why does my cat bring me things

I have an indoor-outdoor cat (neutered male) that is four years old. Sometimes in the morning I will find a dying or dead mouse or bird on the front porch. Gross! Why does he bring me presents like this? Thanks в A. Z. Dear A. Z. ,
As gross as it may be, this is your catвs way of showing his affection в that or trying to teach you something. Our domestic cats once had to live off their hunting skills and even though they might not need to hunt to eat today, some still enjoy the activity. In the wild, a mother cat would hunt small animals or birds, and bring them back to her kittens for food. In time, she would bring back dinner while it was still alive in order to teach her kittens how to hunt for themselves. Your cat is expressing a nurturing nature by gifting you with your dinner, as well as giving you a learning opportunity. I can imagine youвre probably wondering в how do I get him to stop bringing me dinner? Placing a bell on your catвs break-a-way collar might limit his hunting success. But, the only sure way to keep your cat from killing animals is to keep him inside. As long as he has access to the outside, heвs going to have access to prey. If you insist on letting him outside, we suggest installing an outdoor cat fencing system to keep your cat confined safely on your property. If you attend a Super Bowl party on Sunday, youБll probably hear at least one casual football viewer ask, БHow do they get that yellow first-down line on the field? Б While БmagicБ is a fine answer in its own right, the real explanation is a bit more technologically intense.

LetБs have a look at the background and mechanics behind every football fanБs shining beacon: the yellow first-down line. According to Allen St. JohnБs 2009 book The Billion Dollar Game: Behind the Scenes of the Greatest Day in American Sport - Super Bowl Sunday, the first-down line actually emerged from the ashes of one of sports broadcastingБs bigger debacles: the FoxTrax system for hockey, which was designed by a company called Sportvision. Бwhich hockey fans no doubt remember as the much-maligned БtechnopuckБ that debuted in 1996Бemployed a system of cameras and sensors around a hockey rink to place a little blue halo around the puck. FoxTrax wasn't a great fit for NHL broadcasts: Hockey purists hated the intrusion into their game, and casual fans didnБt flock to hockey just because the puck was suddenly easier to follow. However, the system inspired producers to think of new ways to insert computerized images into live sports broadcasts. The idea of using a line to mark the first down in football was a natural extension, and Sportvision debuted its during ESPNБs broadcast of a Bengals-Ravens tilt on September 27, 1998. A couple of months later, rival company Princeton Video Image unveiled its Yellow Down Line system during a Steelers-Lions broadcast on CBS. (Sportvision is still kicking, and ESPN acquired all of PVIБs intellectual property in December 2010. ) BUT HOW DOES IT WORK? It takes lots of computers, sensors, and smart technicians to make this little yellow line happen.

Long before the game begins, technicians make a digital 3D model of the field, including all of the yard lines. While a football field may look flat to the naked eye, itБs actually subtly curved with a crown in the middle to help rainwater flow away. Each field has its own unique contours, so before the season begins, broadcasters need to get a 3D model of each stadiumБs field. These models of the field help sidestep the rest of the technological challenges inherent to putting a line on the field. On game day, each camera used in the broadcast contains sensors that record its location, tilt, pan, and zoom and transmit this data to the networkБs graphics truck in the stadiumБs parking lot. These readings allow the computers in the truck to process exactly where each camera is within the 3D model and the perspective of each camera. (According to, the computers recalculate the perspective 30 times per second as the camera moves. ) After they get their hands on all of this information, the folks in the graphics truck know where to put the first-down line, but thatБs only part of the task. When you watch a football game on television, youБll notice that the first-down line appears to actually be painted on the field; if a player or official crosses the line, he doesnБt turn yellow. Instead, it looks like the playerБs cleat is positioned on top of an actual painted line. This effect is fairly straightforward, but itБs difficult to achieve. To integrate the line onto the field of play, the technicians and their computers put together two separate color palettes before each game.

One palette contains the colorsБusually greens and brownsБthat naturally occur on the fieldБs turf. These colors will automatically be converted into yellow when the line is drawn on to the field. All of the other colors that could show up on the fieldБthings like uniforms, shoes, footballs, and penalty flagsБgo into a separate palette. Colors that appear on this second palette are never converted into yellow when the first-down line is drawn. Thus, if a playerБs foot is situated БonБ the line, everything around his cleat will turn yellow, but the cleat itself will remain black. According to How Stuff Works, this drawing/colorizing process refreshes 60 times per second. All this technologyБand the people needed to run itБwasnБt cheap at first. It could cost broadcasters anywhere from $25,000 to $30,000 per game to put the yellow line on the field. Sportvision had to deploy a truck and a four-man crew with five racks of equipment. The cost has come down since then, and the process is now less labor-intensive. One technician using one or two computers can run the system, according to Sportvision, and some games can even be done without anyone actually at the venue. Now you can explain it to everyone at your Super Bowl party during one of the less-exciting. Have you got a Big Question you'd like us to answer? If so, let us know by emailing us at. This post originally appeared in 2011.