I got myself a surround sound system. Not a great one but it’s not too bad either. Today was the first day I got to turn it up to a decent volume.
So I pop in The Matrix since I haven’t seen it in a long time. All is cool. I was kind of suprised because my cat SleeStak decided to hang out on the couch. This struck me as kind of odd because the volume was pretty loud but Slee didn’t seem to mind. Untill the overhead sprinklers went off that is.
Not the sprinklers in my house. The sprinklers in the Matrix. The scene where agent Smith is standing in a room with Morpheus and the sprinklers, after the room is shot to hell, go off.
At that point Slee totally freaked. She got up, looked around wildly for a place to bolt. She couldn’t figure out which way to go. So she stood there ready to bolt but unsure of which way to go untill the scene ended and the sprinkler sounds stopped. At which point she looked around for a minute, sniffied the air, then went back to sleep.
I love surround sound. I love my cat, though she is kinda dumb*
Now I am wondering which movie I can buy that will really freak her out.
Slee
*At the same time she has me petting her and feeding her at will, not to meantion the whole littler box thing. Makes me wonder who the dumb one is.
I have a very, very similar story. I had just gotten my surround setup and Squeemu was sitting in my lap while I watched “Signs” (the bad Shyamalan/Mel Gibson one).
There’s a scene where Mel walks into the cornfield at night, and there’s a sort of hissing/chittering sound - incidentally, a lot like what those Matrix sprinklers probably sounded like - that swells up and pans wildly around the speakers.
The cat FREAKED. I mean, she tore out of my lap, ran behind the couch, then shot out from behind the couch and ran 20 feet or so into the kitchen. When I found her in there, she was completely puffed up like a big ball of fur and her eyes were wide. It took her about 10 minutes to calm down.
During the opening credits of** Chicken Run** the dogs bark around the entire room while chasing the escaping chickens. Freaked my dog out the first coupla times.
Of COURSE I played it over and over again.
The THX intro works quite well, too.
Especially if it’s really, really loud.
A roomate of ours had two cats, Clumsy and Stupid. (yes, those were actually their names) Stupid was actually quite a nice cat and really didn’t deserve his name. Clumsy, on the other hand, was both clumsy and stupid and was definitely not going to win any smart kitty awards.
Cut to the testing of the new speakers. Both cats are napping in the middle of the room. Sound gets louder - Stupid jumps up, and can’t figure out which way to run. Couple steps this way, couple steps that way in a total panic and finally decides the basement is the best place to be.
Clumsy didn’t even move. That was when I started wondering if he was maybe deaf, in addition to be clumsy and stupid.
<ding dong!> “Get the door, it’s Domino’s”[sup]TM[/sup]
It’s also got the dog flipping the hell out because “the doorbell rang”. :smack:
The dog also offers proof positive of how much better hi-def television is. Animals on regular TV? No problem…but if an animal, any animal, is shown when we’re watching a HD channel, he goes fricking ballistic. It’s loads of fun watching him peer behind the television, trying to find out how to get to that damn wallaby.
Also one of the Toy Story movies has the THX trialer where the robot guy has the little cow sound making thing that he hooks up to the THX and then you are treated to the sound of a cattle stampede all around you.
Cats don’t seem to like the sound of a cattle stampede.
My cat doesn’t like the “Wheee-eeeyeee-eeeeyeeee” song from Raising Arizona. I haven’t tried it on her with Surround Sound yet. Soon, my pretty. Soon. (What do people without pets torment?)
When they do it in the theatre, I’m the one sitting in the back with my hands slapped over my ears and exclaiming, irritatedly “Ack! Stop it!”
Then when it’s over all is well.
Our cats work kind of in the reverse order than your story, though: our smart one doesn’t budge from her comfy sleeping position unless she feels there is true, imminent danger to herself. Our not-so-bright girl jumps at EVERY sound. THX intros, velociraptors, the noise that fellow makes on the AOL (I think) commercial (“I want my computer to make a sound like a yeti”), anime theme songs, teletubbies, Flava Flav…
I have a dog that responds to the doorbell sound in the Domino’s commercial too. Only I have no idea how he knows what that sound is - he was never in a home before ours and our doorbell has not worked in the entire time we’ve lived in the house.
I just got a home theater system too, and the same dog will be freaked out by some sounds that come from it. And I don’t play anything loud, either. I think it might be the subwoofer he is weirded out by - even though it is turned down you can still feel slight vibrations in the floor from it (we have a plywood subfloor over a crawl space, so it doesn’t take much). He’ll pop his head up and both ears will start rotating independently, which is kind of cute to watch, but I hope he gets used to it, because I know it’s messing with his karma and I don’t want to upset him.
We have a surround sound system, and the cat acts very oddly around it. I made a thread about it a while ago- the subwoofer is on but the TV/cd player isn’t, and yet the cat will growl at the subwoofer and poke at it with his paw. I’m guessing its giving off some high-frequency noise which is bothering him
We were watching a movie that had a cat growing/meowing and our cat flipped out. He jumped up and ran around the room trying to find the Phantom Cat. Also, general ‘animal’ growling sounds really spook him and his tail will get all foofed up. Its pretty funny.
But then again, he’s a pretty big coward. Even human-generated cat noises can frighten him.
