feline behavior – Page 4 – Pain In The Bud

More proof, ladies and gentlemen, that cats are much more intelligent than we give them credit for.

Two-year-old Milo, who lives with his humans in New Brunswick, Canada, is determined to get himself a drink.

“At first we didn’t know why there was water all over our kitchen floor but quickly learned it was him the whole time,” Milo’s humans wrote. “He’s very smart and learns a lot from watching us do it so often. He likes going outside and learned that he has to turn the doorknob to go outside and learned how the window opens by turning the handle. Though he fails every time because he has paws but still likes to try.”

If only his arms were long enough to hold the button down while he sticks his head beneath the dispenser! He even tries flooding the bottom by holding the button for several seconds. Someone get this kitty a bowl!

Or he could ask his humans to get the model below, which makes it easier on the paws:

This cat has a similar model and uses it to drink directly from the dispenser, as well as to flood the basin:

There’s this thing Buddy does when he’s been napping on my legs or in my lap and he wants to get down.

Whereas the vast majority of living creatures would simply stand up and hop off, Buddy doesn’t bother with that. He yawns, stretches and shifts his weight forward until he’s hanging off me, then allows himself to sag into a ponderous drop, letting gravity do all the work as he practically oozes onto the floor. He’s like water taking the path of least resistance, committing absolutely no energy to the “effort” of moving.

The sequence is complete when he plops down on the floor like sentient slime — paradoxically furry yet gelatinous — then finally picks himself up to pad toward his bowl, his litterbox or the kitchen, where he’ll stand yowling in three second intervals until I give him a snack just to get him to shut up.

It’s horribly manipulative behavior, and I shouldn’t reward it, but sometimes I do because damn, he’s really, really good at being annoying when he wants to be.

If there were an Olympics for being lazy and annoying, Buddy would be its Michael Phelps, pioneering spectacular new ways to do things without expending a single millicalorie more than is absolutely necessary.

And yet, like all cats, he’ll randomly decide it’s time to release all that hoarded energy at once, trilling an enthusiastic “BRRRRUPPP!” before rocketing around the house, ricocheting like a bullet in a sensory deprivation chamber.

Of course I wouldn’t have it any other way. These quirks are part of Buddy, just like his kitten voice, his unintentionally hilarious behavior and his big heart.

We salute you, dear Buddy, for elevating laziness into an art form.