Cat Physics

I think you’ve missed half the phenomenon here. Take an empty room, make absolutely sure there is no cat, anywhere, in it. Close the door, and go to work. When you return in the evening, the room will contain one very angry cat, and a large volume of cat pee.

Clearly, cats posses the ability to teleport into a locked room, but not out of one.

I’m not quite sure that’s it. I have certainly never found a cat in a closed room if I’ve seen him or her outside of it after the last time I closed it. Perhaps they don’t so much as teleport as create a quantum tunnel that allows them to move into the room invisibly while the door is still open?

My apologies to all of the physicists whose head just exploded.

And for the times when they seem to accidentally land on obstacles, I think it is actually intentional. A party was occurring and there was a large blue-frosting cake in the center of the table. The large white cat jumped up and landed right in the cake. It shot off in a flash and there were blue pawprints all over the carpet. I believe the cat was expressing dissatisfaction at a party that served a blue-frosting cake.

Cats can quantum displace, but it depends upon the density of the medium. A cat can displace through air and so can appear and disappear at will. It usually has difficulty going through walls. So a cat will displace into a room and, as suggested, telepathically induce the suggestion for you to return and open the door. That’s why they are always right at the door when you open it. But, the telepathic range is limited, so some are stuck until you come within range.

A couple of my cats are telepathic. I’m not sure how else to explain how I’m lying in bed for an hour with no cats, and as soon as I think, “I really need to get up and go to the bathroom,” BAM! Cat parked on top of me!

Not at all. The problem is in the misconception that buttered toast always lands butter side down.

In fact, the probability of the toast landing buttered side down is in proportion to the cost of cleaning what the toast lands on.
P(cat with toast lands on its feet) = P(cat lands on its feet) x P(toast lands butter-side up) = 1 x P(toast lands butter-side up) = some value X > 0
P(cat with toast lands on the toast) = P(cat lands on its back) x P(toast lands butter side down) = 0 x some value = 0.
Therefore, P(cat with toast lands on its feet) = X / (X + 0) = 1.

Almost none of my cats are lapcats but every time I’m about to get up one appears in my lap.

You got me thinking. I think cat puke/hairball is a bimodal relationship where X axis = how pissed off it makes me to clean it. Normally, the chances of them puking on something increases if it is hard to clean (behind something) or on electronics and such. Sometimes though, just to keep me guessing, they will puke mere inches from the linoleum, and it becomes the day’s greatest accomplishment if I can move them off the carpet.

Normally, people are grossed out by cats eating fresh puke. I consider it a godsend when the male cats or the dog eat the pukiest female’s leavings as it makes cleanup much easier.

I re-wrote Senegoid’s post in 50’s-ese:

Perhaps it was a cellular peptide cake with mint frosting and he was trying to warn you that there was something wrong with it?
Yes, I am a big ole nerd.

One of our cats will do the puke dry heaves for about 30 secs before it actually does the deed. On hearing this, the other cat will run from wherever it is sleeping and wait expectantly 2 inches from the puking cat’s face.

I think it was Twain who defined a door as “a thing a dog is always on the wrong side of.”

This thread ought to be submitted to the Ig Nobel Prize Committee: Ig Nobel Prize - Wikipedia

While I sleep, my 15 lb cat Bob, can sit on my side and focus all his wieght unto a very small area of my rib in order to rouse me to fed him. So I believe this is a survival mechanism of some sort.

My 15- year old elder statesman, Fuzzy, is a Himalayan of massive proportions - he’s got more fuzz than any cat I’ve ever seen. (He had a normal name, once… but nobody remembers what it was, anymore. He’s just Fuzzy.) Anyway, when Fuzzy was but a wee kitten (but already quite fuzzy) he accidentally jumped into an open toilet one time. He’d perched on the (closed) toilet before, and this time it just didn’t work. His fuzz got soaked and weighed him down quickly, so that he couldn’t jump out. Cue the loud vocal objections.

Indeed, as I fished the very unhappy soaked kitten out of the toilet and wrapped him in a towel (which was instantly sopping) it occurred to me that he could be a form of feline sponge, as yet unknown to mankind.

It happened again, some years later when he’d fully grown into his fuzziness - standing bathwater was accidentally left in the tub, and he decided he wanted a drink, perhaps? Well, he slipped and landed in the tub (“I meant to do that!”) and got weighed down by the wet fuzz again and couldn’t jump out. All he could do was stand there and plaintively alert the neighborhood that he was stuck. In water. And he’s not happy about it.

Two wet towels later, he was still giving me the stinkeye. Like I had something to do with it!

The poor guy gets wet, and suddenly he weighs 500% more. That just doesn’t seem possible, but hey, with Cat Physics, anything’s possible, right?

well, yeah, I have known for decades that that cats are sponges: if there is any love-overflow, there will a cat cat there to soak it up. Cats are love-sponges.

Ok, I want to know the actual physics. I know cats have strange articulations in their hind legs so they can jump higher than other animals, but I just witnessed what I can only describe as actual defiance of gravity.

Our bath mat is pretty stiff, and if it isn’t put over the edge of the tub enough it just leans, upright.

Buddy, you remember Buddy, right? Well, he likes to jump into the tub, hoping someone left the water running.

The mat was leaning against the tub, as he jumped over it. It startled him. In mid-air, he turned 180○ and actually went higher. He should have landed inside the tub, but, instead, he landed right where he started.

I was less than two feet away. I know what I saw, but, gravity, isn’t just a good idea, it’s the LAW!

So, seriously, how’d he do that?

A feline situational distortion of the local space-time continuum?

Well, yes, but I’d like the “science” dumbed down a bit, so in fact, it doesn’t simply sound like an episode of Dr. Who. :smiley:

Wibbly-wobbly, meowy-wowy! :smiley:

I think that being long and skinny, and with a tail, they can shift some body mass around to change direction.

I can buy that for the 180 but, he gained elevation.