Our cat used to do it from time to time when he was younger. Now it’s rare, but when someone he doesn’t know comes over he occasionally manages it.
I work at a feline rescue. I’m surrounded by anywhere from 50 to 250 cats at any given time. (plus my 3 at home) I’ve seen some crazy behavior, and yours definitely makes the top 10! That is adorable, yet quite weird.
He looks like he is conducting an invisible orchestra! That is a lovely cat and a great video.
Wow. Some sort of dopamine disorder? I felt a little bad about how much it made me laugh.
“Prozac” is a fine can name, though “mania” is more accurate for most cats I’ve had.
Exactly! I call it gophering too. Fatcat used to do it all the time when I had a coffee table because he would want to see what was gong on in the kitchen. He didn’t need to lean on anything either.
He hasn’t done it in a long time do to his age and ill health. Littlecat has never gophered as far as I’ve ever seen.
One of our cats occasionally sits upright for extended periods of time. He’ll just sit there grooming his chest or chewing on his nipples (a problem behavior we’re trying to treat).
If you catch him doing it, he’ll give you this odd expression as if to say “do you mind not staring at me while I have a lick? kthxbye.”
Misread that as “nipples (a problem behavior we’re tying ta teat).”
I was sufficiently freaked out by it when he started doing it, a little over a year ago as a just-turned-adult cat, that I shared the video with my vet and had Peanut checked for possible eye, ear, or neurological problems. He got a clean bill of health from a very puzzled and amused vet.
I then contacted an animal behaviorist at Tufts’ veterinary school and sent her the video. She thought it most likely is a manifestation of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but we never could pin down exactly what normal behavior he’s obsessing on.
He still does it, nearly every day at least once – and that’s what I happen to see. But he’s otherwise perfectly healthy and happy, so I’ve stopped worrying.
Ah, yes, on rereading the thread I picked up on this. When I first saw the behavior in Peanut, it was gophering to look at something above him and otherwise not easily visible – say, something on a chair seat. The cute sitting up straight then began to conclude with a few tentative paw-wavings before he dropped back to all fours. Over the course of a few weeks it developed into the weird behavior you see on the video.
It looks to me like he’s shredding invisible drapes. Seriously adorable.
My cat doesn’t do anything funny, certainly nothing like yon Peanut-cat. I just told him he should cultivate some kind of weird talent so that I could make a video of him and turn him into a YouTube star. He just looked at me and purred.
He’s okay, my cat.
Maybe he could try what my little Sally likes to do?
She’s not a lapcat, not a hold-me cat, but when I’m at the computer and the mood strikes her, she’ll jump up onto (not into, onto) my lap and stand there, pressing her head and shoulder into the crook of my right arm and insisting that I hold her left hind foot, hiked tight to her body, in my left hand. If I try to put it down and skritch her belly, she’ll firmly reinsert the foot into my hand.
This makes her very happy and she purrs like a little mad thing. It makes it very difficult for me to type, but that’s not her problem, now, is it?
Sassy assumes the prairie dog pose without balancing against anything. She does it quite often for no apparent reason. She also tries to bury things she doesn’t like the smell of by dragging air over them. Strange girl.
Rasui and Mernoosh, two cats I know, will do that pose when they’re interested in the dangly thing you’re cat fishing with, but no so interested they’re going to put the energy into jumping.
(They’ve got to conserve that energy for smelling awful and drinking the fish tank water. Also sleeping on your head.)
Hey, my Sally does the air burial thing too!
I used to have a 27-pound cat that sometimes sat like that. Then, eventually, he’d start to lose his balance, which would cause his forearms to start flailing around, before the inevitable crash.
The only cat I that ever had that sat upright (without support) consistently and often was also a Russian Blue (boy). Usually, but not always, it was a ploy for treats.
When I was a kid, we had a Lynx Point Siamese that would recline upright against things, especially our La-Z-Boy recliner, and we would have fun putting various objects on him and next to him and taking his picture. He would just sit there unperturbed. Unfortunately the pics of Larry the cat are all lost now. He was very mellow and would sit around this way for hours, perched on his throne. This was his preferential method of lounging for all of his seventeen years.
When Larry was not seated in the recliner, he was good for a game of fetch. He would bring a ball /stick/toy/whatever back to you so you could throw it again. I don’t think he ever knew he was a cat.
ETF, your Peanut is adorable!
When I started reading this thread, I thought “I hope EddyTeddyFreddy pops by with a link to her video of Peanut!”
Both Punky and Molly have done this in the past, quite without any assistance. It’s usually when they’re trying to see out of the screened patio, which has vinyl up about 18" from the floor. I don’t recall ever seeing Rio do it.
I have only seen it on rare occasions from a couple of my cats. The weird behavior that gets me is my cat, Pi, sleeps on his face. He will be sleeping sternal but instead of extending his neck out or turning his head to the side, he has his face turned down so it’s flat against the surface. I always thought it odd since he has a chronic stuffy nose problem and I would think that would make breathing more difficult. I have never seen another cat sleep like this.