Feline Weirdness – Page 11

Point/Counterpoint: ‘There Are So Many Wonderful Places To Lounge!’ vs ‘Dude, You’re In My Spot!’

Buddy the Cat praises the many comfortable lounging spots at Casa de Buddy, while Buddy the Cat blasts his human for sitting in his favorite spot! Who’s right?

There Are So Many Wonderful Places to Lounge!

You know what I like about ~~our~~ my home, human? It affords me seemingly endless comfortable places to lounge and nap.

There’s the rug underneath the dinner table, which is soft and makes me feel well-protected with a roof over my head and chairs blocking access to anyone larger than me.

There’s your padded fake leather office chair, which not only retains your butt heat, but is also a fabulous item to scratch.

There’s my bed, which used to be your bed, which I graciously still allow you to use 22.3 percent of. Oh, and the wonderful raised platform above my scratcher, where I can watch birds safely and make weird noises when they fly. In the winter, the radiator provides a toasty alternative to draftier spots.

When I was but a kitten, I never dreamed of having such a vast realm to call my own, with so many comfortable places to be lazy.

Indeed, there’s no place like home, and no places like my spots.

Dude, You’re In My Spot!

Come on! Get up!

This is not funny. You know that’s my favorite spot! The left side of the couch is comfortable, warm, gives me a good view of everything, and smells like you.

Get up! Get up! If you don’t vacate the premises immediately I will be forced to disappear, wait until you’re distracted, then nearly give you a heart attack with a well-timed ambush.

Or perhaps I will take my spot anyway by sitting on your head. How foolish would you look then, eh human?

Yes, there are plenty of other places for me to rest but I like this one because you’re sitting in it.

Grrrr, fine! But I’m sleeping on top of you, so if you need to heed nature’s call, do it now, human. I don’t like to be disturbed by your bathroom trips. Also, could you try to breathe a little less? It’s just that when I’m laying on your chest, I can feel your exhales on my fur and it’s really annoying. If you could keep breathing to a minimum, that’d be great.

How Is It Possible That People Can’t Recognize Their Own Cats?

PLUS: Today’s the deadline for UK residents to get their cats microchipped under a new law that levies a hefty fine for people who don’t comply.

Another day, another story about a person who can’t tell if the cat they’ve brought inside is their own or a random lookalike.

In this case, a woman named Amber Porter says her indoor-only cat bolted outside, and after a few hours she was able to bring him back in — only to have doubts about whether he’s actually her cat. Meanwhile, an identical-looking black cat is hovering around Porter’s home, and she’s trying to lure it inside.

“I’m still a little worried about it,” Porter said. “I have fully convinced myself I have the wrong cat but I also think I do have the right one.”

This absolutely blows my mind. If someone asked me how long it would take to determine if a gray tabby is Buddy, I’d say approximately half a second. It’s not because of his “bib,” that unique white tuft of hair on his chest, or his pronounced muzzle, although both would offer confirmation.

It’s his behavior, his mannerisms and movement, the fact that if we were separated, he’d meow loudly the second we’re reunited and I’d hear that familiar half-trill, half-meow he does that seems to be Buddesian for “Hello, servant!”

In any case, I hope Amber Porter figures out which cat is hers, and the story looks like it’ll have a happy ending because she says she intends to keep both cats.

Today’s the deadline to get your cats microchipped in the UK

A reminder to our British readers: today, June 10, is the deadline to have your cat microchipped under a new law that makes chips mandatory.

If you’re caught with an unchipped cat, the fine is a hefty £500, or about $635 in ‘Merican greenbacks. That’s some serious chop, so get your little buddy chipped!

Tabby cat — “Chip me, human!” Credit: FOX/Pexels

Alice Potter, a cat welfare specialist with the RSPCA, told Sky News that microchips with up-to-date information are the biggest factor in reuniting cats with their humans when the former go missing.

