddy.”

Nothing!

There is no movement from this cat statue, only that gaze. But wait. The upper part of her mouth is beginning to twitch uncontrollably. It’s pulsating. Now it’s curling. Now I see her teeth and hear the snarl, realizing that if I were a grasshopper, I’d be dead meat.

Yet there is cat justice, for just as I am terrorized by my Snoopy, so is she terrorized by The Cat From Next Door, the black and burly Sport.

Sport spends most of his time dozing on a chaise longue on our patio, and after long-ago demonstrating dominance over Snoopy, refuses to leave. Oh, we tell him to leave, but he just glares vacantly as if we were speaking some sort of alien felinese. We could get really tough and throw him out, but he’d probably only come back. He’s a cat. It’s his job. Go figure.

As much as it tries, tonight’s special doesn’t succeed in demystifying cats, and just as well. Some mysteries are better left unsolved.