Confuse-a-cat Ltd.

March 12, 2004 8:31 PM

Confuse-A-Cat Ltd."Have you confused your cat recently? Chances are you have not. Most people don't realise that they must confuse their cats regularly."
posted by mr_crash_davis (31 comments total)

arf?
posted by trondant at 8:33 PM on March 12, 2004

Wouldn't it be easier to just show MetaFilter to your cat?
posted by wendell at 8:34 PM on March 12, 2004

I'm surprised they didn't go into detail about their cat confusing techniques.. I guess I'll have to throw in mine.

Step 1: have cat neutered (obviously this will only work on cats of the male persuasion)
Step 2: bring cat home from vet.
Step 3: wait for cat to discover something is missing.
Step 4: confusion ensues.

I swear our cat didn't move for at least an hour, just kept staring, and hoping, and probably wishing it was all an awful awful dream. Poor little bugger..
posted by Pink Fuzzy Bunny at 8:40 PM on March 12, 2004

"Furthermore we request that any persons who do not discover this site is a joke by the end of the first page kindly refrain from breeding."

posted by Grod at 8:49 PM on March 12, 2004

This is an ancient joke, but I'm not sure about the provenance. It was one of the legion of obscure injokes me and my university pals deployed like clusterbombs to pretend that we were clever, like 20 years ago.

No idea where it came from, though, as I mentioned. I wonder if this site was made by one of them. Probably not, as it wasn't really our best material.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:52 PM on March 12, 2004

Season One, Episode Five

A wink's as good as a nod to a blind bat. eh? eh?
posted by shagoth at 9:00 PM on March 12, 2004

Thank you, sir.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:05 PM on March 12, 2004

I found the perfect pet combination was a large female dog and a small cat.

I've had this roommate once who had this combo... the dog would carry the cat by the neck everywhere, put it down somewhere and lick it til the cat was just a mess of dog drool and sticky hair. The cat of course loved all this attention and purred like a harley davidson.

The dog was confused by the cat when the latter tried to make itself a comfy spot on top of the dog, which involved planting its claws on the side of the dog and pushing/pulling its folds of skin.
posted by titboy at 9:08 PM on March 12, 2004

A friend of mine, a cat lover who paid a painfully large sum to rebuild a cat which had fallen off a third story roof ( a non-optimal distance for a house cat to fall) taught me a special cat-confusing trick : first, pick them up by their tail. The females like this best. It riles them up. Then you whack them (softly) on their lower back towards the tail - they seem to love this up to a point. Then , they start to bite.

Are there Biblical injunctions against this sort of thing? It ended there, I swear.
posted by troutfishing at 9:09 PM on March 12, 2004

You want to know how to confuse your cat permanently?

Get a tortoiseshell. They come pre-confused. Seriously. Cute, but stupid. Apparently, it's genetic.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 9:09 PM on March 12, 2004

I have three cats - two Persians and a real Lisbon alley cat who cost only $10 - and they're all psychotic. Which (my wife's a psychologist) means happy, deranged, utterly separated from life as it is.

So, Crash, my informed opinion is that these CYSPO ("cats you speak of") are not having enough fish. Cats need fish. Real fish. Not milk; not canned tuna; not Whiskas. Real fish. It's their cocaine, believe me! :)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:44 PM on March 12, 2004

Get a tortoiseshell. They come pre-confused. Seriously. Cute, but stupid. Apparently, it's genetic.

I dunno about that. My tortoiseshell cat figured out the food dispenser I bought. It's supposed to feed the cats at a set time, but she'd just wander over whenever she wanted, reach into the dispensing spout with both paws, and pull some kibble out. I had to resort to the ancient Too Much Chicken-Wire technique to defeat her.
posted by vorfeed at 11:56 PM on March 12, 2004

Confuse-a-cat was a Monty Python sketch.
posted by rikabel at 1:09 AM on March 13, 2004

funny site, and yah it does seem like a python sketch altho' i don't ever recall seeing it.

Get a tortoiseshell. They come pre-confused. Seriously. Cute, but stupid. Apparently, it's genetic.

apparently the same gene that produces down syndrome in humans produces the torti pattern in cats. i've had 2 torties, both quite confused in their own unique way. really funny, loveable animals.
posted by t r a c y at 1:39 AM on March 13, 2004

Season One, Episode Five

A wink's as good as a nod to a blind bat. eh? eh?

Er, was it just me, or was there an extremely NSFW advert at the bottom of that page?
posted by salmacis at 1:51 AM on March 13, 2004

No, it's just you. What dodgy cookies have you been picking up lately?


