Fishercat!

November 30, 2014 • 2:40 pm

From the Facebook page of Harberin Bizdin, which appears to be a Turkish-language news website, we have a great video of a domestic cat catching fish in a large body of water (the sea?).

The original seems to be here, a French fishing news site.  The cat’s tenacity and skill is astounding; it must have been hungry!

 

 

If you give a cat a fish, you’ll have fed it once, but if you teach a cat to fish, it will have food forever.

 

65 thoughts on “Fishercat!”

  2. I guess that curious fish’s genes are eliminated from the gene pool!

    “Hey, what’s that fuzzy thing up there, looks like a face. Ahhhhhhhhh! Why is the world so cruel?!”

  4. Amongst the amusing comments a science question: anything in the moggy’s vision that can help it see into the water? I know ( or I think I know) that there are no mammals that have polarising eyes so is it just experience and learning?

  5. In New England a “fisher cat” is a name for the fisher, a member of the weasel family, larger and more common than a marten and closely related to it. Why it’s called a cat–or a fisher, for that matter–is not clear, but the misnomer probably derives from early settlers’ poor grasp of zoology.

  6. It looks like they were throwing bread in the water so that the fish would go after the bread. And the cat was waiting for the fish to jump for the bread. There were probably a lot of fish there. I know of a fish feeding spot like that where people go and feed bread to the fish that swarm around the feeding spot.

      2. I figured that was the place you were referring to even before you posted the link. My old dept’s ecology research station is a mile or so from the spillway.

        1. Hey! It was right on the way to Conneaut Lake Park back in Conneaut Lake Park’s heyday haha. I remember a lot of yellowjackets there at CLP that would hang out around the trash cans lol.

    2. So the fish have learned that “here be feeding hoominz”, and the kitteh has learned that “here be fishzzzz”.
      Smart kitteh, If it wasn’t being denigratory to the dinosaurs, I’d say the fishes are being a bit bird-brained.

  7. We had a cat that pushed back my fish tanks’ covers, reached in and snagged fish. I solved the problem by giving her an aquarium, a ten gallon battery jar, with a Weatherfish (Misgurnus anguillicaudatus). Weatherfish are very excitable. The cat spent hours grasping the battery jar, with a paw at each end. She’d whack the end the fish was it, it would dash to the other end, she’d whack, … Endless amusement. Until, that is, she persuaded the fish to jump out. She at half of it, and that was the end of pet fish for her.

    I also had a Shovelnosed Catfish (Sorubim lima) whose preferred food was small fish. I fed it minnows, collected them myself and stored them in a kiddie pool in the basement. The cat also extracted minnows from the kiddie pool, used to demand to be let into the basement so she could go fishing.

          2. Hey, how did you swing it? Mine kept coming out empty. Yours turned out better than mine anyway, with the eye and the (((.

          3. WordPress comments out empty tags (it sees the greater than & lesser than signs as tags used in HTML) because it probably thinks they are broken.

          10. OK, now my fish works. I think I had had the tail backwards which would have meant a less than and then a greater than, thus pissing off WP.

          12. Great idea!!

            On that note, my 14.5 ya Freddie is suddenly getting canned fish because his staff is feeling sorry for his somewhat skinny butt (literal) due to his hyperthyroidism. He is eating this up (also literally) and demanding moar, Moar, MOAR!

          13. Hunger is a good thing in an older, underweight cat! Very good — excellent, in fact.

            Baihu in the past tended towards moderate finickiness, but not recently. To his commercial raw food (a mix of whatever species of Nature’s Variety Raw Instinct I’ve got in the freezer, defrosted overnight in the ‘fridge) I’ve started adding at most a teaspoon of Trader Joe’s Tuna for Cats, and enough hot tap water to cover the food — as hot as it’ll come out of the faucet. And give it a quick stir.

            He’s since earned the nickname, “Mr. Bowl-Licker.” Every time, he practically inhales everything I set in front of him. And he’s getting a lot of water this way, and with his food, which is ideal. Probably the best-hydrated cat in the Southwest….

            b&

          20. Yeah and I think that’s the same cat that had an odd brush with diabetes. At one point, they thought they would need to inject him with insulin every day but then the vet got them to feed him Fancy Feast & it fixed him right up. Very odd. I suggested this cure be used on humans. 🙂

            My two good friends have had the same cats for almost as long as I’ve known them (around 20 years). It amazes me how long they can last. Of course, they are well taken care of & are indoor cats too.

          21. Honestly?

            Given a choice between eating Fancy Feast and sticking myself with needles…I’ll take the needles, thankyouverymuch….

            b&

          22. Yeah me too. The cat seemed good with the Fancy Feast though & it was considerably cheaper for the cat’s staff.

          23. Curious. I’d have guessed the diabetes was caused by eating kibble, but Fancy Feast is one of the cheapest canned foods on the market, making me think it must have been some other canned food the cat was eating before.

            It can also be hard to break a cat of the kibble habit, just as it can be a challenge to break humans of the fast food drive-through habit….

            b&

          24. Freddie, who’s basically been eating kibble alone for 14+ years, is basically saying “Screw the kibble, me likes wet food, and lots of it!!”

            I had been under the impression that (good) kibble is better for them, especially their teeth.

          25. The big problem with kibble is that it’s lacking in the most important macronutrient in a cat’s food: water. Cats don’t have a strong thirst instinct and normally get the majority of their water from their prey. So unless they get plenty of water with their food, chances are slim they’re going to drink enough free water for proper hydration.

            Cats who are particularly thirsty almost always are already suffering from some form of renal disease brought on by chronic dehydration. And they usually need to be taking in even more water than they already are….

            That’s why I prepare Baihu’s food like that. The commercial raw food is pretty moist and would probably be enough to keep him from feeling thirsty…but then I add at least as much water as food, and that’s enough to keep him fully hydrated. And since it’s hot water with all the flavors of whatever’s in his food, he slurps up every last drop.

            b&

          26. but then he is The Best Hydrated Cat in the South West;-)

            Fred has always liked to drink lots of water, especially from his fountain.

          27. I don’t remember what they were feeding him but it was expensive stuff and they were surprised cheap, crappy Fancy Feast solved the problem. The vet says she saw this a lot.

          29. You had to point that out…LOL. I can’t even draw w a keyboard:-(. My students would (politely) groan if I sketched any kind of critter on the board.

          31. ;-)) I usually drew aardvarks, because nobody really knew what they were supposed to look like. “What is the optimal aardvaark pen one can construct with x meters of fencing…”

          36. Pssst copy & paste is your friend. I can’t draw either. You can just keep it pasted somewhere like in Evernote or Notes.

          39. My cats eat a dry food (Bench & Field brand – no ingredients from China) exclusively. When I’ve tried giving them canned food as a special treat, they nibble a little and go back to the kibble. They will accept a bit of tuna, and lick a plate if there’s traces of butter or fat left, but they mainly stick to the dry.

  11. So can anyone identify the language? I don’t think it’s French but I’m not sure…

    1. It’s Turkish. I can’t make out all of it but at about 20 seconds in, the young child says “Bak, kedi, bak bak bak.” which is “Look, kitty, look look look”.

  12. “Build a man a fire and you keep him warm for a night; set a man on fire and you keep him warm for the rest of his life.”

    — Paula Poundstone

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