Cats are just lulling you into a false sense of security with this “affection” routine. One night they will rip your throat out and feast on your still warm flesh. At least that’s what I tell my wife, when the cats are trying to cuddle me.
Probably, since they have the run of the place.
A few blocks from here, an old guy who lived with a lot of cats passed away and was then eaten by his cats. It was weeks before anyone noticed anything.
Since then, the market value of a duplex across the street from his house has dropped so far that the duplex owners have sued his estate.
But that’s not the weird part.
His two adult children, who live just across town, tried to sue the town for it not having someone visit him once in a while.
I think the cats ate the wrong person.
They definitely ate the wrong person.
As an aside. My son once told me that he had read that a pet dog will wait a couple of days longer before eating you than a pet cat will. Does anyone have a cite for that?
Who said that cats are solitary animals?
I was watching a Nature show on PBS and quite the contrary, they are very much social animals yet discrete in their communication.
I have had (in my adult life) so far 4 cats. Niki, who still lives and Sam, put down in 2000. Both of them buddies and there was definately “grief” in my Niki when Sam never came back.
Now I have added two 8 year old boys (I call them brothers but I don’t think they came from the same litter) love are very social together. They even get into each other’s dishes and don’t “bitch” at each other. They lick and love each other as though they are true brothers but I am 85% sure they aren’t siblings. I know my Sam and Niki weren’t and they had the same behavior.
Cats love you because you love them back. Animals aren’t stupid, if you were psycho to them they would act in kind. If they were psycho, then that’s a different story.
Oh and this:
Depends on the cat. Two 8 year olds and a 15 year old. One 8 year old is a FATTY (and going to the vet next week to put him on a plan) his brother, is normal and average for a cat his size. My 15 year old, she’s never been fat, always been average for her smaller stature. (sp).
Each cat or dog is as individual as us humans. One might have a slow metabolism while the other might simply just be average. Feeding practices aside, in my own experience, most cats will maintain what it needs without over doing it, as does my dog but many dogs will over do it. It just depends on the individual animal.
What’s the deal with cats bringing home mice they’ve caught? As was said, cats may hang out together but they hunt solo. It seems like they just want to show off, but that doesn’t seem to have any instinctual relevence.
Despite the fact that they are now sometimes classified as only a sub-species of the African wild cat, domestic cats seem, under human influence, to have become more sociable than their wild cousins (even in “feral” domestic cats who haven’t been raised with humans). African wild cats are generally solitary (though according to that page they will sometimes hunt in pairs or family groups); AFAIK, they don’t form the “colonies” that domestic cats will when they are feral or semi-feral (as for example cats on farms).
There was a Staff Report that briely discussed this :
Will cats eat their owners?
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mdepradation.html
MEBuckner were we talking about cats other than domestic cats? 
I didn’t think so…so where’s the issue.
So I ask, who said cats are solitary animals.
BTW, the lions live in prides, why not the domestic cat?
hehe
(just to pick at bones here)
Lion - A large carnivorous feline mammal (Panthera leo) of Africa and northwest India, having a short tawny coat, a tufted tail, and, in the male, a heavy mane around the neck and shoulders. (courtesy of www.dictionary.com)
From that second link in my above post:
So, perhaps they think you’re a kitten, and they’re trying to provide for you. I know, I said they think you’re their Mommy, not the other way around, but as Miss Mapp quoted “Social interactions that are common in all domestic cats, such as playing with, rubbing against, grooming, and lying close to familiar cats and people, appear to be behavioral overflows and hodgepodges, left over from those circumstances in which wild-cats are social”. Lacking the defined social roles of pack animals like wolves (“OK, human, you’re the alpha, and I’m a member of your pack. Got it.”), cats sort of have a mixed approach. That is, domestication involved promoting the breeding of cats with a variety of human-centered behaviors, many of which were derived from infancy, but others may have been parental, or even taken from mating behavior.
I hesitate to even disclose this, but one of my cats jumps up on my chest and cuddles whenever I go to bed. Often he just winds lying down for a little snooze (at least until I sneeze or shift position), but sometimes the “nursing kitten” behavior is very pronounced–lots of heavy purring, kneading, and a head-down sort of blissed-out expression. And, then, sometimes, when the “kitten” behavior seems especially heavy, he will become, ah, visibly aroused (despite being a eunuch), at which point he wanders off and, well, auto-fellates himself.
Then again, my other cat (also a neutered male) will occasional bite him on the back of the neck and mount him.
