Aren’t I nice to treat you to three cat items today?
#1 Okay, this cat riding on an automated vacuum cleaner while wearing a shark suit is either extremely docile or stoned on ‘nip. And it looks puzzled to be moving without having to walk. It just goes to show that no matter what bizarre act you think of, someone’s done it and put it on YouTube.
#2: As Catsparella notes, atheist entertainer and writer Ricky Gervais (see his WSJ piece, “Why I am an atheist”) is a diehard ailurophile. Like guest writer Matthew Cobb, he has a cat named Ollie, which was presented to him in 2003 on the “Friday Night with Jonathan Ross” show, as a replacement for a pet that had recently died. Here’s the show, with Gervais getting his surprise kitten. Note that he doesn’t hesitate a second before saying he’d keep it.
And here’s Ollie ten years later, in one of Gervais’s Twitter photos called “Twonks”:
Another photo (with caption) from Catsparella:
While on New Year’s Eve, [Gervais] posted this lovely close-up, along with the heartfelt tweet, “Believe in yourself. Be kind. Have fun. Do your best. And respect the unconditional beauty of nature. Happy new year.”
Anybody here own a Siamese?
#3. Finally, reader Amy sent in this helpful diagram:
Although I don’t have a cat, I pet plenty of them, and I favor the Bread Kneader, the Butt-Muncher, the Turtle Neck, and the Kali Ma, but the last one carries the danger of scratches. I’d be interested in knowing which petting regimes are favored by readers.
For another view of the Kali Ma, The Oatmeal has a great strip on “How to pet a kitty“. It’s too long to reproduce in its entirety (go read the whole thing), but here’s one funny protip:
h/t: Doug, Ginger K., Sarah
I don’t have a Siamese, I have a Ragdoll and a Moggie tabby. They are called respectively The Floofy and Chairman Meow, aka The Chairman. My cat’s sort of have titles rather than names. We prefer the Brain Eater, the Buttmuncher, the Thinker and the Kali Ma as a general rule, though occasionally the later turns into the Whiskered Bear Trap.
I have a snowshoe cat which is a cross between a Siamese and a Tuxedo cat. I think Ricky’s cat may be a snowshoe cat…look at the little white feet he has.
Something has to be amiss with this human’s pets. There is one where the cat is riding the Roomba in a shark outfit, there is a duck who is naked & a pitbull dressed in a duck outfit.
Ricky Gervais’s cat tweets are pretty funny sometimes mostly because of the odd folks who comment. One guy insulted his cat calling it a very bad word but muphry’s kicked in and he spelled “your cat” as “you’re”. Of course everyone corrected his insult with proper grammar and the insulter tried again but still screwed up the grammar. I was actually so funny I had tears from the laughter!
As for patting cats, I really want to do the Kali Ma. I have a hard time resisting cute animals but I do have a cat allergy (not as bad as it once was) that my immune system decided to give me after I had a pet cat; I wasn’t allergic to my pet, but after I didn’t have a cat, I developed allergies, which I’ve learned is how your immune system likes to screw with you (as I right now suffer with rag week allergies….thanks crap genetics). Often, despite the allergies, I’ll try to pet the cat and just wash my hands before touching my eyes or face…..but sometimes I can’t help myself and just go pet crazy with the kitty! Cats always like me and want the pets!
Did you see the recent research report on cat allergy? It has been on a few of the news sites, this one at WebMD Scientists Closer to Cat Allergy Cure provides a little more information than some of the others but, still not much. If you have access the original publication is at The Journal of Immunology which has a link to the not (to me) very helpful abstract.
I did hear some rumblings of that….I’ll take a look, thanks! Does this mean I can have a menagerie of pets again? 🙂 In the recent past, I had a budgie, two guinea pigs, a big aquarium & a dog all at once. The local pet store would laugh as I bought all the food, etc. Now I just have the dog and the aquarium. 🙂
I have a cat (and dog) allergy too. Indeed make sure to wash your hands; it also helps to be in an open space – you need fresh air.
I have a snowshoe cat which is a cross between a Siamese and a Tuxedo cat. I think Ricky’s cat may be a snowshoe as well…look at his white feet (hence the name snowshoe). These are really great cats…mine plays fetch among other funny feline antics.
I used to “own” a tiny black (with silver tips on her shoulders) Siamese named Pepper.
She was VERY proper, civilized, calm, reserved… until there was chicken (especially fried chicken) involved. If I wanted to bring home KFC I had to go inside and put her in a crate before I brought the bucket in.
She’s been gone for 10 or 12 years now, and I still miss her.
Oh, and we call it the BUTT-DANCE because of the reaction it provokes.
Can somebody here explain to me why my adopted cat almost never sleeps more than 3 days in a row on the same spot? She was a small wild kitten, 6 months old I guess, when I adopted her. And she refuses stubbornly the cushion I bought her.
Could possibly be the location of the cushion. Bought one for one of my two cats, she used it for a few days then stopped.
But some time later when I moved the cushion to a quieter spot in a room with less human traffic (because I thought I had wasted my money), she now uses it constantly. Just a thought.
Changing sleeping places make her feel safe. It’s natural behaviour. Just let her sleep where she wants to. You can try to make the inconvenient places unapproachable, but that makes them more attractive (it will be unapproachable for potential enemies too).
Your first mistake was letting her know that you wanted her to use the cushion you bought for her.
Because she’s a cat that’s just how they are. She’s probably just checking the place out a bit. That’s what my cat, Cleo The Cat did. Now she have 4 spots where she sleeps. I also crocheted her blankets for each of her spots. She also eats tuna because she doesn’t like cat food.
