Hakuna Matata
November 5, 2015 6:48 AM   Subscribe

 
This does seem to suggest that cats are – generally speaking – quick-to-anger control-freaks that act without forethought

Remember: Just because research confirms what everyone already knew, doesn't make it unimportant.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 6:51 AM on November 5, 2015 [38 favorites]


> Previous research has indicated that not only does your pet see you as an inessential landlord, but they also tend to view us as idiotic, furless cats who can’t hunt.

Save your scorn for the day when you develop the ability to open cupboards and/or use can openers, you furry little domesticated jerks.

Just kidding, I like cats and have two.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:52 AM on November 5, 2015 [8 favorites]


Save your scorn for the day when you develop the ability to open cupboards

In our house it's not for a lack of trying.

For a solid hour.

At three in the morning.
posted by Ufez Jones at 6:54 AM on November 5, 2015 [81 favorites]


Save your scorn for the day when you develop the ability to open cupboards and/or use can openers, you furry little domesticated jerks.

My cats can already open cupboards. My days are numbered.
posted by briank at 6:54 AM on November 5, 2015 [6 favorites]


Rar!
posted by exogenous at 6:54 AM on November 5, 2015 [45 favorites]


Study Reveals That Your Cat Is Basically A Tiny Lion

It is known.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:57 AM on November 5, 2015 [11 favorites]


My Old Lady Cat has a habit of jimmying open the closet doors of our bedroom loudly in the middle of the night. If we didn't know it was her, I'd think it was either a really shit ghost or an inept burglar.
posted by Kitteh at 6:57 AM on November 5, 2015 [6 favorites]


Oh god Exogenous that gif is wonderful. Especially the lack of reaction from that corg.
posted by dismas at 7:00 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


they may be far more neurotic – and resistant to being ordered around – than previously thought.

I have never underestimated this.
posted by like_neon at 7:03 AM on November 5, 2015 [16 favorites]


But he's clearly got stripes!
posted by Artw at 7:07 AM on November 5, 2015


I'm always impressed when I see someone taking their cat on a leash in the backyard or somewhere.


Of the three cats I've lived with long-term, one would have attacked the leash, one would have attacked me, and one would have had a complete nervous breakdown.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:14 AM on November 5, 2015 [7 favorites]


My former Bengal lived in a house that had levers on the doors instead of round knobs. We would try to shut her out of the bedroom so she wouldn't encourage us to get up and hunt mice at two in the morning. She quickly realized that she could jump up and hit that lever and make a great attention-getting noise, and then quickly discovered that if she kept doing that, eventually she would open the door.

So we responded by sticking a wooden 2x4 wedge under the door. (We had eventually gotten to the point where the twanging of the doorknob didn't really quite entirely wake us up.) That worked for a while until one night the cat woke me up by walking across my face. I figured my wife had just forgotten to put the wedge under the door, but then it happened again the next night, when I knew damn well I'd wedged it shut.

It turns out the cat had spotted that little wedge under the door and thought it was something to attack. Then, god help us all, she figured out that if she pushed it back out from under the door, her old trick would work again!

Cat science marches onward. Like antibiotic resistant bacteria, the little bastards evolve and adapt and figure out ways to impose their will. We eventually had to put a 20 lb dumbbell against the door at night.
posted by Naberius at 7:14 AM on November 5, 2015 [61 favorites]


I have nothing to add to this conversation except a self link to my recently adopted bengal kitten who is not 3 pounds and yet becomes apoplectic when we do not allow her near the slow cooker when it has chicken in it.

All research that indicates cats are jerks fails to consider that for thousands of years, we have known that cats are jerks and we think its hilarious and we love it because they are also very, very soft.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 7:16 AM on November 5, 2015 [93 favorites]


So, I guess I should be glad that it's a tiny piebald bastard that sits outside my glass door at 2 AM taunting my dog and not a larger feline with the same personality characteristics. Maybe tiny-lion needs a taste of goofy-oversized-speed-wolf.
posted by Seamus at 7:16 AM on November 5, 2015


"...some new research on the psychology of our favorite feline companions reveals that they may be far more neurotic – and resistant to being ordered around – than previously thought.....

Evidently neither the researchers nor the writer of this article have ever seen a cat....
posted by HuronBob at 7:16 AM on November 5, 2015 [3 favorites]


based on this study, it looks like the Scottish wildcat – with its mix of dominance, agreeableness, and conscientiousness – might make for a more amiable pet.