(One interesting thing, mother cats of course immobilize kittens by biting them on the neck; cats have an instict to go limp when grabbed that way. That also is how males grab females when they’re mating. I can imagine a feline Freud having a field day with that.)
** techchick68:** Well, the point is just that (unlike wolves/dogs), we didn’t take an already social animal and use those instincts for domestication; we’ve managed to domesticate what started out as essentially a solitary hunter, in the process creating an animal which is social within their own species as well as affectionate with us.
Well ME Again I stress that there is at least one such feline class of animals that does live in groups. While I am not in tuned, completely, with the evolution of domestic cats, for practical purposes, they are social animals at this point and time.
I wish I had the reference for the Nature show that gave us more insight to our domesticated cats. They did touch briefly on the socialization of cats but for the life of me, I don’t recall. If I can find it and actually buy the video, I will. But it seems to me that they weren’t that hard to socialize because they had the cat socialization skills or we would have found a different type of feline to bring into our homes.
Then again I could be wrong but it make sense.
Oh and…a wolf is far less social than a domestic cat. They love their pack (even humans in their pack) but are highly concerned about those humans they don’t know.
My recently adopted cat Monty is social dude. If he were human, he’d be the star of a cocktail party. His brother on the other hand prefers to remain in a room where I am but no others are. My Niki is the same as Monty, people, she loves. My dearly departed Sam could give a rat’s butt if you came in our home, he would rather be in the bedroom away from the action.
Again, it depends on the cat, I truly believe that. They can be raised in the same house but do what is in their comfortable realm.
A cat is not a cat unless he/she does as he/she pleases.
Cats are awesome that way. I can’t imagine my life without a cat.
This one, it turned out, tunneled into a neighbor’s basement and was subsequently released back into the wild.
I’m at work now and don’t have the article at hand, but it did say something about this, to the effect that in the mouse-bringing scenario, the cat is Mommy and you are the kitten who needs to be provided for and taught to hunt (hence the occasional half-dead mouse).
When I was a kid and we had outdoor cats who brought home prey, I used to look on it as a sort of “it’s the thought that counts” present. By those standards, getting a whole dead mouse is much nicer than being presented with just the head–which seems to me rather like someone giving you a box of chocolates with all the good ones already eaten.
Speaking of cats settle this debate for me
When you get a female cat fixed does she or dosent she still go into heat and desire to mate ?
I’ve had people tell me yes and no to both …
this is added becuase i didnt have the e-mail notification box checked
I always thought the mouse thing was all about pride.
Look what I caught! All by myself too!
My wife had a tomcat, Tigger, when we met… and he brought home stuff all the time. Plainly, he was not trying to provide for us, partly because he had never been a mama cat, but partly because he never brought us a whole critter.
I think he was showing off. I learned to be very careful about going out on the porch early of a Sunday morning to get the newspaper; stepping into a pile of cold wet bird guts while half asleep is NOT recommended.
…but he’d arrange the bird guts with the head above them, and one wing to either side, and the feet below the guts. In short, he’d reassemble the parts of the bird he hadn’t actually eaten. Whether it was an offering… or a trophy to impress the humans… I leave as a question for my fellow Dopers.
On a related note, my ginger cat, Bunny, once caught a bird durn near as big as she was. She killed it, washed it carefully… and left it, intact, on the little throw rug on my side of the bed. Hell of a surprise when I woke up.
We also used to find dead voles in the hallway from time to time, but I suspect those weren’t offerings so much as they were toys that were abandoned when they quit moving…
nightshadea, a female cat who has been spayed should not go into heat. If she does, it is a sign that the ovaries were not fully removed (very rare), and she should be taken to the vet immediately.
I’ve had cats since I was a kid, and what fascinates me is their behavior ‘cycles’, including ‘affectionate’ behavior and random behavior. For instance, the cat comes in at night, I hear him eating, then he jumps on my bed and goes to sleep. Does that every night without fail for a month. Then one night I hear him eating, he finishes, I’m waiting for that pounce on the bed, and it never comes. He has fallen asleep on a chair in the living room. For the next month, he hits that same chair every night. Then it switches to a corner of the living room. Then suddenly, for no apparent reason, he’s back on the bed for a month. Same goes for the morning routine - every day for a month he joins me in the bathroom and drinks out of the sink. If I don’t turn the faucet on, he meows plaintively like he’s going to die of thirst. Then suddenly one day he doesn’t come into the bathroom. I won’t see him in the bathroom again for months, until I barely remember him doing it. Then, as quickly as it stopped, it starts again. Not once in a while, but every day without fail for the next month. What is that?