We tried the cucumber trick on Allie. She couldn’t have cared less.
I’m never sure whether my cat is scared of, or in love with our wireless Brother printer. Whenever we print something, she sprints towards it at high speed from anywhere in the house and stands atop it, as if demanding it submit.
She doesn’t lick the paper, or go near it any other time, just when it makes it’s initial readying noise prior to printing.
Otherwise, she’s a normal, excessively clever and manipulative cat, who can rarely be bothered by anything that isn’t related to food or her occasional need of BOTH HANDS when I’m trying to play on the computer.
My previous cat got seriously freaked out whenever there were wolves howling on the television. He’d either hide behind the sofa, or climb up onto my wife’s lap for protection.
But, stranger was one of my mother-in-law’s old dogs, a German shepherd who was just a freaky, spooky animal in general. My mother-in-law once got a turkey feather somewhere, and the dog was terrified of it. Said turkey feather wound up on the fireplace mantel, and thus, out of sight (and out of mind) for the dog, until it somehow wound up on the floor. The dog wouldn’t come within a yard of that feather, and even after it was picked up and put away again, she wouldn’t go near that spot again for days.
I’ve never heard about cats and cucumbers. I have one on the shopping list now cause that video was just too funny.
Our 10 month old kitten is fearless, he runs to to door when he hears the bell and he ignores the garbage truck. Our housekeeper has to pick him up and move him out of the way of the vacuum. He’s terrified of the extendable dusting wand. This is probably a good thing, because if he wasn’t scared of it, he’d probably want to climb the walls so he could play with it while I’m getting cobwebs out of the corners.
I’m very good at certain carnival games. So good, in fact, that when I leave the carnival, I’ve got at least one, if not two, giant stuffed animals in my arms. My then-wife thought it might be nice to arrange them in a corner of the living room. They were always a conversation piece when friends came over.
One day, I won a big stuffed Tasmanian Devil (from the cartoons) at the annual carnival. It went front and centre of all the stuffed animals in the corner. And one of our cats hated it.
We had four cats at the time, and while three were fine with Taz, one was not. She gave Taz a wide berth every time she had to walk by him, watching him the whole time, as if she was expecting him to whirl into action. Only when she was far enough away, would she turn her head, and head off to where she was going. She had no problem with any of the other stuffed animals, as she indicated by ignoring them before I brought Taz home, but once Taz was there–he was dangerous to her in some way.
We looked after a greyhound for a while. We live in distant hearing of a stadium that hosts the occasional loud concert. The greyhound was usually OK with this, but was completely freaked out by a Justin Bieber concert.
I will leave it to you to reach your own conclusion about what that says about Justin Bieber.
our kitten who was barely a cat when he passed wasn’t afraid of much but the trash truck was the ultimate kitten eating monster the minute he heard the trash truck he’d hide until it left the neighborhood …
Our cat is afraid of his own butt. He will try and run away from it several times a day.
blacky (who was named by an 4-year-old learning the names of the colors) one of the cats we had was afraid of purring as a kitten when she purred she acted like she was In fear and pain and ran around trying to figure out what made that evil noise
it took a while for her to figure out she was the one making that noise … the vet told us to hold her and pet her until she purred for bout about 15 minutes twice a day
You know those little teeny tiny feathers that your cushions or sofa occasionally spit out? Them. If my dog so much as sniffs a tiny white feather on the floor, he will RUN from the room, and won’t return until we’ve ostentatiously demonstrated that we have removed the danger.
I’m guessing at some point in his earlier life he got stabbed on the nose with the sharp end of a feather.
Of course he is. It follows him constantly and chases him when he tries to get away.
These stories are just hilarious!!
I don’t know if it is actually fear that causes this, but my 100+ pound dog immediately walks back to his crate whenever I sneeze. He’ll stay there for 15-20 minutes. I have no idea why he does this, especially since we never, ever tell him to go to his crate unless it’s bedtime.
I feel the pain of a lot of these. Our terrier was 7 or 8 when she started developing these reactions (she’s 11 now). The incoming phone message alert mentioned upthread, whether a buzz or a chime? Either live or on TV she goes wild tearing at sofa and chair cushions with her teeth (or once, memorably, my leg), followed by her trembling against my leg. The Amazon startup sound? (like Netflix in the SNL skit above)? Same. Most beeping things? You bet. (with a few strange exceptions)
The vet has given us a couple of pharmacological approaches…we dropped the one that left her in a half-stupor, and are sticking with the one that does take the edge off, but doesn’t eliminate the problem.
Poor dog.
Our cat Cocoa (avatar pic) is the same way – very mellow and affectionate with us, but hides from any unfamiliar humans.
Our African Grey, Rocco, is afraid of COVID masks. I take him to work with me where he hangs out in my office. I have to remember to remove my mask before entering the room or he’ll freak out and attack me.
A friend’s dog was terrified of their bug zapper’s sound. When they were on the patio and an insect got zapped, he’d shake/shiver/hide. They ended up getting rid of the bug zapper.
I know cats don’t like water, but mine takes it to a whole new level.
One day as I was getting out of the shower, I notice my cat staring at me from the complete other side of the bathroom. So I flicked my hand at him. When I did, a single droplet of water managed to roll off the tip of my finger, do a perfect 180 arch and land right square in the middle of his eyes. To which his eyes got big as saucers and he ran out of there in cartoon fashion.
Huck, my 130# Great Dane which is considered a guardian breed, is scared of a lot of things. Anything that is out of the ordinary will scare him to death. While walking down our trail, an old tree had fallen across the path. Well, that fallen tree hadn’t ever been there before, so Huck stopped dead in his tracks about 10’ from it. I had to coax him to keep walking. He got down into a slinking position and practically crawled on his elbows up to the tree. He sniffed every square inch of it before he’d go past it. It took a few days before the tree became a normal part of the trail for him. Then my husband took the chainsaw after it. The next time we walked and Huck noticed the tree wasn’t there, that was also a cause for alarm. He sniffed every inch of the ground where it used to be.
Dang…almost forgot. My smaller dog, a 50 pound Vizsla mix, won’t walk on tile or hardwood floors. She manages to make it over very short distances in our house, but we have to lay down towels and throw rugs if we take her somewhere. Sometimes she gets stuck in our foyer and we have to build a towel bridge to get her to the carpeted den.
(No, her nails are trimmed on a regular basis and that seems to play no part.)
My fearless barbarian dog, Conan, is afraid of many things but the most ridiculous has to be the sound of the whistle of the teapot.
We didn’t have a whistling teapot until some months ago when the one we had sort of burned because we let it in the fire for too long, so we bought a whistling one.
Conan was absolutely terrified of that horrid banshee scream and ran to hide under my desk (his favorite refuge from all things fearsome and menacing).
He gradually lost his fear of it and now ignores it completely.