Today we again have three items plus lagniappe, and I will keep on with Caturday posts for at least a month.
First, we have a four-minute video of Marvin the Cat getting a “rave bath”, whatever that is. The YouTube notes give a link and a caption:
So I asked Grok what a “rave bath for a cat” is. The AI answer:
A “rave bath” is a fun, creative bath-time setup for a cat (specifically one that actually enjoys water—rare for most cats!) where the owner turns the bathtub into a glowing “party” atmosphere.
It comes from a popular 2024 viral video by The Dodo featuring a cat named Marvin, who is obsessed with baths. His owner came up with the idea to make bath time even more exciting:
- They turn down the lights in the bathroom to make it dark.
- They add glow sticks (the kind you crack and shake) floating in the water for Marvin to swat, chase, and play with.
- Sometimes they include a light layer of pet-safe bubble bath or bath bombs for extra splashing fun.
The result looks like a mini rave or underwater wonderland with colorful glowing lights reflecting in the tub. Marvin goes wild splashing around and clearly loves it.
The term “rave bath” stuck because of how the owner describes it in the video: “We came up with the cutest thing ever. It’s a rave bath… It’s like a Wonderland.” The video has millions of views across YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook, and people now sometimes use the phrase for any glow-stick-enhanced bath for water-loving pets.It’s basically the opposite of a normal stressful cat bath—pure pampering and play for cats like Marvin who beg for water time instead of running away from it. If your cat hates baths, this probably won’t convert them, but it’s adorable to watch! You can find the original video by searching “Woman Throws A ‘Rave Bath’ For Her Cat Who Loves Bath Time | The Dodo.” [JAC: note the disco music during the rave bath.]
This is a woman who loves her cats!
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You should all know by now that Turkey is probably the most cat-loving country in the world. I’ve seen it for myself on several visits: one of the notable aspects is the groups of cats that congregate in outdoor restaurants, with the customers occasionally feeding them. Here’s a photo I took in March, 2008 in Istanbul:
From the Facebook site Fact Fuel: we learn that some Turks erect minature ladders to keep cats dry (and note the cat houses):
Winter in parts of Turkey can blanket cities in heavy snow, leaving stray cats searching for warmth along icy streets. In response, some apartment residents have installed small, cat-sized ladders leading from the ground up to their balconies. These narrow wooden or metal pathways are carefully secured against building walls, giving outdoor cats a safe route upward instead of forcing them to remain exposed to freezing temperatures below.
Once on the balcony, many residents place insulated boxes, blankets, or small shelters where the cats can curl up and rest. The ladders act as bridges between street life and temporary refuge, especially during storms. For animals accustomed to navigating rooftops and alleyways, the climb becomes a familiar path to safety.
The gesture reflects a cultural affection for street cats that runs deep in many Turkish communities. Rather than ignoring their presence, neighbors adapt their living spaces to include them. In the quiet snowfall of winter nights, these modest ladders stand as vertical lifelines — proving that compassion can be built step by step, right alongside everyday homes.
The ladders:
And if you click on the screenshot below you’ll go to an Instagram video:
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And we return to the perennial problem described in this NYT column, which refers to a paper in the Anatomical Record by a team of Japanese authors (second secreenshot). You can access both sites by clicking on the titles (the NYT goes to an archived link). The key is the way a cat’s spine is configured.
From the NYT article:
In a paper, published last month in the journal The Anatomical Record, researchers offered a novel take on falling felines. Their evidence suggests new insights into the so-called falling cat problem, particularly that cats have a very flexible segment of their spines that allows them to correct their orientation midair.
Greg Gbur, a physicist and cat-falling expert at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who was not involved with the paper, said the study was the first he knew of that explored “what the structure of the cat’s spine tells us about how a cat turns over while falling.” He added that the research uncovered many remarkable details about how cats maneuver while falling.
People have been curious about falling cats perhaps as long as the animals have been living with humans, but the method to their acrobatic abilities remains enigmatic. Part of the difficulty is that the anatomy of the cat has not been studied in detail, explains Yasuo Higurashi, a physiologist at Yamaguchi University in Japan and lead author of the study.
“Physicists have tried to model the behavior in relatively simple equations,” said Ruslan Belyaev, a zoologist at the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution in Moscow who was not involved in the study. But, he added, “the real cat” is anything but simple.
Modern research has split the falling cat problem into two competing models.
The first, “legs in, legs out,” suggests that cats correct their falling trajectory by first extending their hind limbs before retracting them, using a sequential twist of their upper and then lower trunk to gain the proper posture while in free fall.
The second model, “tuck and turn,” suggests that cats turn their upper and lower bodies in simultaneous juxtaposed movements.
In the new study, Dr. Higurashi and his colleagues scrutinized different segments of cat spines using donated cadavers. They also conducted dropping experiments on a pair of live cats, from about three feet up.
But wait! There’s more:
The researchers found that the feline spine was extremely flexible in the upper thoracic vertebrae, but stiffer and heavier in the lower lumbar vertebrae. The discovery matches video evidence showing the cats first turn their front legs, and then their lower legs. The results suggest the cat quickly spins its flexible upper torso to face the ground, allowing it to see so that it can correctly twist the rest of its body to match.
They measured the spinal flexion in cat cadavers whose spines had been removed, and they twisted the removed spines until they “failed”. Here’s a figure from the paper:
“The thoracic spine of the cat can rotate like our neck,” Dr. Higurashi said.
Experiments on the spine show the upper vertebrae can twist an astounding 360 degrees, he says, which helps cats make these correcting movements with ease. The results are consistent with the “legs in, legs out” model, but definitively determining which model is correct will take more work, Dr. Higurashi says.
The results also yielded another discovery: Cats, like many animals, appear to have a right-side bias. One of the dropped cats corrected itself by turning to the right eight out of eight times, while the other turned right six out of eight times.
Here’s a figure from the paper showing the cats being dropped (onto soft pillows, mind you). Note that in (b) the anterior part of the cat rotates faster than the rear part, This cat looks scared, with its tongue sticking out. The caption tells you what’s going on.
If you want to see the paper, click below:
Here’s an enlightening video of how cats spin their bodies (front first) to land on their feet. It’s clearly instinctive, i.e., reflecting a behavioral-genetic program molded by natural selection:
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Lagniappe: Larry the 10 Downing Street cat has put out a video about what’s going on in his block. Most important, the Brits have decided to replace historical figures on their banknotes (they once included Darwin), with wildlife. Larry makes a strong case that he’s both wildlife and a historic figure!
Extra lagniappe: A CBS news report on the rescue of Biscuit, a stranded moggy:
And a third lagniappe item. This photo and caption arrived just half an hour ago from Robert Lang. His caption:
Yesterday I and some friends did a hike to a little-visited waterfall in the San Gabriels. At the trailhead, which is shared with some other popular trails, we met this person who was bringing his moggie along for their hike:’
h/t: Carl, Robert