I have a notion (which I had read about in a cat book, and have tried out on occasion with I think some success) that to get on friendly terms with a strange cat it helps to not look at it directly, and to do a ‘slow blink’ with your eyes. Cats consider a direct stare to be a threat. So instead, you should look askance at the cat, and when you see it glance at you that is when you should try the slow blink. It works as follows: slowly blink your eyes, and then look away. Try this a couple times. In ‘cat speak’, this is supposed to mean that you are friendly.
As you watch cats, I am sure you will see that they often do the same thing to you on frequent occasions. It will also rotate its ears away from you, which also says it is friendly. Of course we cannot do that.
I sometimes do the slow blink with my cats and they nearly always do it back.
I’ve used the slow blink on big cats, too – at least some have returned it. It’s pretty exciting to feel that I’ve communicated (on some level, at least) with something that big and wild.
Slow blink is a signal of contentment for cats. I’ve done it forever and it usually works. They take that signal very readily.
I really like that Catmasutra picture.There are a couple of ways I’ve yet to try.
The Kali Ma. Just keep your hand still, only move your fingers. The cat will only put its claws in your flesh and not scratch you. If the cat doesn’t like it it will simply stop, turn around and run away (unless it’s a psychopath, but then you shouldn’t pet it anyway).
Female dogs like it too, if they trust you.
I use many of those petting techniques, including the Bread Kneader, reverse Brain Eater (wrist over the nose and fingers behind the ears), Butt Muncher, Thinker, Turtle Neck, and Kali Ma. But the chart omits an important method I think of as the Temple Grandin: hands on either side of the ribs, squeezing gently as you stroke toward the tail.
The Double Sided Piano.
My daughter and I were in Japan in May, and she wanted to see a cat cafe. So we went to one, a place called Nekokaigi (slogan: “The cuteness of cats is common to the whole world”) in Kyoto, http://www.nekokaigi.com/english/top.html if you want more. Their technique for petting the cats was to pat them quite firmly on the haunches (roughly where you would push a dog down to make it sit, and the sort of pat you might give a medium-size dog). The cats – there were about a dozen – seemed to like it, which surprised both of us. My daughter tried it on her cat, which didn’t like it; I’ve tried it on mine, which doesn’t object but doesn’t seem to regard it as petting.
My sister has a Siamese who’s now about 17 years old.
He was very rambunctious when young, including trying to open a particular door by running across the house and jumping at it (hitting about five feet up). He volunteered to be a fur collar regularly, jumping from the ground to my shoulder (these days, he does it more rarely, and typically needs to climb a bit).
After kittenhood, he adopted the standard Siamese characteristic of being extremely vocal. Still, he’s very friendly, amiable, and unafraid. He’s not skittish around any humans, and readily made friends with a new kitten (around 10 years ago), and more recently a new Morkie.
In addition to a tortie I also have a chocolate point Siamese called KoKo (its from a series of books – anyone know them?).
I got him from the local animal shelter as a 3 month old and he was unbelievably gorgeous.
He is now around 5 years old and has turned into a beautiful puss in every way.
Every night when I go to bed, I always sit up and read and this is his cue to jump up on bed next to me for his ‘scratching time’.
His favourite is under the chin where he closes his eyes and looks to be in bliss.
If I don’t scratch enough he jumps off the bed in a huff but if there is enough he will curl up next to me and I will put my arm under his belly with my hand under his head and he will drift off to sleep.
My 15 year old tortie Addie prefers the Brain Eater, to the point that she will lay by my side with her back in the curve of my arm so that the back of her head is in my palm so that I can continue the skritches while she lays down.
The middle cat, medium haired Charlie (named after Darwin, because as a kitten she seemed to be trying to select herself OUT of the gene pool)likes the Butt Muncher.
Daxter, the doofy boy cat, likes the Fine Tooth Comb, particularly when he’s spread eagled on my lap. And heaven help you if you try the Brain Eater on him.
My spouse and I currently share our large Victorian house with five meezers: a creamy red point male whom we found as a stray in our carriage house (already fixed!), an adopted 14-year old chocolate-point female (retired breeder), and three 6-year-olds (2 seal points and one blue point). We also have seven other domestic shorthair cats, all adopted strays or rescues, the oldest of which is 16 years old.
Over our 31.5-year marriage, we have had eleven other Siamese (9 of whom died in old age, and 2 as a result of cancer), plus two black oriental shorthair females, each of whom had a purebred Siamese as a mother.
If you were to visit our home, upon walking in you would not smell “cat” or “litter box.” Our secret: keeping the cats in separate harmonious groups on different floors, and 11 litter boxes, which are policed at least twice a day and changed / cleaned completely once a week.
We have a part Siamese-Calico with stripes from a Tabby. Very beautiful, but poor eyesight which perjures her creativity and makes her existence-fearful around small humans.
“Twonks” is how Ricky Gervais refers to his Twitter followers. He frequently tweets photos of Ollie with the phrase “night twonks” (short for good night, twonks) just before he stops tweeting for the evening.
I go for the two spots they can’t get on thier own: Top of the head and back of the neck.
I knead the top of the head with my most distal thumb knuckle while at the same time scratching them good with the fingernails on back of the neck. It is much appreciated by our kittehs.
I also use a modified Hyperspace and I use the Kali Ma if they are feeling particularly relaxed.
Cats and d-gs generally run right up to me for scratches. I must exude good vibes to them (in spite of large stature, maleness, and rampant facial hair).
Animals know when you like them. I’ve had dogs run up to me in public from out of nowhere.
On the rare occasions that I’m below carrying capacity for cats or d_gs, I invariably spend a day or two pondering over which breeds I’d love to have; then invariably go to the pound and end up with whatever seems to resonate with me at the time, seemingly regardless of any pre-decided criteria.
(Though, living in the country, I seldom have to go looking for cats at all.)