Oh, yes, that does look like it would make an amiable pet!
posted by Umami Dearest at 7:19 AM on November 5, 2015 [9 favorites]


Save your scorn for the day when you develop the ability to open cupboards and/or use can openers, you furry little domesticated jerks.

They've already developed that ability -- they just outsourced it.

CAT 2016 -- THE ORIGINAL JOB CREATOR
posted by Etrigan at 7:20 AM on November 5, 2015 [18 favorites]


Get round knobs for the doors. After a few days of ineffective jumping and thumping you should be good.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:22 AM on November 5, 2015


Get round knobs for the doors.

This would be cheating, not to mention in strict violation of the Cat/Human Détente Accord (Paris, 1805).
posted by valkane at 7:26 AM on November 5, 2015 [10 favorites]


> Previous research has indicated that not only does your pet see you as an inessential landlord, but they also tend to view us as idiotic, furless cats who can’t hunt.

Inessential? Uh huh. Open your own cans, then. Asshole cat.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:27 AM on November 5, 2015 [3 favorites]


Duh.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 7:28 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


CAT 2016 -- THE ORIGINAL JOB CREATOR

"When Mexico sends its dogs, they're not sending the best. They're not sending you, they're sending puppies that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing catnip. They’re bringing crime. They’re chasers. ... And some, I assume, are good puppies."

CAT DONALD TRUMP 2016: YOU WORK FOR ME
posted by leotrotsky at 7:28 AM on November 5, 2015 [8 favorites]


Get round knobs for the doors.

I can attest from bitter experience that this won't stop them all.
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:29 AM on November 5, 2015 [8 favorites]


I'm always amazed that people manage to lock their cats out of the bedroom at night. I've tried that with various cats and the scratching and yowling outside the door turned out to be more sleep disturbing than having the cats in the bedroom. My old cat, Ursa, would just slam her head into the door over and over, full force until we opened the door. We were afraid that she'd damage her tiny little brain.
posted by octothorpe at 7:30 AM on November 5, 2015 [5 favorites]


I don't mind the cats in the bedroom or on the bed even. I do resent that for the past week I've not even been able to have my own pillow because *somebody* decided that this was her best favourite sleeping spot ever.
posted by MartinWisse at 7:32 AM on November 5, 2015 [6 favorites]


Reading this thread made me want to pet my cat. So I called to him, and he enthusiastically came running down the hallway to me. "See!" I thought, "MY cat isn't an asshole like they are saying." And then he stopped about one foot away from me and has since refused to jump on the couch next to me despite all my pleading. He's just sitting one foot away and looking at me.
posted by misskaz at 7:35 AM on November 5, 2015 [65 favorites]


This does seem to suggest that cats are – generally speaking – quick-to-anger control-freaks that act without forethought

I knew there was a reason my three-year-old reminds me of a cat.
posted by Slothrup at 7:35 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


Little lion cat.
posted by misskaz at 7:38 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


After careful evaluation, I determined my cat was INTJ.
posted by klarck at 7:41 AM on November 5, 2015 [16 favorites]


BuddahInABucket, you get the hell out of here with that little cutie, and her little spots, and her little tufted ears!
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:43 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


chomp!
posted by dismas at 7:43 AM on November 5, 2015 [12 favorites]


After careful evaluation, I determined my cat was INTJ.

Most evil geniuses are.
posted by bgal81 at 7:44 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


One of our cats is named Gilmore after this barnstorming lion. I've not yet taken our Gilmore flying in my plane, but I would like to make him a little decorative parachute for Halloween some year.
posted by exogenous at 7:47 AM on November 5, 2015


Well, yes, we have always known that our cat thinks that the lynx on the Taste of the Wild venison/salmon food bag is a picture of her. And we often greet her with "who's a tiny lion? Is it you? It's YOU!!!"

I am Parent Cat and Gratifier of Whims. My longest-running housemate (Food Ape #2) is Stupid Peer Cat. Our other housemates (Food Apes 3 and 4) are Addled Kittens Who Require Monitoring.

For instance, our cat will tolerate being picked up by Stupid Peer Cat, which she doesn't like, because Stupid Peer Cat is bigger - unless I'm in the room, when she knows that if she whines and fidgets, I will make Stupid Peer Cat put her down. Only I will provide food if whined at. It's important not to come upstairs to settle in for the first part of the night until all the Addled Kittens have returned home - there is a special chair to sit in while watching for them.

