[QUOTE=MLS]
My fat marmalade tabby likes to chew and lick plastic. He especially likes the plastic rings that hold soda 6-packs together. <snip>
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Feather does that, too. Her favourite seems to be toilet paper bags. She really gets into a zen state, licking them for minutes at a time. She’ll sometimes get her paw in on the action, too - lick the plastic, lick a paw, back to the plastic, etc. Kitty weirdo.
Some photos of Cato:
This is not exactly about my cat, but about my cat’s grandmother.
She was a wild cat. She just showed up one day at the door of a farm whose owners were friends of my family, in Spain. She couldn’t be older than 6-10 months.
According to our friends, they opened the door in the morning and there was this wild cat, sitting there, calmly looking at them with the biggest chutzpah imaginable… It was as if she were saying: “It took you long enough; when is breakfast?”
She settled into the farm, and not long afterwards became the ancestor of a thriving colony of farm cats. She also became the undisputed Queen, Matriarch, Despot, Terror and Dictator-For-Life of EVERY SINGLE ANIMAL in that farm.
She would graciously allow you to pet her and (if she was in a good mood) rub her belly. However, woe of those who would be impudent enough to dare and try to pick her up!! She only allowed a select few to do that. And you, stupid plebeian, definitely were NOT one of them! Stitches time, monkey-boy!
The farm had two mastiffs, HUMONGOUS guard dogs. Their shoulders reached halfway between my waist and my chest. Well… Those beasts were terrified of that tiny feline! They would NEVER approach her closer than 3 or 4 metres. Nobody ever found out what on Earth the cat did to instil such Fear Of God ™ into the dogs, but the fact was that they were deathly afraid of her. Sometimes I idly try to imagine some scenario, but I end up thinking that nothing that my mind might conjure could be even remotely close to the truth.
That cat (incidentally her “kinda sorta official” name was Lola) was a Real Character. There are stories of hardy veterinarians trying to get a hold of her.
Sometimes they were never found again 
In other news, my cat (granddaughter, as I said, of Lola) is a total beaut and she is in the middle of her daily “5 minutes of total insanity”, wherein she runs amok through the flat in pursuit of (perhaps) imaginary foes.
Just my 2 eurocent!
Our cat, Marla, curses at us. Well, not exactly—but how else would you interpret this? When Marla is presented with a catfood that isn’t on her “approved” list, she tries to bury it as if it were poo. She’s got to be saying, “WTF? You expect me to eat this sh*t?”
[QUOTE=want2know]
…and licks the water off the shower wall.
–drinks water out of the bowl by dipping her paw in and licking the water off.
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Don’t all cats do these two things?
My cat Ishtar collects jewelry. I can’t leave any hanging around, she collects it and puts it in one of her caches.
When we first had her, I remember going through a period of buying earrings, I kept losing them (my ears aren’t pierced, so they clip on). My husband has a large, heavy, oak wastepaper basket in the corner near his computer. It’s so heavy that I just change a bag in it, and maybe clean behind it once in a blue moon.W
That was Ishtar’s first cache: a pile of earrings, shiny Christmas decorations, bits of shiny ribbon. I like to think that I’ve Ishtar-proofed my things, but she keeps proving me wrong.
Now and then I find new hiding places with the characteristic shiny stuff in them.
One of my previous cats, Sam, was in love with my slippers. Needless to say, when I noticed that, they became his slippers. He remained faithful to them for 17 years.
When first stepping onto certain surfaces (typically fuzzy throw blankets) Van will slowly knead the surface with his front legs (as one would knead bread) for a couple of minutes while staring off into space. Then he will lay down.
Also attacks bugs, but only if they are flying. Too big a fraidycat to go after anthing bigger.
[QUOTE=BJMoose]
When first stepping onto certain surfaces (typically fuzzy throw blankets) Van will slowly knead the surface with his front legs (as one would knead bread) for a couple of minutes while staring off into space. Then he will lay down.
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This is stereotypical cat “comfort” behavior. It stems from what kittens do when they nurse.
[QUOTE=fervour]
Our cat, Marla, curses at us. Well, not exactly—but how else would you interpret this? When Marla is presented with a catfood that isn’t on her “approved” list, she tries to bury it as if it were poo. She’s got to be saying, “WTF? You expect me to eat this sh*t?”
[/QUOTE]
My Siamese girl, Sapphire, will comment long and loud about anything she disapproves of. She will also come running to me, to tattle on my husband or another cat, if she’s pissed at them. She likes to talk. This isn’t so strange in a Siamese, though. They are well known for conversing with anyone.
I firmly believe that if we could understand feline, cats would be world-class swearers. Bunch of fuzzy little potty mouths, they are.
[QUOTE=OpalCat]
This is stereotypical cat “comfort” behavior. It stems from what kittens do when they nurse.
[/QUOTE]
Huh. The odd thing is he didn’t start doing this until he was a year and a half old. But that was about the time we got this particular throw blanket. Guess it reminds him of Mommy.
Pi always has to sniff my hair. Loud, snorty snifflings, usually right in my ear. Sometimes this prompts a big boogery sneeze because he has a chronic stuffed nose. So a sniffling means run away fast.
Pi and Luna like to wait for us outside the shower and sometimes run in and play in the shower after or lick the water off our legs. It took a few times of turning on the shower with them in there to get them to wait outside the shower since they liked to hop in with us.
Pi likes to watch the boyfriend and I when we get intimate. BF doesn’t like an audience, especially a furry one with claws that sometimes likes to join in the play, so they usually get chased out of the room.
Dinger likes to join me in the bathroom and uses the litter box when I’m on the toilet.
Boxes are the bestest thing in the world. Who needs cat trees? I think they like to play Fort with big boxes. Get something in a big box, just leave it in the living room until they totally destroy it, then go get a new box.
