My wife and I have a couple of kittens about 5 or 6 months old. One of them, Grant, loves to play fetch with a toy mouse. Here’s a quick video I took with my digital camera. Grant can go on for hours playing fetch.
So, do you have any animals that think that they’re a different species?
I knew of a dog that would climb trees. It was a large tree that “forked out” very low. He didn’t get very far up the tree but he would climb it.
I’ve had several cats that loved to play fetch. It’s not an unknown behavior in cats. One of the current kitties loves to play fetch, and will bring one of his toys to my husband, drop it in his lap, and look up expectantly. He’ll play fetch for fifteen or twenty minutes at a time, and then gets bored with it.
This same cat is snoozing on my husband’s bed, with a blanket over him. He very carefully pulled the blanket back, crawled under it, and managed to wiggle under it until he’s completely covered. I guess he has to resort to these measures because he can’t reach the thermostat.
I have a cat that fetches as well – a toy given to us by the SPCA. And he follows me around and sits at my feet. First time I’ve owned a cat-shaped dog in my life and I’m just grateful I don’t have to take him out for daily walks.
Both my dogs believe that it’s their right to sleep with a pillow under their head and a blanket covering them. They have gotten over it at night but when I come home from work the bed is unmade, full of dog hair and there are dog shaped head prints on the pillows. I change the sheets a LOT more often than I used to.
I adopted a lilac Siamese cat that had been abandoned by his mother and raised by a mother dog with four puppies. I dubbed him “Puppy-Cat.”
Puppy-Cat loved to play fetch, drink out of the toilet and go for walks on a leash.
Now those are two things I’d love to observe. I have a cat who use to go underneath my blankets to sleep. I never saw it, but I’d often look at my bed sometime during the day and see a big lump in the blanket. He doesn’t do that any more for some reason. At bed time he’s usually on my bed and occasionally he’ll put his head on one of my pillows.
Annie-Xmas, wow, most cats don’t do well on leashes. My wife and I have a fat cat and a vet recommended taking him for walks. We got a harness, which, when I tried just having him wear even without a leash he seemed miserable, so we decided against trying to walk him.
Puppy-Cat got all sorts of attention when I walked him on the leash. He heeled perfectly and loved it!
That sounds awesome.
I’ve got a fetch-playing cat. People ask me how I taught him how - I tell them I didn’t teach him how, and unfortunately I can’t teach him to stop, either.
My cat plays fetch but only with the yellow foam earplugs, she also follows me around the house, and she likes to take naps with me, snuggling under the blanket with her head nestled on my arm. She will squirm her way under the blanket and sleep with her head on the pillow if I am not around as well.
We have a cat now that thinks she’s a dog. She will sit on top of the couch and stare out through the front window, and will growl like a dog if anyone passes by. She also doesn’t like the other cats in the house, and will only play with our dog.
Also, when I was young we had a cat that would play fetch. It started when I tried to throw away a candy wrapper (a wadded up kit kat wrapper back when kit kat wrappers were aluminum foil) from across the room and came up short. The wrapper hit the garbage can and came rolling back across the floor. The cat grabbed it and brought it to me. So I tried it again, and he fetched it again. From then on out, he would play fetch whenever I threw a wadded up kit kat wrapper. I used to throw it from one end to the other in our basement rec room. The cat would often grab the wrapper at full speed just before it ran out of basement, and would slam into the closet doors on the other end of the room. It would then happily trot back and drop the wrapper in front of me to throw again. The cat never seemed to tire of this game.
My dog thinks she’s a cat. She’s currently curled up next to me being stroked like a kitten, and constantly curls around my legs as I walk, trying to trip me up.
I had a dwarf hamster who liked something similar. When she got old, her favorite thing ever was to sit on top of our down duvet, which had a flannel cover. There was an old washcloth that was “hers”, and we’d put it down and she’d wiggle her way underneath, with only her nose poking out one side. When she got tired of the view she’d wiggle her way to another side and look out that way for a while. Repeat ad nauseam.
I did have another hamster who thought she was a dog in that she loved to lick people. That, or a rat, because she’d groom your nails whenever she had the chance (something pet rats do to their people sometimes).
Lots of cats will carry toys around in their mouths so it isn’t much of a stretch for them to play fetch, too. This morning I went to pour myself a cup of coffee and there was a kitty toy in my coffee mug that I had left on the counter. Either they wanted to play fetch or they were trying to tell me I don’t need caffeine for energy, a good toy works as well.
A couple of my cats think they’re dogs, I think. One especially has two mousies that he loves to play fetch with–to the point that we have to hide them at night because he’ll bring them to us while we’re asleep and then poke at us until we either realize what he’s up to and play, or put the toy away.
One of my Russian Blues likes to put coins in my shoes, but I don’t know if that’s doglike behavior. She’s all cat in all other respects. 