From a life science point of view, these animals resemble a liquid—much more so than other creatures such as humans—because of their movable (and sometimes missing) collarbone. Once their head fits through an opening, the rest of the body can easily follow.
This is the conclusion
In fact, the name of the Deborah number comes from a line in a section of the Old Testament known as the “Song of Deborah.” (Although translations vary, the King James Version is: “The mountains melted from before the Lord.”)
Here the author uses a biblical allusion to make their point, while also providing a fun fact to the reader.
On New Year’s Day about 15 years ago, we spent hours looking for our cat. The fireworks had frightened the poor animal so much that it had hidden somewhere. We searched all its favorite places without success. The feline seemed to have vanished. But at some point, we were amazed to see something black and fluffy crawl out of a long, narrow opening under our fireplace. Tigrou, our house cat, had hidden in a space seemingly too narrow for the creature to fit.
Here, the author uses effective storytelling of a personal experience to hook the audience into the article.
This means that cats should be classified as liquids, right?The question is not so easy to answer.
This is the author's point of view. Whether or not cats are liquid has a complex answer to it, according to the author.
There is more than one way to think about states of matter, such as liquids and solids
This is the main idea of the article. While cats are the example used, it's really about the grey area between liquid and solid.
Mountains are indisputably solid for us. During a human lifetime, no flow behavior can be detected. But over millions of years, this changes.
The author uses the strategy here of selecting an extreme example, to best illustrate their point