I had to invent a special door-curtaining system so that I could have both a window unit air conditioner and a way for Dr. Cat (the cat) to come and go from my room (the lair). I have found that if you put up a curtain rod outside the door and hang three curtains from it (so that they are thickly bunched) and keep the room door almost all the way closed, the cat can come and go through the curtains while the room does not lose too much cool air. I mean, I got some attractive curtains and everything. Otherwise, of course, I would have been getting up and down ten times an hour because the cat would want to go in and out and in and out every two minutes, because cats.
posted by Frowner at 7:53 AM on November 5, 2015 [11 favorites]


I'm always impressed when I see someone taking their cat on a leash in the backyard or somewhere.

I take one of our cats outside on a leash. He really doesn't like having the harness put on him, but he also reaaallly wants to go outside, so we've worked out a compromise where I hold him in the air and put the harness on him and he doesn't draw so much blood that I pass out and drop him.

The problem now is that we recently adopted a dog and sometimes I have to leave the back door open to convince her to go outside and pee. So the cat hears the door open and comes running to go outside. The dog is afraid of the cat, which means I have to perform this juggling act of trying to convince the dog to go outside while simultaneously holding the cat back.
posted by backseatpilot at 7:54 AM on November 5, 2015 [5 favorites]


I'm always amazed that people manage to lock their cats out of the bedroom at night.

Our cat permanently resides in the master bedroom, because that's the only thing that will contain the collateral damage. So naturally, he bangs on the bedroom door trying to get out at night.

He doesn't often actually want out, and when he does get out he meets the dogs and immediately decides the bedroom is a pretty great place after all.
posted by Foosnark at 8:07 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


I've always taken a strange comfort from the converse of this idea when hiking in cougar country....big cats are basically the same as tiny cats....easy to startle and distract, quick to look for a getaway if confronted.
posted by OHenryPacey at 8:10 AM on November 5, 2015


when you develop the ability to open cupboards

Not only can she open the cupboards, but our mastermind cat (as opposed to our goober cat, and our boss cat) has recently determined how to remove bags of treats from cupboards that we secured by tying them shut with hairbands. We are working to develop new anti-cat cupboard technology now.
posted by instead of three wishes at 8:16 AM on November 5, 2015 [4 favorites]


Study Reveals Humans Are On To Us.
posted by gottabefunky at 8:17 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


The dog is afraid of the cat, which means I have to perform this juggling act of trying to convince the dog to go outside while simultaneously holding the cat back

Cat juggling?
posted by iviken at 8:27 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'm always impressed when I see someone taking their cat on a leash in the backyard or somewhere.

My indoor cat Peter enjoys leash walks beyond all other things. He doesn't exactly go in the direction that anyone else wants to go in, but he likes the chance to suddenly race off at top speeds and haul a human behind him, and he definitely likes the chance to sniff new things. He definitely prefers being on harness and leash to being in a carrier, to the point that when he visits the vet he only rides in the carrier while we're driving and as soon as he gets into the building he's allowed out on leash. We've even taken him on walks to the local Petco before and he was fine. (He's also a weirdo who will cheerfully approach strange dogs for a sniff if they don't bark at him or act weird, and also if they're not smaller than he is. Great Danes are awesome, but apparently dogs smaller than our ten-pound cat are an abomination not to be tolerated. I have no idea what is going though his weird little mind there.)

He's not entirely thrilled about being velcro-ed into his little harness and will totally play the inflating-his-gut-to-make-it-looser game if you let him get away with it (we just re-fix the bottom loop when he stops paying attention). But apparently it's worth it if he gets to go outside with a human along, to the point that he becomes visibly excited if we pick up the harness. He also will present himself at the front door of our apartment if the dog is going out for a walk and loudly mew in the hopes of getting to come along.
posted by sciatrix at 8:30 AM on November 5, 2015 [18 favorites]


as a quick-to-anger control-freak that often acts without much forethought, I feel more feline than ever, and I usually feel quite feline. mew.
posted by millipede at 8:49 AM on November 5, 2015 [3 favorites]


YOUR cat may be a tiny lion but MINE is a cranky chubby hot-pink zebra.
posted by angeline at 9:13 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


