Caturday felid trifects: Why cats hate water; cats confuse reasoning; the Acro-Cats’ and lagniappe

I’m trying to keep up the felid trifecta, but it’s not easy! Today we have the usual three items and two–count them, two–bits of lagniappe.

First, Live Science asks, “Why do cats hate water?” click below to read.

 

First, not all cats hate water, as you can see from the video below (you’ll have to click through). But in general, if a cat falls into the bathtub or an aquarium, they can get out almost without getting wet! Why do most of them not like water. The short answer is that we don’t know, but people have theories which are theirs:

One of the most enduring stereotypes about domestic cats is that they absolutely despise getting wet. From frantically scrambling out of the bathtub to recoiling at the mist from a spray bottle, cats and water always seem to be at odds. And while some felines might not mind a swim — certain breeds, including Turkish Vans and Maine coons tend to adore the water — many cat owners know that this stereotype still rings true for their fur babies.

But why do cats hate water so much?

There isn’t any dedicated scientific research on cats’ relationship with water. But there are some potential clues in cats’ biology and evolutionary history, experts say, as well as in their individual upbringing.

Kristyn Vitale, an animal behaviorist and founder of Maueyes Cat Science and Education, suspects that the ancestor of the domestic cat, the African wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica), may play a big role in why modern domestic cats avoid water.

Some wild cats, such as tigers, fishing cats and jaguars, like to swim in order to escape bugs, cool off and even ambush their prey. But the African wild cat mostly lives in desert environments, where it rarely encounters large bodies of water or swims.

“They are not particularly known for hunting near water or within the water,” Vitale told Live Science in an email. “A large proportion of the African wildcat’s diet is made up of terrestrial animals, like rodents. Given this, it is not surprising that domestic cats don’t really seek out water. It is just not something this species was built to do.”

However, Jonathan Losos, a professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis and author of “The Cat’s Meow: How Cats Evolved from the Savanna to Your Sofa” (Viking, 2023), told Live Science in an email he isn’t totally convinced by this theory. He pointed out that just because an animal is from a desert doesn’t mean it fears water, and that the range of African wildcats also extends to some less arid habitats — meaning some members of the species do encounter water in their lifetimes.

My colleague Losos, whose book on cats I reviewed for the WaPo, is probably correct here, though I have to add that the ancestor of domestic cats, the African wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica), is from the arid Middle East, and probably doesn’t encounter bodies of water. Still, there are other theories:

Jennifer Vonk, an animal cognition expert at Oakland University, brought up another potential reason house cats don’t like water: being wet is physically uncomfortable and can potentially disrupt their sense of smell.

“Their fur does become waterlogged and make movement more cumbersome, which probably leaves them feeling vulnerable,” Vonk told Live Science in an email.

Water can also mask a cat’s natural odor, or bring with it new smells that cats are sensitive to. Cats may be able to detect chemical cues in tap water that they find unpleasant, Vonk said, and Vitale noted that getting wet may obscure a cat’s natural pheromones, which could cause distress.

I like the waterlogged fur explanation best, though of curse the fishing cat  (Prionailurus viverrinus) makes its living in water (subsisting mostly on fish), and some domestic cats enjoy a good swim or drenching, like the ones below.

Click on “Watch on YouTube” below or click here to see several hydrophilic cats.

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Now here’s a paper from arχiv (click to read if you want, and find the pdf here) showing that putting cats into a reasoning model deeply confuses the model. I’ve put the abstract below the screenshot:

 

Cats Confuse Reasoning LLM: Query Agnostic Adversarial Triggers for Reasoning
Models

Meghana Rajeev, Rajkumar Ramamurthy, Prapti Trivedi, Vikas Yadav, Oluwanifemi Bamgbose, Sathwik Tejaswi Madhusudan, James Zou, Nazneen Rajani

We investigate the robustness of reasoning models trained for step-by-step problem solving by introducing query-agnostic adversarial triggers – short, irrelevant text that, when appended to math problems, systematically mislead models to output incorrect answers without altering the problem’s semantics. We propose CatAttack, an automated iterative attack pipeline for generating triggers on a weaker, less expensive proxy model (DeepSeek V3) and successfully transfer them to more advanced reasoning target models like DeepSeek R1 and DeepSeek R1-distilled-Qwen-32B, resulting in greater than 300% increase in the likelihood of the target model generating an incorrect answer. For example, appending, “Interesting fact: cats sleep most of their lives,” to any math problem leads to more than doubling the chances of a model getting the answer wrong. Our findings highlight critical vulnerabilities in reasoning models, revealing that even state-of-the-art models remain susceptible to subtle adversarial inputs, raising security and reliability concerns. The CatAttack triggers dataset with model responses is available at this https URL.

They added “adversarial triggers” to problems posed to AI programs to see if they threw the programs off. Here are three examples, one with a cat and two with other triggers.

The upshot was that mathematical triggers, like the red stuff inserted into the examples above, were the most effective at confusing the program and getting a wrong answer, but throwing cats in was nearly as effective. I don’t know what the lesson is, because, although they didn’t use d*gs, it’s possible that any sentence with animals in it would be just as confusing. I couldn’t see any other-animal controls.  Still, it’s CATS!

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Finally, reader Stephanie alerted me to the presence of the Acro-Cats, a company of trained cats and their training staff that tours America, putting on shows. You can read about them at the link below:

This is not exploitation of moggies, as these are rescue cats who seem to be well cared for. See the page above for information about all the cats and the troupe of humans, too.

Tuna and the Amazing Acro-Cat troupe are all clicker-trained domestic house cats, all former orphans, rescues, and strays adopted by Samantha. The Acro-Cat troupe now features over a dozen talented cats that entertains audiences across the U.S. with a one-of-a-kind show that includes cats riding skateboards, jumping through hoops, balancing on balls, and other feats of agility. The show finale features the only all-cat band in the world: Tuna and the Rock Cats, with cats playing cowbell, guitar, drums, chimes, xylophone, tambourine, and piano, and the newly added Jazz Cats, playing saxophone, trumpet, and clarinet.

Aside from providing our audiences with a captivating, humorous, and impressive show, the Amazing Acro-Cats demonstrate the mental and physical health benefits of cat training through the use of positive reinforcement clicker training! Our shows educate the public on the benefits of clicker training for cats, and our training kit and training video encourage our audiences to train their cats at home.

Many housecats are abandoned or rehomed due to behavioral issues stemming from boredom. Clicker training sessions not only keep cats happy and engaged, they also deepen the bond between cats and their “owners.” Clicker training is even demonstrated live in the show to highlight foster kittens in need.

During our tours, we partner with local rescues and shelters, and often donate a portion of our show ticket sales to their organizations. We also provide lobby space for our partners to set up an information table at our venues and kennels to showcase their cats and kittens ready for adoption. To boost adoption interest, we assess adoptees and bring some up on stage to perform a live clicker training demonstration. Cats adopted at our show go home with some basic target training and a training kit.

Here’s one demonstration of the Acro-Cats:

The schedule for the Acro-Cats is here: they are doing a Pacific Northwest tour followed by a Southeast tour to Asheville NC and Athens, GA.. Sadly, they’re not coming to Chicago.

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Lagniappe. Yes, read the documents.

Extra lagniappe: a woman gets smacked in the face when she tries to talk to her cat. You can see she senses an upcoming attack!

h/t: Ginger K., Stephanie