Cat Eyes

“Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to You.” [Psalm 139:12]

Cats are nocturnal animals and have a need to see well at night. Cats need only one-sixth of the light needed by people to see when it’s dark. Plus, their eyes need to work well during the daytime. How do their eyes function so well in low light? The Lord has created some special abilities in the eyes of Puff and Snowball.

First of all, when the lights go down, the pupil of a cat’s eye needs to open really wide to let more light inside. Our eyes have circular muscles that open and close our pupil, which limits just how much they can open. A cat’s eye has a couple of muscles that open and close the pupil like a shutter, giving the eye a slit-like pupil when it’s bright outside. In fact, the relative size of a cat’s eye is bigger than a human’s eye. It also has a more curved lens, which brings in more light and also gives it a greater ability to sharpen its focus on objects.

Did you ever notice that when you shine a light on a cat’s eyes at night they seem to glow? That’s because of the tapetum lucidum, which is like a mirror behind the retina reflecting more light back onto lightsensitive cells in the retina. This special “mirror” gives the cat’s eyes the characteristic nighttime glow when they are caught in a beam of light. Another feature of a cat’s eye is the type of light receptor cells on the retina. Cones are cells sensitive to high levels of light and are good with color detection. Rods are cells sensitive to low levels of light and are helpful with black and white detection. A cat has far more rods in its eyes than people. Even the location of the optic nerve on the back of the eye is positioned to help our feline friends see better movement at night.

God’s vision is even better than that of a cat. The Lord can see you no matter where you are. When Abraham sent Hagar away, she cried out to God. The Angel of the Lord spoke to her, and she responded; “Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees; for she said, ‘Have I also here seen Him who sees me?’” (Genesis 16:13). We have a God who sees very well, even in our darkest nights.