Just kidding. I saw it too. Hee hee.
posted by chrismear at 5:21 AM on March 13, 2004

Sit the cat on top of a door. Drives it *mental* - it knows it's standing on something, but it can't see what. It knows it's high up, but isn't prepared to jump. So it sits there and gets mad.

Funny, funny, funny. Watch you don't get clawed bringing it down though...
posted by bonaldi at 5:59 AM on March 13, 2004

I recall an urban legend about how to immobilize a cat by wrapping a piece of cellophane tape around it's midsection. This was somehow supposed to impair the cat's balance so that it would just fall over. I never tried it.
posted by troutfishing at 6:24 AM on March 13, 2004

a simple string will do. it's hilarious. and boy do they get mad at that string...
posted by dabitch at 6:34 AM on March 13, 2004

a post-it note on a cats forehead will make them walk backwards to get away from it too. (and eventually it'll fall off easily without hurting the poor confused kitty)
posted by dabitch at 6:35 AM on March 13, 2004

Confuse-A-Cat Ldt. was one of my favorite all time MP sketches. The cat sat before a stage while the most surreal stop action madness successfully befuddles the cat. At the end, subsidiaries roll across the screen: Stun-A-Stoat, Vex-A-Vole, etc. I never fail to bust a gut...
posted by moonbird at 6:54 AM on March 13, 2004

Get a tortoiseshell. They come pre-confused. Seriously. Cute, but stupid. Apparently, it's genetic.

So, I'm driving home from work one night, and there's this little kitten running back and forth across the Interstate. I picked it up and brought it home. It's a long-haired tortoiseshell.

People come over and say, "Oh my God! That's the most beautiful cat I have ever seen!" and then ask why he is staring at the corner. He just runs around the house like a maniac, and stops every once in a while to stare at a corner.
Great cat. Terribly dumb. Still, there is ONE trick he can do - he can fetch. After a few minutes, however, it's off to the corner.
posted by bradth27 at 7:24 AM on March 13, 2004

My wife confuses one of our cats by playing one of those "environment" CDs - rainforest. Poor Kali, pawing at the speaker box, trying to figure out where those damn birds are.
posted by pyramid termite at 8:16 AM on March 13, 2004

You left out my favourite, moonbird: Bewildebeest
posted by filmgoerjuan at 9:28 AM on March 13, 2004

My cat will chase her own tail, and try to kill it when she finally catches it. That's why we have to keep her claws clipped very short.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 10:37 AM on March 13, 2004

i wonder if that's where badly drawn boy got the title for his first album (hour of bewilderbeast) .....
posted by pikachulolita at 11:02 AM on March 13, 2004

Some cats will chase a flashlight beam. I've seen a siamese do this. It's quite entertaining for both human and cat.
posted by troutfishing at 2:34 PM on March 13, 2004

I guess nobody read it to the end: "This website was inspired by the Confuse-A-Cat sketch which appeared on episode 5 of Monty Python's Flying Circus, "Man's crisis of identity in the latter half of the twentieth century". The episode first aired on November 16 1969. We hope this site is a fitting tribute to the Pythons and their loyal fans all over the world."
posted by Slagman at 10:40 PM on March 13, 2004

not only did i miss that disclaimer i totally missed where shagoth linked to the sketch way at the top of this thread. i guess i'm as easily confused as my cats are 8-) they do say pets are like their people, heh.

plus i forgot to mention the best way to confuse my cats... same as troutfishing basically. the little laser dot pen, it drives them wild and they will standby for days waiting for it to return once i shut it off. it's great exercise for indoor cats tho', if you've got a good long hallway like i do. they'll chase it up and down at high speeds for ages.
posted by t r a c y at 10:50 PM on March 13, 2004

a post-it note on a cats forehead will make them walk backwards to get away from it too. (and eventually it'll fall off easily without hurting the poor confused kitty)

My friend has done this to his cat, and it is pretty funny as he reaches his paws out towards the post-it as though it was far in the distance, standing up on his hind-legs to try and reach it. However, it wasn't funny after the cat fell over backwards, got freaked out, and clawed a nice gash in my friend's hand. Guess he had it coming.

Laser pointers are the absolute best cat confusers there are.
posted by catfood at 10:57 PM on March 13, 2004

My cat (tortoiseshell, very cute, very loving, and dumber than rocks) will beg me to play with the laser pointer. You know how some cats react to the sound of the can opener? She's like that with keychains, just in case it's the one with the laser on it.
posted by Foosnark at 10:11 PM on March 14, 2004