Max* has a new, strange behavior. I’m wondering if anyone else has seen anything like it or differently strange.
He has to touch his water before drinking. I put out fresh water; he smells it, hovers his paw over it without touching, smells it again, touches the surface with his paw, then sticks his nose in too far, snorts water, touches again, then drinks.
He hasn’t always done this, but on and off since he was little. Now he does it every time.
He also shakes hands on command and sits up like a dog. He has been practicing catching food thrown his way. He hasn’t quite mastered that. He used to fetch, but he’s gotten lazy. Running isn’t his thing anymore. I don’t think of fetching as a trick, since he did that at his whim, not mine.
I know cats are strange and wonderful beings (some are strange, some are wonderful most are both). What new, strange and/or wonderful things do you have to report?
sorry, no pictures, my camera is being held hostage.
We used to have a female that would do somersaults on occasion. She’d walk to her preferred spot, lower her head, and sort of flop over and sideways. It was a variation of the usual “flop down to take a bath” thing that most cats do, but with the added forward component.
Missus Coder and I got so we could see it coming a few seconds beforehand. When company was visiting, we’d spot a somersault coming, point at the cat, and say, “Nosy! Do a somersault!”, and she would obligingly flip over. They thought we had the smartest cat on the block.
Our cat is a Blue Persian with (as has been unkindly described on these boards) as a squished in face.
When he sneezes it is a thing of beauty.
You can see him winding up by putting his snub nose in the air and his eyes close. At this stage every adult is fleeing the room.
Then the sneeze comes. All his fleas are blown off. However he never stops at one sneeze- it is always half adozen. Then he drops back to sleep while we are having a bath.
Towelfish seems to eat in a weird fashion when she gets t the bottom of the bowl. She scoops out a piece of kibble onto the floor, then uses the side of the water bowl to scoop it up, and then she eats it out of her paw-scoop.
I had a cat who was around 20 years old who when she drank from the water bowl would bump it so the water shook. I think her vision might have been going so she wanted to see the water clearer when it was shaking and thus glimmering more actively. Or it reminded her of running water. Or she just liked to make a mess.
Cuervo eats by himself in our powder room. There’s a dish of dry food out where they all nibble from. Sometimes, if his separate dish in the powder room is empty, he’ll go over to where the ‘community’ dish is sitting and use his paws to flip the little rug it sits on, over the dish to cover it.
Like to say “hey, if I’m empty, you guys ain’t eating either”
PS: No, he’s not spoiled, why?
I think it’s not unusual for cats to make their water move before drinking it. I know a lot of vets recommend using pet water fountains for them, because they’re more likely to drink from moving water and thus stay better hydrated. My totally off-the-cuff hypothesis is that since their vision is optimized for detecting motion (when hunting), they may not be able to see water too well when it’s still. Ergo, I’ve found water here before, bump, motion, ah! water! slurp.
One of our cats used to touch the water with her paw to make ripples before drinking. She also liked to eat her dry food by scooping it out of the bowl onto the floor, one piece at a time, eating it, repeat for next piece, etc.
Heh. That must save you a small fortune in flea control drops.
My cats mostly do cat things…they like paper bags, and they like to ambush other cats in paper bags, for instance. I’m sure that the younger female holds dance recitals on our dining room table when we’re not looking, as she’s the most active cat, and I frequently find the salt shaker on the floor. Never the pepper shaker, just the salt shaker, and occasionally a placemat.
