貓咪的祕密生活:你不在家時貓咪都在做什麼
Cat videos are swamping the internet. Search on YouTube for ‘cats’ and you’ll get 11.3 million hits. Fat cats, cute cats, ugly cats, cartoon cats: we can’t get enough of them.
網上到處都是關於喵星人的視頻，在YouTube網站搜索關鍵詞“貓”，你可以看到1億1300萬的點擊量。胖貓、可愛的貓、長得醜的貓、卡通貓：我們就是喜歡喵星人，怎麼都不夠。Any enterprising puss that could film and upload its own home movies would be an instant internet sensation. Horizon: The Secret Life Of the Cat (BBC2) revealed the science that might make this possible.
要是有事業心的喵星人能拍下自己的家庭影片並上傳網絡，肯定馬上會成爲網絡熱門關注。好在科學讓這成爲可能，BBC二臺製作了一部喵星人紀錄片《地平線：貓咪的祕密生活》。In the Surrey commuter-belt village of Shamley Green, 50 pet moggies were fitted with GPS trackers that pinpointed their position to within a few centimetres as they prowled on their nightly rounds.
在薩里郡通勤居民區Shamley Green村，50只貓咪被戴上了GPS追蹤器，當這些貓咪在夜間潛行時，這些追蹤器可以準備定位它們的位置，誤差僅爲幾釐米。
The most adventurous were given tiny collar-cameras to wear, offering viewers a cats-eye view of the world.
最刺激的是給它們戴上非常小的頸圈攝像頭，讓觀看視頻的人可以通過貓眼看世界。The cats were very much the focus of the programme: we didn’t learn their owners’ names. Instead, we met Ginger, who repeatedly snuck into his neighbour’s garden at 4am to fight the resident cat. Phoebe and Kato worked out a “timeshare” of their territory so they were never patrolling at the same time. There was Claude, who crept into a stranger’s house each night to steal food; and Molly, who travelled two hours from home to hunt from a birds’ nest in a wood.
貓咪們是整個節目的重點，我們都不知道他們主人的名字。介紹一下它們吧：這隻叫Ginger的貓，多次在凌晨四點鐘溜進鄰居家的花園，和他們家的貓打架；Phoebe 和 Kato 這兩隻貓在他們的領地上則是“分時度假”，所以我們從來看不到它們倆同時出來巡邏；這隻叫Claude的貓，每晚爬進一個陌生人的家裏偷食物；還有這隻叫Molly的，到離家兩小時路程的一個小樹林裏去搗鳥窩。The documentary contained few surprises. Cats, as their owners already guessed, like to sneak through next-door’s cat-flap and raid the food bowl; they hiss and yowl and then scarper when they meet one another; hunting mice is, mostly, too much trouble for them.
紀錄片中可能並沒有太多驚喜。就像它們的主人已經猜到的那樣，貓咪會通過貓洞溜到隔壁鄰居家，偷襲食盆裏的貓糧；它們遇到同類時，會發出嘶嘶聲和號叫聲，然後就默默溜走；對大部分的貓咪來說，抓老鼠是挺麻煩的事兒。