“On average, 11% of all cats coming into the RSPCA’s care are still not microchipped. We’ve also rescued cats who have been microchipped but the details haven’t been kept up to date, which is arguably even more frustrating as it means cats spend a long time in our care whilst we fruitlessly try to contact the owner with out-of-date information,” Potter said.

“However, we’ve also seen countless stories of cats that have been reunited with their owners thanks to a tiny microchip – showing what this change of legislation will achieve for animal welfare.”

This Cat Looks Like An Orangutan

The former stray has become hugely popular online thanks to his permanently surprised-looking expression.

Much as I love my cat, I’ve never been a fan of being startled awake by the little stinker jumping on my chest or slapping my cheek, only to find him right up in my face, staring as creepy as you please.

I now realize I’m fortunate. Imagine waking up to this dude yowling in your face:

Sheesh.

That’s Fedya, a four-year-old cat who presumably has some Persian lineage or a similar breed. His human, 42-year-old Natalya Zhdanova, found the little guy in her backyard when he was just a kitten. He was in a bad way at the time and she nursed him back to health with help from her neighbor’s kind cat.

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His perpetually perplexed countenance wasn’t as obvious in his kitten days and Zhdanova has said she never imagined he’d become an online sensation with more than 300,000 people following the Russian feline on Instagram.

People have said Fedya looks like a real life cartoon character, but I think he looks like an orangutan, specifically an adult male with pronounced cheek flanges. In orangutans, cheek flanges are useful for attracting mates, as they signal a male is strong, healthy and his body is coursing with testosterone.

In cats? Who knows. Maybe they’re a result of Fedya’s swagger. (Fedya, by the way, is a diminutive of the Russian name Fyodor, also spelled Fedor, from the original Greek name Theodore, or Theodorus.)

We wish the big guy well, whether he’s curled up by a fire in Russia or stalking the humid jungles of Borneo!

Buddy Hatches Plan To Crash Boxing Match, Steal Boxes

As the masterminds behind the genius heist, Buddy and his associates stand to become extraordinarily wealthy in cardboard boxes, making them the envy of all felines.

NEW YORK — Crammed into a small, smokey room, the felines huddled around a table laden with cocktails, cigars and architectural schematics for a large arena.

Seated at the table was Salvatore “Carniclaws” Catzarelli, Tomasso “Tommy Two Times” Felinzano, Jimmy “Little Jim” Fitzpawtrick, Desmond “Sensimeowla” Neville, a group of junior associates and Buddy the Cat.

“This here boxing is a goldmine, fellas,” Buddy told the other gangster cats, pointing a paw at the original building plans for Madison Square Garden. “The humans, they don’t want to share their boxes, which is why they guarded the secret of boxing from us cats. They want us to be satisfied with one lousy box every week or two. But we’re onto ’em now, see?”

Boxes at MSG — Thousands of glorious boxes litter the central court at Madison Square Garden in New York. Now that cats are wise to the human sport of “boxing,” humans won’t be able to hoard all the boxes to themselves anymore.

Neville licked the edge of his rolling papers, carefully adding potent catnip as he meowed without looking up.

“Mi finna be down wit da heist, mon,” he said, wrapping the paper tight around a generous portion of ‘nip. “Long as di score gonna be split equitably, ya hear?”

“That’s right,” Catzarelli nodded, digging into the pockets of his trench coat for a lighter, which he passed to Neville. “Youse guys know, there’s five of us so we split it nice and even, 15 percent each!”

A smile barely crinkled the corners of Buddy’s mouth before it vanished.

“Of course, my friend,” he said. “You’ll all walk away with 15 percent of the proceeds. If I’m right and this ‘boxing match’ is the goldmine I think it is, we’ll be richer in boxes than we ever imagined! Boxes for every mood and sleeping position. Boxes for your friends and guests. Boxes inside boxes inside boxes!

The Great Box Heist — Felinzano and associates refine plans for the first boxing heist in the history of catdom.

One of the junior associates, a kitten named Crispy, raised a paw.

“Uh, sirs, with all due respect,” he said, “I don’t think boxing is what you think it is. There are two humans in a ring and…”

Buddy cut the kitten off with a wave of his paw.