Both of the most common creatures we humans keep domestically (actually in our homes) - cats and dogs - are basically subservient versions, we have created, of our most recent great predator enemies - tigers and wolves. It's kinda messed up if you think about it.
posted by iotic at 9:15 AM on November 5, 2015 [4 favorites]


apparently dogs smaller than our ten-pound cat are an abomination not to be tolerated

idk, seems pretty wise to me. little dogs are super unpredictable on whether they are going to be tiny delighted cuddle machines or a thousand furious teeth of wild-eyed death. sometimes they are both at once.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:18 AM on November 5, 2015 [4 favorites]


Not only can she open the cupboards, but our mastermind cat (as opposed to our goober cat, and our boss cat) has recently determined how to remove bags of treats from cupboards that we secured by tying them shut with hairbands. We are working to develop new anti-cat cupboard technology now.

This is why I store cat treats in the refrigerator.
posted by jaguar at 9:20 AM on November 5, 2015


The cat treats live on the highest shelf of one of the tall bookcases in my room. Every once in a while, the cat will attempt to get up there by climbing the side slats of the bookcase like a ladder. She invariably ends up dangling from her front paws about two shelves below the treats. She only does this when I'm in the room, too, presumably as a kind of Deprivation Theater more than an attempt to get the actual treats. They're not even especially good treats - her real treat is the fact that we feed her 1/3 can of Best Feline Friend salmon flavor cat food every day.
posted by Frowner at 9:24 AM on November 5, 2015 [4 favorites]


I'm always amazed that people manage to lock their cats out of the bedroom at night.

My three kittens (six months old next week) are currently banished from the room at night, although not during the daytime, and so far are sanguine about the situation. However, their now-deceased predecessors elected to take things into their own paws at about nine months: they hurled themselves at the door at 2 AM, hard enough to jar it off the latch. Ergo, I await further developments.

We are working to develop new anti-cat cupboard technology now.

I've got these, which seem to be cat-proof unless the cat manages to yank them off the cupboard entirely. Unfortunately for me, all three of my cats like water ("guys, you missed a memo somewhere"), and I have noted, with extreme trepidation, that the biggest of the three is trying to figure out how to turn on the kitchen faucet.
posted by thomas j wise at 9:26 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


I feel like this is a good excuse to re-watch every youtube clip of big cats chasing laser pointers. I always love watching a huge and terrifying tiger paw come down on the tiny red thing, in exactly the same sharp move as the tiniest kitten will make.
posted by Aravis76 at 9:30 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


I've had cats long enough to now accept the fact that when they stare at a seemingly blank space with interest, it's often because there really is a little bug flying about, or a rodent in the wall, or something like that. I've learned to trust the cat, basically.

This morning as I was getting ready for work, my Zuzu, who's a pretty good little hunter, jumped up on this small, 18-inch long expanse of countertop between the stove and the wall, which is where we keep the toaster oven and blender. So she jumps up there -- which is odd in and of itself, because I don't think she's ever jumped up onto the kitchen counter in this house -- and starts batting the heck out of the blender base. It wasn't the kind of sideways cat bat where they want to knock something to the floor. It was the overhand kind of cat bat, the roundhouse, the one accompanied by a frown, when they take to bopping something they dislike or distrust. (Like in this old favorite cat vs. printer episode.)

The blender jar wasn't there, there was no food present, nothing. The blender base was tucked back in the corner, and she just started wailing on it.

Freaked me out, to be honest.
posted by mudpuppie at 9:34 AM on November 5, 2015 [3 favorites]


apparently dogs smaller than our ten-pound cat are an abomination not to be tolerated

idk, seems pretty wise to me. little dogs are super unpredictable on whether they are going to be tiny delighted cuddle machines or a thousand furious teeth of wild-eyed death. sometimes they are both at once.


Yeah, also I think cat-sized dogs register more as a territorial threat. I have had cats and greyhounds for several years now, and the greyhounds are so big that they exist at a completely different scale. So the cat doesn't see them as trying to usurp his/her position, just a tall clumsy thing that distributes neither food nor pets.
posted by misskaz at 9:41 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


ROAR!
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:41 AM on November 5, 2015 [3 favorites]


Our cats used to reach under our bedroom door and rattle it while we were trying to sleep, which was super annoying. Keeping a spray bottle full of water beside the bed solved that problem in a hurry.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:43 AM on November 5, 2015


> I feel like this is a good excuse to re-watch every youtube clip of big cats chasing laser pointers.

