cat behavior – Page 29 – Pain In The Bud

This Might Be The Weirdest Cat Behavior Of All

Cats are certified oddballs, but this behavior defies explanation.

Are cats the most religious animals?

I’m not asking because I think cats are locked in an eternal good-vs-evil struggle between their deity, the God of Napping, and the evil forces of the Red Dot. We’re all well aware of that.

I’m asking because, well, my cat prays. He eases onto his hind legs, sits straight up, puts his paws together and gestures as if in fervent prayer, just like this guy:

Or this marbled tabby apparently in the middle of her evening vespers to the God of Yums, that from which all sustenance seems to come. The fridge.

And finally this kitty, who baffles his owners as he stands up, presses his paws together and shows excellent prayer form:

Buddy has some bizarre and amusing moves in his repertoire of feline quirks, but the “praying” thing is the one behavior I haven’t come close to decoding. I hadn’t even heard of it until I saw the little guy doing it one day when he was just a few months old.

First thing’s first: No one seriously believes cats are praying or know what prayer is, so I just wanted to get that disclaimer out of the way before my inbox gets flooded with variations of “HAHA U MORAN CAT’S CANT PRAY LOLZ”

Some people think the motion looks more like a begging gesture. Cats are asking for something when they do it, proponents of the begging theory argue.

I think we can rule that out. I’ve heard owners of other “praying” cats say their furry lieges wave their paws like that in various situations, and that’s been my observation as well. Bud does it randomly, and I’ve seen him do it while he was unaware of my presence. He couldn’t have been asking for anything.

There’s no research on this behavior and there’s virtually nothing about it on the web aside from a handful of Youtube videos.

Maybe it feels like stretching or provides some other form of muscle relief. Maybe it’s a cat’s way of limbering up. Maybe it’s an indication of a cat’s mind state, the same way relaxed ears and an upright tail indicate kitty’s happy and relaxed. Or maybe it’s a form of self-soothing for anxiety.

Those are all guesses, and none of them feel quite right. So help a dedicated cat servant out: What’s your take on this behavior, and what prompts cats to do it?

How Do These Nice Russian Ladies Know My Cat?

My cat’s been teleporting to Russia, apparently, where he’s become a muse to a pair of witty Russian ladies.

Dear readers, I think we’re close to proving what we’ve long suspected, that cats can indeed teleport!

I used to think Buddy could only teleport short distances. One time, for example, I stepped over the little guy while chastising him for lounging in the middle of a doorway. I raised my foot, careful not to step on him, took another step…and looked up to find him sitting on a table 10 feet ahead of me, his head cocked at an angle, staring back at me with an amused expression on his face.

“How do I teleport? Easy. I use a retaining magnetic field to focus a narrow beam of gravitons. These in turn fold space-time consistent with Weyl tensor dynamics until the space-time curvature becomes infinitely large and you produce a singularity. Now, a singularity…”

I did a double take, looking back at the spot on the floor where he had just been, absolutely sure there must be a second gray tabby, a Buddy imposter helping my cat play a joke on me. How can anything move that fast?! He must have teleported!

Now it seems Buddy’s powers of space-time manipulation are greater than I ever imagined.

Enter Lingvistov, a creative team comprised of artist Landysh and writer Asia, who became friends while studying English at a Russian university. After they graduated they decided to put their skills to good use by penning short comic strips and illustrations about cats and their many weird and wonderful habits.

Somewhere along the way, Buddy must have used his powers of teleportation to meet them and serve as a muse, because they’ve got him down to a tee:

Play With Me! — Although we’ve been working hard on correcting the behavior, biting to get what he wants is a classic Buddy move. Credit: Lingvistov

The sneaky little bastard has been fluent in Russian this whole time and hid it from me! That, and his ability to manipulate space-time and teleport at will.

Food O’Clock — ”Wakey, wakey, human! Up, before I slappeth you with my paw!” Credit: Lingvistov

Buddy must have napped with them as well. He loves sleeping between my legs, in the “valley” formed by the blanket, and he uses me as his human mattress. He must have demonstrated his preferred sleeping positions for his Russian friends:

Of course there will be skeptics. The teleportation thing doesn’t quite stand up to Occam’s razor, after all. What’s more likely, that Buddy can teleport, or that a woman in Russia has a gray tabby who is just as uniquely obnoxious as my little dude?

Still, I choose to believe he can indeed teleport and one day, when I finally train him to do my bidding, he can put his powers to good use by teleporting to the store to get me a six-pack of beer.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for a gift for the cat servant in your life, you can’t go wrong with a Lingvistov print or stationery reminding them of their allegiance to our furry overlords.

Cats love boxes — Ah, the eternally unused cat bed. Credit: Lingvistov

Brave Kitty Saves Her Human From Venomous Snake

Shelly the cat showed Mr. Snake the business end of her claws.

His Grace Buddy, King of All Cats, First of His Name, the Most Handsome and Totally Not Scared of Anything, is pleased to issue a Commendation of Bravery to Shelly, a rescue cat who saved her human from a venomous snake.

