雅思阅读材料之你不在家时猫星人都做些什么

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.

网上到处都是关于喵星人的视频，在YouTube网站搜索关键词“猫”，你可以看到1亿1300万的点击量。胖猫、可爱的猫、长得丑的猫、卡通猫：我们就是喜欢喵星人，怎么都不够。

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.

要是有事业心的喵星人能拍下自己的家庭影片并上传网络，肯定马上会成为网络热门关注。好在科学让这成为可能，BBC二台制作了一部喵星人纪录片《地平线：猫咪的秘密生活》。

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.

在萨里郡通勤居民区Shamley Green村，50只猫咪被戴上了GPS追踪器，当这些猫咪在夜间潜行时，这些追踪器可以准备定位它们的位置，误差仅为几厘米。

The most adventurous were given tiny collar-cameras to wear, offering viewers a cats-eye view of the world.

最刺激的是给它们戴上非常小的颈圈摄像头，让观看视频的人可以通过猫眼看世界。

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. 

猫咪们是整个节目的重点，我们都不知道他们主人的名字。介绍一下它们吧：这只叫Ginger的猫，多次在凌晨四点钟溜进邻居家的花园，和他们家的猫打架；Phoebe 和 Kato 这两只猫在他们的领地上则是“分时度假”，所以我们从来看不到它们俩同时出来巡逻；这只叫Claude的猫，每晚爬进一个陌生人的家里偷食物；还有这只叫Molly的，到离家两小时路程的一个小树林里去捣鸟窝。

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.

纪录片中可能并没有太多惊喜。就像它们的主人已经猜到的那样，猫咪会通过猫洞溜到隔壁邻居家，偷袭食盆里的猫粮；它们遇到同类时，会发出嘶嘶声和号叫声，然后就默默溜走；对大部分的猫咪来说，抓老鼠是挺麻烦的事儿。