“Crispy?”

“Yes sir?”

“Who’s the criminal mastermind in this room?”

The kitten looked unsure of himself. “You, uh…you are, sir.”

“That’s right. And who pulled off the legendary turkey heist of 2018?”

“You did, sir, it’s just…”

Buddy held up a paw.

“Unless you wanna be known as Extra Crispy from now on, I’d pipe down if I was youse,” Felinzano told the kitten.

As of press time, the feline criminal ring was putting the final touches on the genius heist, so close to being unimaginably wealthy in boxes that they could almost taste it.

Why Do Some Cats Do The ‘Begging Paws’/’Praying’ Motion?

The begging/praying motion is one of the most unusual feline behaviors, but what does it mean, and why do some cats do it?

Readers of this blog know I love my cat dearly, but he’s also very weird.

Perhaps his strangest, most mysterious behavior is what I call his “praying” gesture: Buddy sits up on his hind legs, puts his front paws together and raises them up and down as if in fervent prayer.

The behavior is extremely rare. Out of many millions of cat videos hosted on the internet, only a handful show cats engaging in it.

Here’s Buddy demonstrating his “prayer” form, set to De La Soul’s 1989 track, “Buddy”:

It’s seemingly random and impossible to predict, which is why it’s been so difficult for me to get a decent clip of Bud doing it. The above video is the third time I’ve managed to capture it, and only the second time I’ve been able to get a clear shot following an earlier capture:

Some cats do it much more frequently, like the ginger tabby below whose humans have decided it’s an expression of gratitude toward them for giving him a forever home:

I’m confident in saying that, for my cat at least, it’s not an expression of gratitude or a form of begging. First, Bud doesn’t do gratitude, and he doesn’t beg so much as he demands. If he feels I’m not responding quickly enough to one of his directives, he goes right to screeching at me: “Snack now, human!” and so on.

Likewise in the video above, Charlie’s humans say the orange tabby does it “randomly.” They’ve even caught him making the motion on camera when no one else was around, which tracks with my own observations of my cat.

So why do cats do it?

“I’ve seen the ‘begging paws’ online and I wish I had a nice, clear explanation for you,” cat behaviorist Mikel Delgado told us.

Some cats, she noted, learn quickly that it elicits a response from their humans.

“My best guess at why cats continue to do this behavior is that it gets them attention,” Delgado said. “That however, does not explain why they do it in the first place.”

Nancy Meyer, a feline behavior consultant who volunteers for Tabby’s Place in New Jersey, said she believes cats in some of the videos are indeed signaling to their humans that they want something. For example, one clip shows a cat “begging” in front of a refrigerator — which his humans say he often does — while another shows a cat facing its reflection in a mirror while pressing its paws together and moving them up and down.

Some of those cats would be well aware that their behavior is a good way to get their humans’ attention, which could indeed lead to them getting what they want.

“It’s like a meow or gaze alteration; it’s a way of communicating that a cat wants to get something that’s currently out of reach,” Meyer told PITB. “The owners reward the cat for this behavior so the behavior perpetuates.”

In my own anecdotal experience I have witnessed Buddy engage in the behavior when he doesn’t realize he’s being observed, and he’s just as likely to break out in “prayer” while facing away from me. I suspect that because he does it so infrequently, he doesn’t realize it results in attention.

It’s unlikely we’ll get definitive answers unless the behavior becomes the focus of research, but that seems unlikely because of its rarity and its unpredictable nature.

Most of the time it appears benign, but Delgado says caretakers should pay close attention if their cats are engaging in it constantly.

“My only concern is that in some of these cats, the behavior appears almost compulsive – like they can’t/won’t stop,” she told PITB. “I also would recommend chatting with a veterinarian to see if they have any thoughts about whether this might indicate any physiological issue.”

Otherwise it appears benign, so if your kitty occasionally breaks out in “prayer,” enjoy the quirk — and good luck trying to get that elusive footage!