puzzle feeder – Pain In The Bud

Barney goes home

Meet Barney, who finally has a forever home after nine years living in a shelter:

I’ve got a bias toward silver tabbies obviously, but look at this little guy! He’s handsome, he’s got bright green eyes and I’ve no doubt he’s got a ton of love to give to his new people.

The question is: Why did it take nine years for him to get adopted? It’s deeply unfair and depressing, although the people at Iowa’s Emmett County Animal Shelter deserve credit for never giving up on him.

Barney was born at the shelter and was passed over every time potential adopters came in to look at cats, shelter staff told the Des Moines Register. When someone posted a photo of Barney to Reddit along with a short note about his predicament, Amanda Scherer drove six hours to adopt him, telling the Register “I really wanted to give him a home.”

Social media has become an invaluable tool for shelters looking to place cats and dogs in homes, and there are two common denominators to the success stories: a great photo that capture’s the pet’s personality and a backstory. The more the story tugs at the heartstrings, the better.

No judgments here, but I wish people who are inclined to buy cats and dogs would think of all the Barneys out there who need homes. Some 1.5 million of them are killed every year because the demand for homes is greater than the demand for shelter pets. That’s a significant improvement over decades past thanks to relentless efforts to get animals spayed and neutered, but we can do better.

Bud’s looking ripped

Buddy’s been on a diet since early this summer, necessitated by my poor job of learning to say no when he screeches for snacks, which is approximately all the time.

It hasn’t been easy for either of us: He wants his treats and I desperately want him to stop meowing for them, but after three months I’ve really noticed a difference. He’s much trimmer these days and he’s mostly learned to be satisfied with smaller treat portions at longer intervals, so it’s been worth it.

Now all I have to do is avoid lapsing into being his human snack dispenser again and avoid using treats as a lazy way to get him to do things he doesn’t want to do. Like, for example, giving me a few minutes of meow-free peace when I’m trying to focus on writing. (The only time he stops trilling, chirping and meowing is when he’s eating or napping.)

I’ll get a good full shot of my feline overlord so you can see how ripped he’s looking, but in the meantime here’s a photo I took this week on the balcony, where Bud likes to lounge in the summer. There are no color filters or any other edits except a simple crop and a shadow/highlight adjustment, and you can see his “terracotta nose” and just how bright and green his eyes are in natural outdoor light:

Although there are no filters, I should note here that I took this photo with my new Samsung, and Galaxy phones are known for their saturated colors. My previous phone was a Google Pixel which often resulted in the opposite effect, with photos looking sapped of color in some lighting conditions. Still, the Galaxy’s photos are much closer to what I see with my own eyes when little man is playing outside.

P.S. Thank you to the reader who dubbed Bud “terracotta nose” a while back. I’m sorry, I can’t remember who bestowed him with that nickname, but I love it.

When presented with a simple tray of food and a food puzzle that requires a little work to get at the yums inside, every animal ever tested has opted for the latter.

Except cats.

Rhesus monkeys, rats, chickens, bears, starlings, gerbils, chimpanzees and a wide range of other animals are drawn to food puzzles, perhaps because the food tastes sweeter to them if they’ve had to work for it, or maybe because it’s just something amusing to do.

“There is an entire body of research that shows that most species including birds, rodents, wolves, primates – even giraffes – prefer to work for their food,” said Mikel Delgado, a cat behaviorist and lead author of the newest study on the phenomenon known as contrafreeloading. “What’s surprising is out of all these species cats seem to be the only ones that showed no strong tendency to contrafreeload.”

Delgado, a research affiliate at UC Davis’ School of Veterinary Medicine, used a clear puzzle feeder so the cats in her study could see the treats inside. A few feline study participants gave it a shot, but only after grabbing themselves some easy grub first. Other cats just ignored the food puzzle and munched exclusively from the tray.

While this is at least the second study to specifically test whether cats “freeload” their meals, the why of this particular feline behavior remains a mystery. Delgado cautioned against the obvious conclusion — that cats are just lazy — and pointed out that several cats in the study were active and expending energy, just not with the puzzle feeder.

One possible explanation: As hunters and obligate carnivores, cats simply may not enjoy games that simulate foraging the way omnivores and herbivores do.

The study was published on July 26 in the academic journal Animal Cognition. Read it here.