The cats that come from my parents’ farm seem to come from a line that is unaffected by catnip. I’ve never been able to get them interested in it, and they typically give it a sniff and walk away. Kind of disappointing. I have two cats from that line with me, and they seem to share that trait (though they’re just a year old, which is, I understand, the borderline for when that kicks in).
In any case, I just trimmed some summer savory out of a pot I have growing on my balcony, and hung it up to dry. You’d think I’d been playing with beef jerky the way these two reacted, pleading, crying for me to give it to them. The smaller of the two cats, who can be described as affectionate but fraidy, is currently sitting in my lap aggressively rubbing the oil (?) from the plant off my fingers, and even nibbling at them a little, which is something she’s never done before. It’s pretty much the exact same reaction I’ve seen in cats with catnip previously. I’ve never heard of cats reacting to a different herb like this; is this typical for anyone else?
My mom had a cat who’d ignore catnip, but go absolutely apeshit when she’d open a jar of green olives stuffed with pimientos, doing the same sort of behavior you describe.
I once had a Siamese cat who was oblivious to the charms of catnip, but went bonkers over the herb rosemary. If I crumbled some rosemary and let Leela sniff my fingers, her pupils would dilate, she’d star to purr, and eventually she would keel over as if she were too stoned to stand up.
Oh yes, the Olive Effect. If I’ve gotten olives on my fingers (which happens when you put them on the tips to pretend to be E.T.) my kitties follow me around and basically mug me. It’s the only time they’ll lick me, which makes one feel used.
If you drop some fish food on the floor, stand back, baby! It was a race to see if I could scoop enough into the container to feed my betta that evening. Of course, now that I know this, I can get them to come any time I want by shaking the fish food.
A friend of mine claims that olives are a hallucinogen for cats. He said he found that out when trying to find out why his cat Oscar loved olives so much.
This begs the question: How do you know if a cat is hallucinating?
(obligitory hijack prevention whenever this phrase is used: neither of these are right, the correct phrase is “bated breath,” “bated” here meaning stopped or held-an alternate form of “abated.”)
It’s still a good pun that I got a kick out of. Regardless of how the word is spelled, it still sounds a lot like “betta’d”, and the breath is “betta’d” from eating the betta food.
How did I make it to 38 and change without ever having done this?
My cats both go crazy for a couple of unexpected things - a couple of wooden buttons on a throw pillow, and my husband’s binder-thingy. I’ll go downstairs occasionally, and there’s a cat sitting on the binder, just a rubbing all over it and having a great old time. They also like dirty dishrags. They rub all over those, too. Mmm, smelly.
I remember a thread right here where a poster said some bags are made with beef tallow. I can tell which bags are beefalicious if my cats insist upon risking suffocation just to get inside the bag and sniff and nibble.
Oh featherlou, you’ve gotten this far without making a fool of yourself with E.T. fingers because you weren’t raised by smart alecky circus clowns like me. Great restraint was not shoving them up your nose until after the Thanksgiving meal. Some tips: You can get better distance nose-lobbing with stuffed green olives, not black. Avoid jalapeno-stuffed at all times. Do not demonstrate your nose-lobbed mouth-caught-olive skills in front of anyone you want to have sex with unless you’re already married to them. Especially don’t do this and then pretend to bark like a seal and clap your ‘flippers.’
Betta’d breath, baited breath, they’re all brill and they’re going in the book!
Our youngest has taken to trotting around the room with daddy’s dirty socks.
She likes to fight them. :dubious:
My cats went nuts for freeze-dried coffee grounds I accidentally dropped on the floor once.
They were rolling in them before I could clean up the mess.
I’ve found something my cats love which will probably gross most of you out: earwax. Seriously, my cats think this is the nectar of the gods and will try to lick my ears constantly. They couldn’t care less about catnip though.
One of our cats is a sock-fiend, too, but she generally prefers clean socks.
We got her a little more than a year ago, from the local Humane Society, and she was already about a year old. Soon after that, we started finding socks all over the house in odd places–especially my husband’s black socks. We suspected it was one of the cats, but it was several weeks before I actually caught her in the act of dragging a sock upstairs from the laundry room. We suspect that her former owners may have scolded her for dragging socks around, because she will NOT let us see her dragging around socks (she only does it when she thinks no one is home, or we’re all asleep, and she drops the sock like a hot potato if someone sneaks up on her), and she won’t play with the socks at all. Hubby finally got in the habit of putting all his clean socks away right after they come out of the dryer, so she contents herself with the mismatched socks that permanently live in the laundry room. About once a week or so, we gather up all the stray socks around the house, wash them with the other laundry, then leave them in a basket for her.
Both of our cats do like catnip, but the male gets very agressive toward the female when he’s high, so we don’t give it to them very often.
My cat (Siamese, about a year and a half old) snobbed catnip like it was stale rice cakes.
Catnip-filled mouse toy?Sniff *Plaintive look that says 'Where’s my string? Is this a string replacement? Has the string abandoned me while I slept? Have you let some indescribable horror happen to the string and now are trying to foist this psuedo-toy upon my precious self in lieu of string? Can I have the string? I better go find the string. Irresponsible string nazi.
[string hunt] miaow rrrr’oow [/string hunt} Catnip scented bubbles?SniffPlaintive look String hunt.
**[Tricksy human] string rubbed in catnip [/tricksy human] **sniff Look. SCARY LOOK. Pure catnipsniff Look. Hunt.
(She, um, has a favourite ‘string’ which is a drawcord she stole from my favourite pants. I tied it to a thin wooden stick and now I ‘fish for kitties’ all over the house.)
So I stopped with the catnip.
But anyway, she needed a new scratching post, and for some reason the only ones I could find that weren’t going to take up ALL the room in my house, were very heavily scented with catnip, some bits even involving pure catnip.
So I took one home.
And she went loopy.
She loved it. Violently. I don’t think she’s been out of contact with it since.
Now she loves all things catnip. Second only to the The String.
I only ever had one other cat that didn’t like catnip, only it NEVER got to like it. It had the ‘stoned’ like catnip reaction to ammonia though. It used to hunt down cleaning rags and rub itself in them.
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