My wife and I had fun with one of those things for about a week, until we noticed that it was rapidly turning even our chill cat into a nervous wreck. We took the internet's advice and ended the chase on a cat toy they could "catch," but that didn't seem to help. They didn't want to kill the cat toy, they wanted to kill the red dot, which was impossible.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:46 AM on November 5, 2015 [3 favorites]


I have had cats and greyhounds for several years now, and the greyhounds are so big that they exist at a completely different scale.

For our cat, chickens seem to be this way - too big to see as birds. Our neighbors got chickens, you see, and I was all thrilled for Dr. Cat, thinking that she'd have hours of fun chittering out the window at them, but she doesn't even really seem to see them. One of the people next door (since moved out) had a fierce little black cat who loved to play-chase the chickens, though, and that was pretty cute. Bit rough on the chickens, but whatever, cats are the most important.
posted by Frowner at 9:55 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


We too stopped using the Evil Red Dot for Pooper (aka Moxie Parker) because frankly, it started to feel like gaslighting the cat. She would have the same reaction that The Card Cheat's cat did and it was sad when she would anxiously scan everywhere in the house long after the Evil Red Dot disappeared. I mean, bless her boots, she already has the tiniest brain of any cat we've ever known so yeah, it felt super mean.
posted by Kitteh at 9:56 AM on November 5, 2015 [4 favorites]


We don't own cats. They sauntered in around 5000 years or so ago, some say even 9000, but they're still the same semi-wild animals. They're a bit less scared around us, perhaps, but not a whole lot different. They're just crashing with us until something better comes along.

Dogs, dogs have changed who they are, how they look and how they think. They're not coyotes or wolves anymore. Dogs have wholeheartedly picked a side. But a cat, a cat could walk out and be that same forest or desert native their ancestors were. But, you know, the meals are regular.
posted by bonehead at 9:57 AM on November 5, 2015 [4 favorites]


>I have had cats and greyhounds for several years now, and the greyhounds are so big that they exist at a completely different scale.

>>For our cat, chickens seem to be this way - too big to see as birds.


Yeah, between all the various animals in the neighborhood, we've got a chihuahua who pretends not to see cats (because they are too big to be prey and he thinks if he ignores them, they won't see him as prey) and cats who pretend not to see chickens (I think for the same reasons), and then a large dog who pretends not to see cats because he's scared of them. Which I think ends up with the chickens as the apex predators?
posted by jaguar at 10:01 AM on November 5, 2015 [14 favorites]


I am basically dying with jealousy for all of the people who have cats. high on my list of unfavorite things about the Bay Area is the fact that you can't find an apartment where you can have pets unless you're willing to pay 40% of a Googler's monthly salary for it.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:02 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


When I lived on Kauai, my dog would totally try to attack sharks that we caught, but she steered well clear of the chickens.
posted by kamikazegopher at 10:18 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


Yeah, bonehead, I like to say that dogs are something that we did to wolves, while cats are basically hanging around us because it suits them, and that tells you most of what you need to know about our relationship with each.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:23 AM on November 5, 2015


tl;dr: Meyers-Briggs for species.

As legit as that sounds.
posted by clvrmnky at 10:30 AM on November 5, 2015


If cats are little lions then why isn't the Serengeti completely covered in cat hair?
posted by srboisvert at 10:31 AM on November 5, 2015 [8 favorites]


this thread makes me so grateful that my cat flora realizes how clumsy and lazy she is so she never attempts to jump on anything higher than my bed

however she absolutely loves to hog my side of the bed and will plop down between me and my laptop when i'm lying down watching netflix, rest her head on my pillow directly in front of my face, and completely block my view. her favorite shows are midsomer murders and miss fisher's murder mysteries, which i suspect are giving her ideas
posted by burgerrr at 10:43 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


But a cat, a cat could walk out and be that same forest or desert native their ancestors were. But, you know, the meals are regular.

The cat of my childhood was unhappy with our services. First, my grandparents took away some of her many kittens. This made her very mad, and she began hiding her kittens. Then she was tormented by my brothers one day, and she just walked out and went feral. Period.
She never entered the house again. But she would pass by at mealtimes, and yes, there would be food outdoors for her.
posted by mumimor at 10:49 AM on November 5, 2015


SO INSULTING
I'm a panther, not a lion!!!
pay no attention to the fluffy lion-seeming schmooze behind me, he's such a faker
posted by Susu pitchounette at 11:23 AM on November 5, 2015


I've always taken a strange comfort from the converse of this idea when hiking in cougar country....big cats are basically the same as tiny cats....easy to startle and distract, quick to look for a getaway if confronted.