A long time ago I had a cat that was a jewelry stealer. The odd thing about this is that he was mostly blind and could supposedly only see shadows, yet he managed to see little shiny things.
my dear departed murphy had a thing for my dearfoams (padded ballet slippers). he wasn’t in love with them. he just liked to hide them.
and he was damn good at it, too.
at one point, i had six pair floating around and was always searching for at least a left and a right (not generally a matching set) to put on my feet. this in a two-floor condo with a total of maybe 800 square feet for both floors.
i think he might have teleported in and out of different planes of existance with them. i never did get a straight answer out of him. 
[QUOTE=Wile E]
A long time ago I had a cat that was a jewelry stealer. The odd thing about this is that he was mostly blind and could supposedly only see shadows, yet he managed to see little shiny things.
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(IANAD/N/Vet, though I do work in ophthalmology.) I suspect your cat could see at least light and shadow, or anything with a lot of contrast. The shiny jewelry probably popped out at him due to how reflective it was.
Side note: We had a patient who preferred yellow/Golden retrievers as a guide dog as he could see them more easily in a dim room than black labs or other darker-coated dogs. Like many ‘visually impaired’ people he wasn’t totally blind in the way many people assume that someone with a dog or cane is, but it was mostly light-and-shadow for him.
I could make a long, long list of annoying things my cat does but that’s another thread I suppose.
Elvin likes to get in the dryer. We live in a condo with a stackable washer/dryer combo that’s in a closet in the kitchen, the dryer is on top. If I leave the door open while I’m doing laundry he jumps up in the dryer. Doesn’t matter if there are clothes in the dryer or not, he’s happy to curl up in a cold empty dryer or a dryer full of warm clean clothes.
Snowy likes to pee in places other than her litter box but that’s not nearly so endearing.
Elvin has recently (this past weekend) learned how to open the kitchen cupboards. Clever, cute and a total pain in the ass.
Ah, my dear boy M. Night and his various quirks…
He strongly believes that things should not be on other things. One of his greatest joys in life is to wander along the bathroom counter, dresser or just about any other surface and to bat small items onto the floor. Not to play with them, just to knock them to the floor.
When he takes a nap with me he loves to wrap his paws around my arm or at the least place one paw over my arm. When he’s ready to sleep he’ll tuck his head under so his face is buried against me.
He’ll eat anything. Sometimes I swear the cat is part goat. (He’s gotten a bit chubby lately, so we’ve cut back on his eating) He likes oranges, salad, french fries(with ranch dressing),fried cheese sticks(with marinara),almonds and just about anything else.
Speaking of eating, he loves to have someone pet him while he eats. So much so that he will come up and whine at you, then run to his food dish and whine some more. I’m really trying to break that habit but so far he still begs for it. I think this came from when he had the URI and we had to coax him to eat.
Not so much a weird thing, but he loves taking steam baths. He still has some breathing issues and the steam helps out. We run the shower on full blast hot and he curls up on the toilet seat and just enjoys it. If you turn it off before he’s done he’ll raise hell.
Anybody else’s kitty like to hold a back leg up with its forepaws while grooming the leg fur?
[QUOTE=velvetjones]
Elvin has recently (this past weekend) learned how to open the kitchen cupboards. Clever, cute and a total pain in the ass.
[/QUOTE]
Not our cat, sadly, as we’re unable to have cats for allergy reasons. But a good friend of ours has an adorable cat named Smoke who is almost always hiding in the kitchen cabinets when we come over. We’ll have been at the house for about 10 minutes without having seen or heard her, and then finally there will come a loud ::clank:: from the kitchen, and a small grey pile of fur will have apparated on top of the refrigerator.
[QUOTE=neutron star]
He pounces on and attacks everything, moving or not, but then he’s just a kitten and I guess that’s what kittens do. Here’s a video of my little guy pouncing at the camera a few times and then tearing my hand to shreds.
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Your Dante looks exactly like my Mr. Mischief Scrambles*, who is not * a biter, although my other cat, Gary the Thunderbolt Titus Esquire III* was.
Mr. Mischief was an abandoned stray (though not for long, he’s quite young), so he still exhibits some “outdoor cat” behaviors (for instance, he fails to bury his business, although Gary is trying very hard to teach him), and was weaned way too early, so he’s a nurser. He’ll suck on anything that gets near his mouth, and I’ve woken up on several occasions to find him happily fastened to the hollow of my neck (vampire kitty!). He loves to snuggle, but only if he came to you. He haaaaaates to be picked up.
Gary is weird in a million ways. He’s actually the one cat I’ve *never * seen “kneading” anything. Ever. He won’t drink water unless he’s seen me drinking it. He’ll jump in the shower with me. He doesn’t meow much, and he doesn’t often purr audibly, but he makes a variety of adorable trilling noises. He *loves * to be picked up, and when you do, he’ll place a paw on either side of your face and rub noses. Then he snuggles into your shoulder. He’s awesome.
Gary is the same. He loves people in general, but he adores **new ** people. I once walked into the kitchen to find him laying on top of the plumber who was lying on the floor with his head under my kitchen sink. The plumber claimed to not mind, and insisted that I didn’t need to remove him “He’s a cool cat, we’re good.”, so I guess he was a little weird, too.
*
, ** - I did not name these cats, I swear.
Speaking of water, there was a standard gold-fish-bowl sized fishbowl at my mom and sister’s place filled with water and floating fake fish. Their two cats didn’t drink out of their regular water bowls but only drank out of that, to the point that my mom would just refill that instead of the regular water bowl. Perhaps it was the taste of the other water, or temperature, or the fact the water was older on average so would lose some of the additives the city put in, or that in the wild, the smaller the water basin the more muddy and stagnant it is?