Shelly’s human, Jimmie Nelson, heard strange noises one night last week and chalked it up to Shelly burning off some energy with a late play session. Nelson went to sleep, oblivious to the danger he was in until the next day when he saw a dead copperhead under his kitchen table.

“On the side of the snake’s neck and head there were claw marks and one big slash, so we knew right then that the cat had definitely killed the snake and then brought it out a few days later to show it to her little dad,” Nelson’s daughter, Teresa Seals, told NBC affiliate WBIR in Tennessee.

D6F359FC-9ED3-46F6-9445-79747A4425B5 — Like all great cats, Shelly is a grey tabby.

Copperhead snakes are pit vipers, ambush predators that rely on hemotoxic venom to paralyze and injure their prey. They’re common in the southeastern U.S., though it’s unusual for the snakes to seek out humans or enter homes.

Copperheads don’t provide warnings before they bite and “strike almost immediately when they feel threatened,” according to LiveScience. Although their venom is not as potent as their deadlier cousins in the pit viper family, children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable. Copperhead bite victims are usually treated with antivenin and painkillers, and recovery can take months.

Nelson, who is 81 and a stroke victim, doesn’t like admitting his affection for his feline master, but Seals knows it’s just an act.

“He loves her, he doesn’t wanna act like he pays attention but I’ve caught him actually petting and loving on her,” she said.

She doesn’t think it’s an accident that Shelly ended up with her father.

“I think the Lord sent the cat to us to save my dad,” she told WBIR.

His Grace King Buddy said he’s honored to award Shelly with the King Buddy Commendation for Feline Bravery, an honor created in 2014 after His Grace defeated a vicious mosquito in single combat. The award itself is a bronze statue of Buddy striking a heroic pose at the moment of victory, paw raised after slaying the insect, muscles rippling from the effort of delivering the death blow.

Jimmie Nelson and Shelly the Cat — Shelly with her servant, Jimmie Nelson of Tennessee.

It’s Time For A Diet

Buddy’s in for a rude awakening. Do Temptations cause withdrawal?

The people who know us best instinctively know how to push our buttons. So naturally my brother knows one of the easiest ways to get me riled up is to tell me my cat is a porker.

“Buddy’s looking like he’s put on the pounds,” he’ll say casually. “How much are you feeding this cat?”

“Buddy is NOT fat!” I’ll reply indignantly. “It just looks that way because he’s meatloafing.”

“No, I’m pretty sure he’s just fat.”

Well now he may be right. Buddy isn’t exactly fat, but he’s on the wrong side of skinny and a few bags of Temptations away from being kinda chubby. Now is the time to nip this in the Bud and bring his weight back down before it, uh, balloons.

This is by far the fattest-looking photo of Buddy I could find. He’s in a super-meatloaf pose here, looking like a chonkmaster.

This photo was taken a few days later.

(Above: Buddy in super-chonk meatloaf pose, left, and Buddy in a photo taken a few days later. The way a cat sits or stands can dramatically change the way his or her body looks.)

The problem is, Buddy has mastered the art of the guilt trip.

When he’s legitimately hungry he isn’t shy about meowing for his meals, but what he does in between meals is much worse. When I head into the kitchen for a beverage or a snack, Buddy will pad right up to the doorway and stop, looking at me with his big, expectant eyes. His gaze will follow me as he sits there all hopeful.

And if I leave the kitchen without opening his treat cabinet, those big green eyes become accusatory, as if I’ve committed a profound betrayal of his trust by not giving him the ultra-processed kitty crack he loves.

It’s the complete silence that gets me. No meows, no complaints, just dead silence and those big eyes.

Buddy the Handsome Cat — “That’s a tasty looking snack you’ve got there. Where’s Buddy’s treats? You thought of Buddy, right? You would never forget about me…”

Worse yet, he’ll park himself right next to me and watch me eat a bowl of cereal or a cookie, continuing the silent act. What kind of horrible Big Buddy gets a snack for himself but not his Little Buddy?

So yeah. It’s diet time.

Buddy doesn’t know the dreaded D-word. He’s about to learn. But his diet may be harder on me than it is on him.

Does Your Cat Switch Sleeping Spots?

Apparently cats like to change sleeping spots.

I didn’t know about this until reading about it on the interwebs, where people seem to be bewildered at the practice:

“[M]y eight-year-old female cat finds a great place to sleep – pet bed, closet, blanket – and sleeps there for two to six months, then finds a new spot and never returns to the old. The deserted spots aren’t soiled. Why, besides because she’s a cat, does she do that?”

Some say it’s a behavioral throwback to cats’ wild ancestry, when sleeping in predictable locations could have lethal consequences. Others think cats are like furry Sheldon Coopers, looking for the perfect spot — comfortable and warm, with a good angle to keep watch over everything.

Oddly enough, the King doesn’t seem to have this particular feline quirk. He’s got four spots — my bed, the couch, under the table and chairs, and my still-warm desk chair immediately after I vacate it. He seems to use them at random, and rarely deviates.

He isn’t so much a rotator as he is a napper of opportunity, prioritizing warm laps when available and falling back on comfortable spots the rest of the time.

Does your cat rotate sleeping spots? Where’s the strangest place you’ve found kitty catching some Z’s?