If.
What amuses me is how one of our cats will be in the middle of racing through tha house and just come to a sudden stop to lick some random piece of fur. The onboard computer must have picked just that moment to activate the “clean” program.
And how is it that cats know you’re very busy and thus don’t want to be disturbed, so this, of course, as far as they’re concerned, is the perfect time to come and demand that you give them lurvin’s. However, when you are in the mood to hand out the lurvins, all kitties will promptly flee from you as if you’re made of water or something.
I’m not sure this theory is persuasive. Both lions and tigers clean themselves; neither faces pressure from a larger predator.
Nor will it do to explain this as the need to be scent-free when stalking prey, since large cats stalk upwind.
Well, sometimes they do “composure groom”, like if they fall off the couch or something. It’s part of that “I meant to do that” act.
Our 9yo ratbag performs this bizarre maneuver where she sort of grabs one back leg with both front paws, raises it straight up, then licks the living bejabbers out of it. It’s almost canine somehow. Anybody else’s kitty do this?
It is my theory that they momentarily forget what they’re supposed to do next so it’s a reflexive habit. If they were humans, they’d crack their knuckles or twirl their hair or smoke or grab a dougnut but being cats they haven’t access to the necessary accoutrements for those other activities.
Surely I can’t be the only one here that was reminded by the thread title of Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist?
At one time, he decided to do a course in biology, just for the hell of it. When he attended his first lectures, they were being taught something about cats that needed a background in animal physiology that he didn’t have - the names of muscles, that sort of thing.
So, he went to the library and asked the librarian, in all seriousness, if they had “a map of a cat”, a term that made complete sense to himself as a physicist, but baffled the librarian.
You’re not the only one. You’re just the only one who beat me to it. I remember that story about the map of the cat - I really must re-read Surely You’re Joking sometime.
Dewey does. It does look very doggy.
I get a little skeeved out when they really get going between their toes, I must admit.
Oh, that tug, tug, tug, tug sproing! thing? Oogy. Way oogy.
Just as an aside, rabbits to this as well and they are prey animals. Her Higness would stop and do a complete groom a few times a day, front ot back, in the same order. Tiny Higness even did a paw shaking move before she started which we figured was her way of shaking the imagined dirt from her paws before licking them to groom her face. Uppy-earred bunnies cleaning their ears is pretty funny, they bend one ear down to catch it then lick it as far as they can before grabbing the other. They then shake thier heads to put their ears back in place.
Most times, a nap then follows so it could be argued they are removing as much scent as possible so they can rest without attracting too much predator notice.
I felt a little rush of nerdy excitement when you wrote this. I think this would be an interesting project. Honestly.
It’s like that ping pong playing robot programmed in lisp. It did quite well, except that periodically it came to a sudden halt as the garbage collector kicked in.
I had a cat when I was younger named Miss Priss. One day as a kitten she was walking across the kitchen floor and stepped in a puddle of something I, as a toddler, must have spilled. She immediately sat down in the puddle and cleaned her now wet paw before continuing on her way.