I’ve heard people call this familiar cat behavior by a lot of different descriptive names, such as “making biscuits” or whatever. At our house, we call it “stompy-stomp time” for example. What do you call it at your house?
We call it “making muffins.” Kind of silly, since you don’t knead muffins, but whatever. Here’s a video of him doing it: Toby making muffins on Vimeo (or try out the fancy HTML 5 version).
Boobie time, mommy time, kneady time, showing up for snorfles.
He’s a marmalade tomcat, who misses his mommy very much.
Kneading. Sorry, we never came up with something cutesy to call it.
We call it “tenderizing.” Like tenderizing meat. My cat likes to lay on my head when I sleep and the roommate I had when I first got her used to joke she was waiting to smother me so she could eat me. So when she was kneading she was tenderizing me in preparation. It stuck.
Though it does give me a giggle to hear my husband admonish her to “Stop tenderizing the couch!”
You have until this time tomorrow to come up with a cutesy name or else!
I call it “awww how OWWW GETTHEFUCKOFFME!!”
momi-momi (pronounced mow-me), from the Japanese verb momu, to knead.
momi momi. As much fun to say as it is to do.
When we had cats we just called it “kneading”, though if there was too much claw action I have been known to call it “fucking annoying!”
We call it ‘‘happy time’’.
I generally call it kneading, or making happypaws. However, if the big orange boy throws himself down, rolls onto his back, and starts flipping his paws up and down without extending his toes, I call it paw flippins. And then I call him my big orange sweetie, who is SUCH a good boy, and that leads to more paw flippins and purrs.
Kneading, or playing the piano. Extra points if you play some turn of the century honky-tonk music on itunes while they’re doing it.
Oh, come on now - how can you all not know that it’s called “Happy Dancing”!!! I mean, really, you’re usually so smart here…
Happy dancing involves more than just kneading, it involves the whole body. Happy dancing can be invoked if there’s chicken involved. The cats especially enjoy roast chicken, but they’ll accept fried or grilled, too.
I grew up calling it kneading, but adopted making muffins as soon as I heard it, and I don’t remember when that was.
Then there was my dearly departed Pookie. He would quickly move from making muffins to humping the blanket.
As with other members it is called “Stop that or I’ll kick your arse until you top teeth chatter!” Especially at 3 am.
“Kneading,”
Or “getting ready to go to sleep between my human’s legs.”
Or “pretending I still have claws.”
Us too.
However, we do joke that they are tenderizing us so we will be tasty when they kill us.
Happy paws or kitty fists.
All our boys do it when they’re happy, but only Horton also starts sucking like he’s looking for milk. He’s been doing it since he’s a kitten, and it’s still a strong habit now, at three years old. He only does it to that one teddy bear, though. He’ll get all happy and fluffy and start making the kitty fists, then he’ll bolt up the stairs and go to town on that poor spit-covered bear.
Making biscuits, most of the time. However Eliot likes to lay on the side of the couch and knead the air with his legs dangling off. It looks like he’s casting spells at us so we go ‘magic! magic!’ at him.
On a related topic, does anyone else have a name for when your cats stick one leg WAY up in the air to lick their butts? We used to refer to it as ‘doing his laundry’ but a good friend of mine calls it ‘playing the cello,’ so that’s our new phrase.