Sorry if this lowers your comfort, but that only seems to be the case when there is no prey around. My cats are lazy distractible slugs for 99% of the year, until that day when the weather turns cold and some poor mouse finds his way in for warmth (I have never been able to figure out their point of entry). Then the cats turn into unstoppable killing machines. They don't eat, they don't sleep, they just sit and stare for hours, their stares vectoring in to what I am sure is the exact location under the cupboards where the mouse exists. This can go on for days until some morning when I wake up and they are again sleeping on the back of the couch. I prefer to think that the mouse found his way back out of the house.
posted by rtimmel at 11:28 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


Our cat has moved beyond stealing my pillow and now tries to sleep directly on my head.
posted by Artw at 11:28 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


My little buddy Mr. J even LOOKS like a small lion, but behaves like the lovably derpy Eddie Deezen/DJ Qualls of the lion set.
posted by Samizdata at 11:44 AM on November 5, 2015


rtimmel: "I've always taken a strange comfort from the converse of this idea when hiking in cougar country....big cats are basically the same as tiny cats....easy to startle and distract, quick to look for a getaway if confronted.

Sorry if this lowers your comfort, but that only seems to be the case when there is no prey around. My cats are lazy distractible slugs for 99% of the year, until that day when the weather turns cold and some poor mouse finds his way in for warmth (I have never been able to figure out their point of entry). Then the cats turn into unstoppable killing machines. They don't eat, they don't sleep, they just sit and stare for hours, their stares vectoring in to what I am sure is the exact location under the cupboards where the mouse exists. This can go on for days until some morning when I wake up and they are again sleeping on the back of the couch. I prefer to think that the mouse found his way back out of the house.
"

My cat never quite makes it to the killing part, but, rather, during mouse times, becomes an unstoppable bragging machine as he trots around, mouse in mouth, chest out making sure I know exactly how bad ass he is.

Of course, the one time I tried to get a mouse away from him for hygienic disposal, it stopped playing dead and ran away (unbloodied, mind you) as soon as it left his mouth.

If he wasn't such a doofus, I would almost be willing to pin it up as a racket between the two of them.
posted by Samizdata at 12:13 PM on November 5, 2015 [4 favorites]


This is why I store cat treats in the refrigerator.

...not entirely sure that's a gauntlet I wish to throw down
posted by instead of three wishes at 12:23 PM on November 5, 2015 [5 favorites]


no, seriously, our neighbors moved in a couple years ago and I walked out and discovered her standing on the drivers side seat of the moving van with her paws on the steering wheel trying to work it out, it's her lifelong goal to steal a car as far as we can tell.
posted by instead of three wishes at 12:26 PM on November 5, 2015 [5 favorites]


Our kittens made our lives hell. Mewing, scratching at the bedroom door, eventually banging their heads on the door until we'd let them in. Sharing pillows and the occasional midnight scratch is much easier to deal with now that we Cosleep with Cat.

This is pretty much exactly what happened with our kids.

Now every morning I wake up with a cat on my chest, a 3 year old human on one side of me and a 6 year old human on the other, and if I'm lucky my wife somewhere over there part of the Family Pile.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 12:38 PM on November 5, 2015 [4 favorites]


Whenever we move into a new rent house, we cart along an extra whole door with the cat door pre-installed, swap it out with an outside original door, then put the old door back when we leave. It's a giant pain in the ass (we have to find somewhere to store the extra door for several years; we keep waiting for a raccoon to come inside; our landlord would be pissed if they knew.)

But it's still less trouble than our cat's 3 a.m. Let Me Out routine, which suddenly turns into Haha You Can't Get Me Out from Under the Bed if he does get you to get up to let him out.

He still tries to wake us, but we know he can go out when he wants. He also knows that if he gets us mad enough, we will get him out from under the bed and then lock him out of the house completely.
posted by emjaybee at 12:40 PM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


Get in car. Am lion.
posted by symbioid at 12:49 PM on November 5, 2015


The essence of cat in one gif.
posted by Justinian at 12:58 PM on November 5, 2015 [8 favorites]


I store cat treats in the refrigerator.

