Auggie, The Cutest Dog on the Planet™, reacts when he hears dogs bark on TV. He will run up to the (embarassingly large) TV and bark at the speakers. He will also run up to it when we watch dog shows, if there is a dog who takes up most of the screen.
The kitties both react to birds- I watched "Winged Migration" and Auggie and both cats went nuts the whole time.
Do your pets react to the TV? What do they react to?My cat would probably react to the TV…if it fell on the floor. Otherwise, she takes no notice. Our other cat and dog that we used to have never reacted to it either.
My various cats, over the years, have always reacted to one thing only: Lion documentaries.
My cats have, on rare occasions, watched a hockey game. Dark shapes moving across a bright surface seemed to get their attention. Briefly.
My dog reacts mostly to dogs barking on TV. She’ll run over to the TV and bark back. She looks around and gets all excited, but seems confused, like she can’t figure out where that other dog actully is.
If there’s loud knocking or a doorbell ringing, sometimes she’ll run to our front door and bark. I can never tell if knocking or doorbells are going to bother her - sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t.
One cat doesn’t pay the TV one bit of attention. The other cat occassionally reacts to pictures on the screen. Sometimes birds catch his eye, once a commercial with a quickly-growing vine intrigued him. I think it’s just certain fast-moving images that seem to catch his eye - he’ll go over and bat at the screen and follow it around.
Do you remember from one of the National Lampoon movies (Christmas Vacation, I think), the hick relatives with the dog that watched Family Feud?
Mine loves that show. Doesn’t care for the Richard Dawson ones, she seems to watch it for Ray Combs. That’s one of the few shows that will keep her in rapt attention for the entire duration. Others she’ll watch for a few minutes if something catches her eye or she hears something interesting, but that’s all. Usually she stares into the fire when sitting in the living room. Come to think of it, so do I.
My cats will occasionally sit in front of the TV, or jump up on the TV table when I’m in the middle of playing PS2 games (specifically 3D platformers like Ratchet & Clank). Then I have to pause it and shoo them away. I suspect it’s the “Ooo! Moving objects!” thing.
They also watch the mouse cursor most keenly when they’re in my lap at the computer.
Every single time a doorbell rings on TV, Katie and Joe run, barking maniacally, to the front door. It gets old.
Other than that, no reaction. I have never see either cat give even a passing glance at the TV.
Nope. I’ve had dozens and dozens of cats and dogs over the year and I can recall only one specific incident of any of them reacting to the TV and that was my last cat, Sebastian, batting at a video game character with his paw probably around ten years ago.
He’s not done anything similar since that I can remember.
I don’t have any dogs right now but many years ago I was surprised when one of my Goldens was enthralled by a nature show about wild cats. I had to hold her back from jumping at the TV. She lived with cats and she wasn’t that fascinated by the real live ones.
My cats will occasionally watch TV, especially if it’s something fast moving or a cartoon.
They all reacted to the doorbell noise on that X-Mas commercial for Ferrero Rocher candies when they rang the doorbells to a X-mas tune. That first doorbell must have sounded too real because they’d all scatter like they do when someone actually rings my doorbell.
My rats are fascinated by the way the static on the tv attracts their wiskers. They can honestly amuse themselves for a couple minutes just bobbing up and down against it. As for the pictures coming out of the tv, they could care less.
our cats watch TV, anything with motion and lights attracts them, last night they were watching my Top Gun DVD with me
…they really loved the tomcats 
strangely enough, my betta also likes TV, he also loved the dogfights, swimming back and forth as if to say "i can do that, but i don’t wanna’ "
I guess my cats are weird because they love to watch television. Boris will drop everything to watch Queer Eye. When I change the channel, they try to bat the remote out of my hand. During the summer, we watched the Olympics and he was enthralled by the women’s beach volleyball. I thought it might be that he is a male chauvinist kitty, but others think it was the ball being batted back and forth that he loved. My latest theory was that it was the giant deluxe litter box they played in, with the four feet of imported sand.
Currently, I torture him by turning the remote on and off, and watching as he tries to figure out where the picture is going.
The ArmadilloPup watches Animal Planet. No, really. He’ll watch anything with animals–he’s most excited about dogs and will bark and whine at them. Anything else, he watches avidly, but doesn’t usually bark unless it’s a large mammal, like horses or rhinos. He does this with or without sound. I’ve read that dogs can’t translate 2-D images… anyone who thinks so clearly has never seen my dog watch TV. I don’t know how he knows they’re animals, but he won’t react to people, machinery, or anything else.
I had a cat that would routinely go berserk over car racing. He’d sit on top of the TV, hang his head over to watch the screen, and frantically bat his paw at the spot where he thought the cars would come out.
None of us were really into motor sports, but we’d watch just entertain the cat (who, in turn, entertained us).
If a doorbell rings on TV, my dog will wait by the real door. For hours.
My cats are four years old and have never paid any attention to the TV… until late last year, when I found Muffin in the attack position and realised she was preparing to take out the cats on Stuart Little. After a while she settled down a bit and came and sat right up close to the TV and watched until the movie ended. I had to take her photo 
Since then, she always watches TV.
The other cat still hasn’t noticed the tellie. She has tried to attack the mouse pointer as it moves across my monitor a couple of times.
cazzle, that picture is adorable!
Our cat has never paid too much attention to the TV. However, one morning, I left it on while I was getting ready for work, on a station that we don’t usually watch. When I got out of the shower, the Gryff was parked right in front of the set, meowing at Pokemon. Actually, the big yellow blobby character, I’m not sure what it’s name is. That is the only thing on TV that ever gets a reaction from the cat, we used to try to find Pokemon cartoons so that he could watch. And he only pays attention when that one character is on screen.
Yeah, his brain is the size of a walnut. I try to remember that every time I find myself thinking too hard on what it is about Pokemon that interests him so.
My dog reacts when there’s a doorbell sound on the TV. I don’t think anything else on it phazes him, and I usually leave the TV on (so that there are human voices, etc) when I leave him home and I’m away from the house.
My pets don’t react to the TV at all.
Of course, this is large because tarantulas are deaf and virtually blind. Oh, and stupid, too.
