Just Leopard Things
May 24, 2018 9:34 AM   Subscribe

 
Post of the Year
posted by poffin boffin at 9:34 AM on May 24, 2018 [16 favorites]


FLOOFY NOMS!
posted by darkstar at 9:41 AM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


OMG! I always want a cat, but now I really want a cat. How do you get a stupid cat-hating dog to love a kitty? Seriously?
posted by mumimor at 9:49 AM on May 24, 2018


You call ahead to the spca and ask if they have any dog friendly cats in residence and then ask if you can bring your dog to be tested with them.
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 10:06 AM on May 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


Oh wait, the dog hates cats. Yeah, sorry. No cats for you then. :(
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 10:08 AM on May 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


I love that this - snow leopards biting their tails - happens often enough that it can be a thing.
posted by jb at 10:11 AM on May 24, 2018 [7 favorites]


Oh wait, the dog hates cats. Yeah, sorry. No cats for you then. :(
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 10:08 AM on May 24 [+] [!]


Eponymeows...
posted by Huck500 at 10:16 AM on May 24, 2018 [17 favorites]




Captive cats are weirdos.
posted by ChuraChura at 10:42 AM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


OMG! I always want a cat, but now I really want a cat. How do you get a stupid cat-hating dog to love a kitty? Seriously?

I don't know, maybe get a kitten.

posted by ActingTheGoat at 10:51 AM on May 24, 2018 [11 favorites]


I am a bit of a snow-leopard fangirl and have twice dragged my boyfriend to the zoo 3 hours away where two snow leopard cubs were born last year. I had a tail-biting-snow-leopard photo as my phone background for like, a year. So this post sort of feels like Metafilter has infiltrated my brain and it's a little weird.
posted by rachaelfaith at 11:53 AM on May 24, 2018 [4 favorites]


I don't know, maybe get a kitten.

That video is awesome and everyone should watch it.
posted by 4ster at 11:56 AM on May 24, 2018 [5 favorites]


At least 2 of those were snow leopard kitties biting other snow leopard tails. And I just want to say, that's ok, too.
posted by Phredward at 11:57 AM on May 24, 2018 [5 favorites]


Please just tell me they are happy, I couldn't bear it otherwise!
posted by Space Kitty at 12:26 PM on May 24, 2018


My favorite part is how each of the snow leopards caught mid-munch looks so serious; thoughtful, dignified, contemplative, reflecting deeply on some deep matter. And just happening to have a floofy tail in their mouths.
posted by Kat Allison at 12:57 PM on May 24, 2018 [13 favorites]


This is the only good thing
posted by Going To Maine at 1:04 PM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


Please just tell me they are happy, I couldn't bear it otherwise!

According to Wikipedia:
The tail is also very thick due to fat storage, and is very thickly covered with fur, which allows the cat to use it like a blanket to protect its face when asleep.

I'm guessing this is the behavior that is happening (or one closely associated) with the tail biting. Except for those two cubs, they're just rapscallions, clearly.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 1:10 PM on May 24, 2018 [6 favorites]




So pure.
posted by Young Kullervo at 1:42 PM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


I don't think this stands on its own for a separate post tomorrow, so I'll drop it here: Man throws q-tips at his cat.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 2:16 PM on May 24, 2018 [13 favorites]


Ask Johnny Wallflower, he may have multiple cat q-tip links ready to go.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 2:24 PM on May 24, 2018 [6 favorites]


Thanks, BigHeartedGuy!!
posted by Space Kitty at 2:27 PM on May 24, 2018


So majestic.
posted by mogget at 2:28 PM on May 24, 2018


Well, now I'm going to get kicked out of a zoo for flinging custom-made, oversized q-tips at the snow leopards.
posted by Fiberoptic Zebroid and The Hypnagogic Jerks at 4:48 PM on May 24, 2018 [3 favorites]


Showed to a friend who says they're carrying their tails to keep them clean.
posted by bonobothegreat at 4:54 PM on May 24, 2018 [4 favorites]


They're biting their tails and waiting for the sensation of something biting their tails to arrive in their brain and then biting their tails and waiting ...

My God, they're stuck in a feedback loop!

But really, I thought, like Kat Allison, that they almost all look spaced out and relaxed, and if we take BigHeartedGuy's suggestion that it could be related to putting their tails over their noses to protect their faces from the cold in their original frigid habitat when they go to sleep . . .

Well, water vapor condensation from their very warm breath in their original cold habitat would cause the tip of their tail to heat up quite significantly, so maybe a warm tail tip is one of the triggers for relaxation and going to sleep for them, but in their temperate captivity the only way they can achieve that is by putting the tail directly in their warm mouths.

And maybe that could generalize to a way of getting relaxed even when they're not going right to sleep.
posted by jamjam at 5:37 PM on May 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


I hate to be the person to dead goat this thread about beautiful snow leopards doing something silly-looking, but these are all captive cats and I'm pretty sure that what we're seeing here in at least some of the photos (probably not the kitten ones) is a stress response, a form of self-harm caused by being a notoriously reclusive animal with a natural territory size of between 30 and 1000 km2 which is being kept in a small (to them) enclosure and gawked at by hordes of loud, boisterous apes. This sort of thing is very common among captive wild cats.

Big cats go crazy in zoos. No zoo, no matter how large, well-funded, and well-intentioned, is equipped to give them what they really need. Zoo cats make me sad.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:12 PM on May 24, 2018 [7 favorites]


Yeah, snow Leopards are magnificent and range hundreds of miles in the world’s tallest mountains. They are very much unhappy in a hundred foot pen in Kansas City. On one hand they are very rare and almost certainly will become extinct in our lifetime without captive breeding, on the other hand they would rather not live.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:31 PM on May 24, 2018


While I don't disagree that zoo enclosures are by nature too small for big cats, none of the the tails involved look denuded or scarred, so I don't believe there is any self-harm going on in this case.
posted by tavella at 7:32 PM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


No, sir, I do not bite my tail at you, sir; but I bite my tail, sir.
posted by moonmilk at 9:01 PM on May 24, 2018 [11 favorites]


I don't know, maybe get a kitten.

That video is awesome and everyone should watch it.


It's not even noon yet but I'm going back to bed because there's no way anything else that happens today tops this.
posted by myotahapea at 12:53 AM on May 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


When he was one year old my cat bit his tail hard enough to require stitches. He doesn't recognize it as part of himself. (Fortunately he learned his lesson.)
posted by AFABulous at 9:56 AM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


So very trying that Q-tip thing today. Will report.
posted by seyirci at 10:18 AM on May 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


I’m bedridden on day three of a bad cold/flu and these snow leopards (wif der taiws ib der mowfs) are keeping me sane.
posted by darkstar at 12:56 PM on May 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


If you want more, SnepBot is a Twitter feed that posts nothing but snow leopard pics.
posted by cheshyre at 7:31 PM on May 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


(Reporting as promised: My cat was puzzled. Very, very puzzled.)
posted by seyirci at 6:45 AM on May 28, 2018


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