Oh, so that's what she was looking for.
posted by exogenous at 1:02 PM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]



We don't own cats. They sauntered in around 5000 years or so ago

And then they wanted to go back out 5001 years ago

Then wanted to get back in 5002 years ago...
posted by sweetkid at 1:06 PM on November 5, 2015 [9 favorites]


The fossil record isn't totally clear, they're at least 5000 years co-habitating, possibly quite a bit earlier (and it may even have happened multiple times in different places). It's easy to imagine cats strolling in an out of human dwellings many times in prehistory before they found that perfect sunny corner.
posted by bonehead at 1:15 PM on November 5, 2015 [3 favorites]


Presumably, we had to have invented doors first.
posted by Etrigan at 1:28 PM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


If cats are little lions then why isn't the Serengeti completely covered in cat hair?

It *is*, it's just that lions happen to be the same color as the savannah so you don't actually see the cat hair.
posted by mudpuppie at 2:33 PM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


My cat seems to understand that we control the red dot. He will come up and push at the laser pointer and meow at us until we make it go. Eventually he gets bored and we stop. Since he gets bored before us, I don't think the "lack of catching" is a big issue. I assume this varies widely by cat, as so many things do.
posted by thefoxgod at 2:40 PM on November 5, 2015 [5 favorites]


Mine too. If he loses the dot he looks at the pointer in our hand to see where it is.
posted by LizBoBiz at 2:42 PM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


My partner's child's cat is already completely at home with her familial relationship with Bestial Royalty
posted by Sparx at 3:14 PM on November 5, 2015




(note: this post was composed with a long-haired tabby resting on my stomach as I slouch in my office chair)

For over a decade we had four purebred Maine Coons. It was not unlike having lions in the house. The red dot was tried and while the smaller female played somewhat nice with it, the large males only understood the red dot as GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WARFARE. Ever seen a fifteen pound cat get tossed across the room by a twenty pounder in pursuit of the red dot only to get run over by the twenty-three pound behemoth? It's a little too close to watching the battle for antelope bits on the Serengeti. Chickens? Pah. They wanted to go after Canadian Geese, which would not have ended well. We were told in no uncertain terms that while an African Grey parrot does well fending off cats, Maine Coons were out of the question. Still, nothing like something the size of a lynx sleeping on the couch beside you, purr resonating like a diesel engine.

We now live in a small town with a different collection of cats. A couple have some Coon in them and they are somewhat crazy. I still ain't getting out that red dot.
posted by Ber at 4:34 PM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]






And if you're wondering why he has that look on his face it's because he knows exactly why we got the hummingbird feeder and he hasn't forgiven us for putting it just out of his reach.
posted by clorox at 4:48 PM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


It *is*, it's just that lions happen to be the same color as the savannah so you don't actually see the cat hair.

This has become my strategy. I have a grey and white cat and fortunately we have a grey couch and I only buy grey clothing now. I become the savannah from before colour photography.
posted by srboisvert at 5:53 PM on November 5, 2015 [4 favorites]


Here are some terrible, terrible lions that live with me.
posted by sweetkid at 5:53 PM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


Every morning at breakfast, my cat re-enacts that traumatic scene from The Lion King.

She is always thwarted in her quest for cheese, which I tell her is not really tragic, but she disagrees.
posted by Hypatia at 6:13 PM on November 5, 2015 [5 favorites]


I used to think there wasn't much different between various large wild cats and domestic house cats, until we had to rehome our store cat and she stopped eating.

It turns out, domestication includes many specializations, like the ability and inclination for regular meals.

Where the norm for large cars is a fasting, gorging, stashing, picking food cycle, domestics are much different. Many house cats, when they fast for too long, develop all sorts of complications. Organs shut down. Blood does weird things.

She didn't make it.
posted by clvrmnky at 2:59 PM on November 8, 2015


So sorry clvrmnky. Yeah my cat got really sick at four and I didn't know till then that cats were so delicate - he had been eating, though very little, and while he was sick they told me of all the dangerous things if he ever stopped eating entirely.

I mean I thought he was basically like dogs and people so would feed him scrambled eggs and deli turkey if I didn't have cat food, and that wasn't what made him sick, but I never intentionally let him go without food. I didn't know that if I did so it would hurt him though, I thought it was just like people skipping meals. Not so!
posted by sweetkid at 3:05 PM on November 8, 2015


« Older Reader, I married them...   |   Wrinkles The Clown Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments