Casa del S1m0n has boasted a cat for past couple of months, which is a stretch for me. I’m a dog person, trying valiantly to understand cat behaviour.
For instance, the food he gets claims to contain furball-combatting yoghurt. Does anyone know whether this product can be expected to work in forward gear, or in reverse?
Reverse. It helps the fur to pass through, rather than coming back the way it went down.
Youtube has videos of “Simon’s cat”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s13dLaTIHSg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ffwDYo00Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rb8aOzy9t4
This should help explain behavior.
It is possible to have both, cats and dogs. The bed gets a little crowded though and everybody wants some face time. Hair balls aren’t nearly as much fun as owl pellets, a proverbial biological treasure trove. And when found on the only oriental prayer rug in the house amongst tons of other rugs, well it’s obvious they do it on purpose.
Fat chance. I admire your sense of ambition, but after 45+ years of human/feline cohabitation I have to tell you that cats are not there to be understood. They are there to be obeyed/flattered/worshipped. They have subtle mechanisms designed to confound attempts at understanding.
And they like to hurt you occasionally. They won’t usually actually kill you, but they will bide their time and then, out of the blue, they will hurt you. As far as I can gather the timing of the hurt is according to an obscure, and very complicated, feline comedic concept that combines suspense, violence, irony and fishy breath.
“understand cat behaviour”… Yeh, right.
hmmmm…
I suddenly have an intense craving for tamales… smmeckk…munch..chommpp. yum. 
My cat actually threw up on the kitchen floor the other day. I’m pretty sure it’s the first time in 10+ years that she didn’t throw up on a carpet somewhere. Got me worried that she was really pretty sick (seems OK now though).
I agree that any attempts to understand feline behavior are bound to be thwarted. Good luck!
An astute analysis. By way of demonstration, our small but impertinent cat Hazel is dashing back and forth from the kitchen to the family room in a manner designed to attract our notice and make us wonder what she’s up to. The truth, as far as I am able to understand cat-think (and, as has been pointed out, my understanding is limited,) is that she isn’t up to anything except the fun of believing that she has us intrigued.
Look at her just before she decides to eat the sunflower (b-day present from my sister) behind her. (ooh…and Jeff is ellipticalling in the background there. so much info.)
I’m going to print out this post, have it bronzed and dip it in … uh … guacamole.
Then I shall have The Cheat read it to me whilst I dine on a dinner of Cadbury cream egg omelet.
It looks like what Jeff is really doing is riding a Star Wars-style hover-bike, or whatever those things are called that the Storm Troopers zoomed around on in the forest.
On cats:
One member here (Tyghress, I’m pretty certain – ah, yes it is, per the Search results) has a siggy line that seems to me to capture cat ownership pretty well:
My cat’s behavior seems to conform, to the extent that cats can be said to conform, to that of those described here. Except my kitty’s only got three legs, so she does everything sort of . . . diagonally. Inscrutable still, just also at weird(er) angles.
Um…I understand my cat just fine. I’ve understood all of them, to a one.
I think there’s something wrong with me.
Well, sometimes they (or mine) make themselves understood. I sure know when she wants food, anyway, or when the litter box is unacceptably, er, littered.
But, like, can you explain that thing where suddenly they park themselves in front of a wall and just stare, but not all actively like they’re hearing a mouse in there or something, just sort of quietly hypnotized? Sometimes it sort of creeps me out.
Is that even at issue?
Cats are like liberal intellectuals: sneaky and selfish. Dogs are like militarized conservatives, loyal and believing, to their own detriment.
Dogs remind us of the nobility and greater good of faithfulness and loyalty, cats are rarely loyal, but they can be crazy brave when excited. Dogs are rural, cats are urban; the former quite often bear the stench of the great outdoors, the latter obsessively-compulsively trying to eradicate any odor that would give away their presence. If that ain’t sneaky, I don’t know what is.
You can’t trust cats, except to be selfish. Simon, get another dog when the time is right, it will make you better. The cat might keep you warm at night, even while it attacks your eyelids during REM sleep.
The main good of cats is rodent control and its quite a valuable service, I give 'em that. Otherwise, they murder songbirds and make conflicted environmentalists weep.
Nyuk. Let the fireworks begin.
Sure, I can explain it. And Bodhidharma got the idea from them.
Har har.
Huh? Mine’s always palling around with me. Occasionally she’ll be off on her own, but if I change rooms, usually she wants to be in the same room too. Sure, she’d not worshipping me as a dog might, but often enough I’ll look over my shoulder and catch her just sitting there looking at me with pleasant eyes and face. Unnerving, maybe, but being observed like that IS unnerving. It’s intimate. That’s gotta tell you something.
And FWIW, she clocks major lap-warming time with me. I’d say that’s loyalty, and love. Just on a cat’s terms, is all. Perfectly valid to me.
Many cats are like conservatives, selfish to a fault…me! me!ME!
Dogs on the other hand are not like that at all. Dogs believe everything belongs to them…mine! mine! MINE!Being a biologist I of course never anthropomorphize, so these descriptions are indeed accurate observations of these organisms true behaviors.
One has only to observe the feeding velocity and duration of multiple subjects in close proximity to recognize this.
BTW none of my animals exhibit any of these behaviors…ever.
Ha, what a sucker you are! In the first place, you are the food provider. Secondly, they pall around because they feel safer with their big pink protector nearby. Yeah, they study your face. The better to understand you for future manipulation. And you are the only nearby entertainment. Set a mouse loose and see how long the cat studies your ever gesture.
Wake up and smell the coffee!!!
I like the fact that cats do things I don’t understand. That’s part of their charm. We have a refrigerator magnet that says, “To live with a cat is to invite a bit of wildness indoors.”
I don’t understand this whole dog-person/cat-person dichotomy some folks have. Cats and dogs make wonderful pets, and I like having both around.
Sooner or later a cat is, after all, a cat, he intoned with prim rectitude.
Exactly! However if you live in NA please keep your cats inside. I tire of having to drive to the shelter every morning to drop off neighbor’s cats caught in my live trap. It’s really eating into my gas budget.
Ah, great, you are one of those blue meanies who catch em!!! Ha.
Another aspect of the dichotomy is this: dogs poo right where you can see it. Cats lay their eggs in your vegetable garden bed thereby casting doubts on whether you should even consume said produce. And once they start, they never stop.
In the city or suburbs, definitely. (Our suburban cat is never allowed outside, and the dog was only allowed out on leash or in the fenced back yard.) On a farm, however, outdoor cats are (as Weeks mentioned) a very useful form of rodent control. Either way, please spay or neuter your pets!