I got Video Catnip earlier this week for my Samantha. It’s about 30 minutes of birds and squirrels and stuff like that.
She watches it intently, bats at the screen, runs behind the TV looking for the birds after they fly away. I’m being entertained watching her antics. But, is she enjoying herself or is she getting frustrated by batting at the birds she can’t get to? I bought this video to give her another little something to interest her - not torture her.
Any Dopers have Video Catnip or something similar? What do you think?
I don’t think it’s torture. My cat used to go nuts when I played tetris. He would run up to the TV and bat at the peices as they fell. I never got the feeling he was upset or frustrated by not being able to catch them. He always seemed like he was having a great time.
It’s certainly no different than my cats watching real birds they can’t get at through a window. I think cats enjoy the chase more than the catch anyway: cats will catch a mouse and then let it go so they can catch it again if they’re not hungry. My cat is a little annoyed with me if I actually let her “catch” the laser pointer. It’s the hunt that thrills, apparently.
You’ve gotta be careful not to turn kitty into a TV addict. Z never paid any attention to the TV until she watched Video Catnip for a couple half-hour sessions. It wasn’t long after that she’d watch almost anything just in case the birdies came back. (That photo doesn’t tell the whole story - I swear that cat sat right there for at least half an hour, waiting.)
Once when I flipped over to Sesame Street, she even took a swipe at Super Grover.
She’s pretty well recovered now. Which means it’s time to bring out the Catnip disc again.
Our cat loves The Simpsons! The last episode we watched, she sat in front of the television and watched the entire 30 minutes. I’ve been wanting to get her one of those videos meant for cats, but didn’t have any idea what they were called or what to even look for. Now I know to look for Video Catnip – thank you!
Our late cat (who lived with us for 18 years, but who was probably more than 20 when she finally passed away) LOVED the television for a couple of years.
When I was pregnant with our first child (and the cat was about five years old), I was teaching at a university. We had timed things well so that the baby would be born during the summer between semesters, meaning that I had several weeks between the end of the spring semester and the actual birth, during which time I didn’t have to do much besides wait for the baby to come. I’ve never been a big TV freak, but TV was a decent way to pass the time, especially since the summer was VERY hot that year. Because our cat never left my side during that time (my tummy was WARM!), I frequently just tuned into nature shows so that the cat could watch the wild creatures. (Video Catnip did not exist at that time. In fact, I’m not even sure we had a VCR yet…)
One afternoon, we (the cat and I) were watching a show about the Amazon rain forest , with lots of small mammals and birds–exactly the kind of prey she dreamed of at night. She was sitting next to me on the sofa, intently watching the birds as they swooped in and out of trees, making the same creaky noises she typically made when she saw birds or squirrels at the bird feeder.
At one point in the show, when the cat was completely engrossed in watching critters flit across the TV screen, a bird swooped in from off camera right, zipped across the screen, to exit camera left. The cat leapt off of the sofa next to me and soared over the TV set, exactly as if she thought the bird would come flying out of the back of the TV as it left the camera shot.
Needless to say, the bird never emerged from the back of the TV, and the cat landed in a less-than-graceful heap on the floor between the TV and the wall.
Ch 13 (PBS-NYC) ran a doc on show cats tonight. One breeder said her kitties enjoyed all TV sports, but in particular couldn’t get enough car racing. They also seemed to pay particular attention when Trump fired someone. :dubious:
