We have three items this week, though Caturday Felids is moribud because of lack of interest. If comments are not in the two figures here, I’m giving up, and for real.

First, we have a short report from Canada of two “adventure cats”, Fitz and Vlad.  These are now becoming so common that I think that many cats can, with proper training, can become Adventure Cats.

The adventures of these cats are documented on the Facebook site Fitzcapades, which has 631,000 followers. Here’s a photo of the two cats kayaking taken from the site. And don’t tell me they don’t enjoy it!

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I’ve written many times about how medieval artists were unable to paint or draw cats, although they did pretty good with humans. Frequently they’d put human faces on cats, but they’d always screw them up completely. Cheezburger has a hilarious collection of bizarre medieval cat paintings here, and I’ll post five for your amusement:

Now, for only $40, you can buy 24 figurines of bizarre medieval cats. It would make a perfect present to give an ailurophire, art lover, or connoisseur of the bizzare. If you give it to someone on December 1, they’ll have a weird cat every day until Christmas Eve. Go to the link above or see the Facebook post below (click on it). I’m not sure if the figures are based on real drawings of medieval cats, but who cares?

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And here’s a treat if you like cat-themed entertainment: a whole two hours of a documentary on cats narrated by British actress and presenter Joanna Lumley. There are two parts to this “Catwoman” series, and I’ve watched bits of both. It’s very good and full of information and entertainment. Distributed by ITV studios, it was first made in 2009 but of course is still current, as cats haven’t changed. I’ve put the two parts, each 45 minutes long, in order below:

Part 1 (Lumley goes to Chicago at 2:45 to see our Cat Circus):

Part 2:

Have a look and you might well be drawn in.

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Lagniappe:

The bent tails of Nagasaki’s street cats. Many cats in that Japanese town have bent tails or bobtails, and they’re considered lucky.

And look at the size of this lynx!  (Do not try this at home.)

h/t: Marion, Ginger K.

This is an educational and fun 53-minute episode on cats from NOVA, described by the series this way:

Worshipped as a goddess, condemned as satanic, and spun into a stunning array of breeds, cats have long fascinated humans. But did we ever really domesticate them? And what can science tell us about our most mysterious companions? (Premiered February 19, 2020)

Here are the various sections of the video; the links will take you to a given section. But it’s easier to watch the whole thing! It’s all about domestic cats, neglecting the other 40 living species of felid.

Chapters 00:00
Introduction 03:16
Why Are People Obsessed with Cats? 09:28
Why Aren’t Cats Expressive? 12:46
Can Cats Understand Our Emotions? 14:28
Domestic Cat Relative 18:13
Earliest Encounter Between Human and Cat 21:51
Cat Abilities 25:30
How Do Cats Differ from Their Wild Ancestors 28:30
Importance of Cats in Egypt 34:54
How Domestic Cats Spread Around the World 42:10
The Difference of Feral Cats 46:18
Can Cats Be Trained Like Dogs? 49:04
Breeding of Hybrid Cats 51:12
Conclusion  53 minutes

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For now I’m on a cat-grooming video kick, and here we have a very loud cat named Harley who doesn’t want to be groomed. One alert YouTube commenter noted that the cat meowed 101 times in this 5½-minute video.  Sadly, he has to wear the Cone of Shame. However, the commentary is quite good.

Another commenter said this:

We just casually gloss over how this was without a doubt the single most well behaved cat she ever groomed. No swatting, no hissing, no running away, he stayed put IN THE BATH TUB. He can be as loud as he wants. That cat is any pet groomer’s dream.

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The Algonquin Hotel in New York City was famous for its daily “Round Table,” in which luminaries, wits, critics, and writers would forgather for lunch. The talk was copious and sharp; here’s the Wikipedia description:

The Algonquin Round Table was a group of New York City writers, critics, actors, and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of “The Vicious Circle”, as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929. At these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay, and witticisms that through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country.

Daily association with each other, both at the luncheons and outside of them, inspired members of the Circle to collaborate creatively. The entire group worked together successfully only once, however, to create a revue called No Sirree! which helped launch a Hollywood career for Round Tabler Robert Benchley.

In its ten years of association, the Round Table and a number of its members acquired national reputations, both for their contributions to literature and for their sparkling wit. Although some of their contemporaries, and later in life even some of its members, disparaged the group, its reputation has endured long after its dissolution.

The members (there’s a long list on the site) included Dorothy Parker (the most famous wit), George Kaufman, Harold Ross, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Heywood Broun, and, from time to time, Tallulah Bankhead, Noël Coward, Edna Ferber, and Harpo Marx (yes, he spoke),

That legendary circle is now gone, but the hotel has harbored an uninterrupted series of cats, as described in the article below (click to read).

From Wikipedia:

The Algonquin Hotel has kept a cat in its lobby since the late 1920s. The practice was formerly thought to have originated in the 1930s, but a book by Frank Case indicates that he had cared for a cat named Billy until the feline’s death in the 1920s.  According to administrative assistant Alice de Almeida (the hotel’s “chief cat officer”), the current practice started when the hotel took in a stray male cat that was originally named Rusty. When a guest was sick, Rusty frequently went to that guest’s room and stayed there until they had recovered. Rusty was renamed Hamlet at the suggestion of John Barrymore, who at the time was performing on Broadway in the play Hamlet.  Since then, all the male cats have been named Hamlet, while all the female cats have been named Matilda. It is not clear why female cats are named Matilda, but all the Hamlets are named after the original cat. The hotel has had eight Hamlets and three Matildas in its history. The Algonquin acquired its current cat, Hamlet VIII, in 2017. {JAC: See below.]

The hotel’s lobby contains two feline tree houses. The cat’s collar interacts with an electric geo-fence, which prevents the cat from leaving the lobby, because the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene does not permit animals in dining areas.  The cat has received several gifts from visitors, including four oil paintings. Many people have visited the Algonquin specifically to see the hotel’s cat. One of the male cats was featured in the illustrated book Algonquin Cat;  when that cat died in 1982, his obituary appeared in Variety magazine.  Another cat, a female Ragdoll, was named 2006 cat of the year at the Westchester Cat Show.

Every August, the hotel holds a fundraiser with a feline fashion show featuring the hotel’s cat. The fashion shows started in the 1930s and have raised money for such initiatives as the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals. In addition, the hotel hosts birthday parties for its cat; these events have also served as fundraisers, such as in 2010, when Matilda III’s fifteenth birthday raised money for North Shore Animal League America.^[227] The Wall Street Journal wrote that the cat’s birthday party “is the kind of party where you would find […] $20 Purrtinis for sale, made of Grey Goose vodka, lychee juice, coconut, white creme de cacao and lemon juice and advertisements for Reiki treatments for cats. It is also a party where you would see a cat dressed as a fruit basket…”

Here’s the lineup over the past 40 years

You should stay there when you visit NYC (if you can afford it). If not, at least go visit and see Hamlet VIII

The Algonquin cats have an Instagram post here, and you can read more about the cats (and the Round Table) here (scroll down).  Below is a FB post by Jen (“The Good News Girl”) about the latest Hamlet and his personal assistant (click on the arrow):

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Lagniappe:

Here’s a store in Istanbul with a hat-wearing cat that attracts business (cats are a GREAT way to pull in customers; see below).

I was taken by the several cats frequenting this Istanbul rug shop near the Hagia Sophia.  In fact, over the next three days, I stopped by every day to pet the cats and bargain, and came away with several beautiful rugs. The owner admitted that the cats pulled in customers, and I was one of them!

From FB: cute cats sleeping (click on the arrow):

And the story of a cat who was summoned by mistake to serve on a jury.  Click on the icon to see more.

We’re back with another Caturday post with three—count them, three—items of substance, and two of lagniappe. The first one is from The Independent; the “love hormone: turns out to be oxytocin, which has this complex structure (it’s a neuropeptide, with the amino acid residues labeled):

Click the headline to read how the “love hormone” soothes us when we interact with cats:

An excerpt (indented):

Cats may have a reputation for independence, but emerging research suggests we share a unique connection with them – fuelled by brain chemistry.

The main chemical involved is oxytocin, often called the love hormone. It’s the same neurochemical that surges when a mother cradles her baby or when friends hug, fostering trust and affection. And now studies are showing oxytocin is important for cat-human bonding too.

Oxytocin plays a central role in social bonding, trust and stress regulation in many animals, including humans. One 2005 experiment showed that oxytocin made human volunteers significantly more willing to trust others in financial games.

Oxytocin also has calming effects in humans and animals, as it suppresses the stress hormone cortisol and activates the parasympathetic nervous system (the rest and digest system) to help the body relax.

Scientists have long known that friendly interactions trigger oxytocin release in both dogs and their owners, creating a mutual feedback loop of bonding. Until recently, though, not much was known about its effect in cats.

Cats are more subtle in showing affection. Yet their owners often report the same warm feelings of companionship and stress relief that dog owners do – and studies are increasingly backing these reports up. Researchers in Japan, for example, reported in 2021 that brief petting sessions with their cats boosted oxytocin levels in many owners.

In that study, women interacted with their cats for a few minutes while scientists measured the owners’ hormone levels. The results suggested that friendly contact (stroking the cat, talking in a gentle tone) was linked to elevated oxytocin in the humans’ saliva, compared with a quiet resting period without their cat.

Many people find petting a purring cat is soothing, and research indicates it’s not just because of the soft fur. The act of petting and even the sound of purring can trigger oxytocin release in our brains. One 2002 study found this oxytocin rush from gentle cat contact helps lower cortisol (our stress hormone), which in turn can reduce blood pressure and even pain.

Research is pinpointing specific moments that cause the release of this hormone in our cross-species friendship. Gentle physical contact seems to be a prime trigger for cats.

A February 2025 study found that when owners engaged in relaxed petting, cuddling or cradling of their cats, the owners’ oxytocin tended to rise, and so did the cats’ – if the interaction was not forced on the animal.

The researchers monitored oxytocin in cats during 15 minutes of play and cuddling at home with their owner. Securely attached cats who initiated contact such as lap-sitting or nudging showed an oxytocin surge. The more time they spent close to their humans, the greater the boost.

. . . Are cats just less loving than d*gs?

It’s true that studies generally find stronger oxytocin responses in dog–human interactions. In one widely discussed 2016 experiment, scientists measured oxytocin in pets and owners before and after ten minutes of play. Dogs showed an average 57% spike in oxytocin levels after playtime, whereas cats showed about a 12% increase.

This is of course because d*gs have been bred to be worshipful sycophants, while cats retain a measure of independence. At any rate, words to remember:

So, next time your cat blinks slowly from across the sofa or climbs on to your lap for a purr-filled cuddle, know that something invisible is happening too: oxytocin is rising in both your brains, deepening the trust and soothing the stress of daily life. Cats, in their own way, have tapped into the ancient biology of love.

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Meet Cleopatra, who, in this 7-minute video, gets groomed for the first time. She’s “severely compacted” rather than matted, with tons of shedded undercoat remaining in her fur. There is a ton of fur. She even gets her nails cut and has a bath, but, with her hoodie and cone, she remains relatively calm. As the groomer says, “[Cleopatra] was an absolute pleasure to work with.”

I don’t know if amost groomers are this kind and thorough, and of course she knows she’s on camera, but if I had a fur-clogged moggy I’d take her to this person.

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This article, from MetLife Pet Insurance (click screenshot to read) is full of useful information. Which states are “dog states” versus “cat states”? Which cities have the most of the best pets versus d*gs?

Here’s the method behind the survey, and realize that the same is not all that large. Also, determining the “leaning” of cities and states is done by using Internet searches, which is dubious. But let’s assume for the time being that the results are fairly accurate:

This survey, conducted by Fractl on behalf of MetLife on July 7, 2026, gathered responses from 1,005 U.S. adults to settle America’s dog-versus-cat divide and uncover how pet preference aligns with personality, lifestyle, and relationships. Respondents had an average age of 42; 50% identified as men, 49% as women, 1% as nonbinary, and under 1% declined to specify their gender. Generationally, 35% were baby boomers or Gen X, 47% were millennials, and 18% were Gen Z. Of those surveyed, 84% were pet owners: 39% owned a dog only, 24% owned a cat only, and 21% lived in multi-species households with both a dog and a cat, while 16% had no pets at the time of the survey.

In addition to the survey, Fractl analyzed Google search volume data from June 2025 to May 2026 to determine each state’s and major city’s dominant pet preference. The research reviewed 84 dog- and cat-related search terms, organized into 40 matched dog-versus-cat pairs (such as “puppy adoption” vs. “kitten adoption” and “dog park near me” vs. “cat cafe near me”), across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and 55 major metropolitan areas.

Because dog-related terms out-search cat-related terms nationwide, researchers measured each location’s relative lean, meaning its share of paired dog searches compared with the national average, rather than raw volume, so that a “Dog State” or “Cat State” leans relative to the rest of the country rather than in absolute terms. Researchers weighted all 40 pairs equally and excluded four unpaired terms (“dog leash,” “dog walker,” “cat litter,” and “litter box”) that had no cross-species counterpart, to keep the index balanced.

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The main results:

Mississippi, Wyoming, and South Carolina are America’s most dog-obsessed states, led by Mississippi, where dog-related searches run 120% above cat searches.

• Washington, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts are America’s most cat-obsessed states, anchoring a cat belt across the Pacific Northwest and New England.
• America splits 27 dog-leaning states to 23 cat-leaning states, plus Washington, D.C., a near-even national divide.
• El Paso, TX, is the most dog-obsessed metro in the country, and Philadelphia, PA, is the most cat-obsessed, with big cities leaning far more feline than the states around them.
• Americans call themselves dog people over cat people by nearly 2 to 1 (47% vs. 28%).
• Nearly 1 in 3 U.S. pet owners (31%) would choose their pet over their partner in a serious conflict.
• Over 1 in 2 U.S. adults (57%) say a partner’s pet preference could be a dealbreaker, and 18% say a partner must share their preference, no exceptions.

The last result surprised me the most!  Here’s the geographic split, which leads me to believe, to my satisfaction, that, compared to Republicans, Democrats are more likely to own cats than dogs: Somebody should do the correlation between percentage of Democrats versus percentage of cats (and ditto for Republicans). From the site:

Mississippi is the most dog-obsessed state in the country, where dog-related searches run 120% above cat searches. A dog belt runs through the Deep South and Mountain West, while a cat belt stretches across New England and the Pacific Northwest. Each state’s lean index below shows how far its dog-versus-cat search mix runs above or below the national average, with positive scores leaning dog and negative scores leaning cat.

The East and West coasts have a relatively higher ownership of cats than do the middle-of-America states and the South.

And for cities:

El Paso is the most dog-obsessed metro in the country, with dog-related searches 135% above cat searches. The strongest dog metros cluster across the Sun Belt and South, mirroring the dog belt at the state level.

Philadelphia is the most cat-obsessed metro, and the cat list is dominated by coastal and tech hubs. Cities also polarize more than states. The most cat-obsessed metro leans nearly twice as feline as the most cat-obsessed state, so the divide sharpens in urban America.

And some psychology and behavior. I’m surprised that people post more on their dogs than their cats, but not that cat people tend to be more introvert-ish and judgmental about their partner’s pet preferences.

Make what you will of these data, and post it below.

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Lagnaiappe:

Click below to learn how the police removed a bunch of ice to reach a cat (now named Cadence) trapped behind an ice machine (the news story is also on Chicago’s WGN news site):

More:

I can’t guarantee that this is real video, but I hope so:

Owners couldn’t figure out why the cat wasn’t sleeping in its bed.. then they saw this..🐈🐾😊 pic.twitter.com/D6a0a2ynkI

— Posts Of Cats (@PostsOfCats) January 27, 2025

h/t: Nicole, Erik

Well, I have some cat stuff for you. The first is a doozy: the world’s most polydactylous cat: a Maine Coon with 29—count them—29 toes. That’s 11 more than the normal number of 18, with 5 toes on each front paw (including the dewclaw) and four on each rear foot. Click the screenshot to read the article from  Parade Pets:

An excerpt:

This ridiculously fluffy gray Maine Coon kitten has so many extra toes that his family literally started counting them because they suspected they might have a Guinness World Record holder living in their house. They were right. Erebus officially holds the Guinness World Record for the most toes on a cat, and I don’t even want to imagine how long it takes to trim all those tiny claws.

The adorable video was shared by TikTok user @kendraschultz81 and features Erebus proudly showing off his impressively oversized paws.

According to WFRV Local 5, Erebus was born with 29 toes. His family, Kendra and Hunter of Blue Northern Maine Coons, realized almost immediately that they might have something extraordinary on their hands and carefully counted every single toe. After completing Guinness World Records’ verification process, Erebus officially became the new world record holder for the most toes on a cat.

Polydactyly is a naturally occurring genetic trait that causes cats to be born with extra toes. While it can occur in many breeds, it’s especially common in Maine Coons, where the extra toes are thought to have helped their ancestors walk more easily through snow and rough terrain.

Most polydactyl cats have one or two extra toes on some of their paws, but Erebus takes things to an entirely different level with an astonishing 29 toes.

The condition isn’t usually painful, and many polydactyl cats live completely normal, healthy lives. In fact, many pet parents think the oversized paws make them even more adorable.

. . . aaaand, here’s a video report on Erebus. Look at the size of these feet! At first he had lung problems, and wasn’t expect to survive, but the feisty moggy survived.

Here’s the Tik Tok video that brought Erebus fame:

@kendraschultz81

♬ Seven Nation Army – The White Stripes

Guinness hasn’t yet updated its record, as it still reports, at the link below, two cats who tied with a 28-toe count, but Erebus has one more:

A quote:

An adorable 10-month-old kitten named Toby Henderson (USA) has tied a longstanding Guinness World Records title for the most toes on a cat, after equalling Jake the Polydactyl Cat’s (Canada) 2002 total of 28 claw-some digits.

Toby, who belongs to Delaney Henderson, recently found his forever home in Lansing, Michigan, and was made Officially Amazing on 12 May 2025. He lives alongside his loving parents and sister Connie, another polydactyl cat who has two extra toes on her front paws.

Here are two photos of Toby’s feet, but remember that Erebus beat him by a toe:

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Now here’s a clickbait headline from the Washington Post that will lure cat-lovers (click to read, or see it archived here). A tuxedo kitten was first stolen from a pet store, and then somehow used in a bank robbery:

An excerpt:

That should be “tail”.  I wonder how the kitten was “used”. Did the suspect thrust Magnolia at the teller and say, “Give me all your money. I have a kitten.”? And they didn’t even charge him with catnapping. . .

Here’s a short video showing photos of the lovely Magnolia.

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From “good.good.good.co,” we learn that Nebraskans had an unofficial State Cat named Cameron, who until recently haunted the grounds of the state Capitol Building in Lincoln. Now ailurophiles are capaigning to put a statue of Cameron on the Capitol grounds. Click below to read:

An excerpt:

The Nebraska State Capitol’s unofficial feline mascot could soon become a permanent fixture outside the historic building he brought warmth and love to for a decade.

Until this spring, Cameron the “Capitol Cat” made a home away from home at the Capitol near his downtown Lincoln residence with his owner, Dianna McGinnis. After long legislative days, staffers and lawmakers alike would greet Cameron, even on nights after heated filibusters or those that stretched toward midnight. Many found relief as he awaited their attention.

Cameron retired in May as the unofficial Capitol greeter when McGinnis moved to assisted living. But his pawprint on lawmakers, staff, and community members well beyond Nebraska could soon live on with a statue on the south side of the Capitol off Goodhue Boulevard.

The life-size bronze statue of Cameron would be about 18-20 inches tall and sit atop a pedestal made from Indiana limestone, about 28-32 inches in height. The limestone is proposed to mirror the stone facing and architectural trim of the historic Nebraska State Capitol.

“I mean, let’s be real, it would be so freaking cute and everybody would get their picture by it, and his little head would be petted, and it’d be shiny gold because everybody would rub his little head coming in,” state Sen. Jana Hughes of Seward, who is helping the project, said Friday.

No state or taxpayer funds would go toward the statue.

Hughes, who joined the Legislature in 2023, and former state Sen. Anna Wishart of Lincoln, who served between 2017 and 2025, will pitch the privately funded project to the Nebraska Capitol Environs Commission on Friday. The meeting is for feedback initially, and the supporters would need final approval before the statue could be affixed near the Capitol.

More:

Hughes said she first heard of the statue idea around the time lawmakers adjourned in April from one of her constituents, Scott Shafer, who works for the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs. Using artificial intelligence, she created a rendering of how the statue could look. However, the final design would fall to the storied sculptor supporters hope to hire.

Benjamin Victor of Boise, Idaho, the artist behind the Ponca Chief Standing Bear and Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte statues on Lincoln Mall north of the Nebraska Capitol has agreed to sculpt the bronze Cameron.

. . .As of Tuesday afternoon, the fundraising campaign had raised almost $3,500 toward its $37,500 goal just a few days after launching. Shaw has also agreed to donate profits from his photo book about Cameron to the project through October.

The cost includes Victor’s estimate and ongoing maintenance. Meeting materials indicate minimal upkeep with materials “designed to withstand Nebraska seasonal cycles without degradation.”

While Shaw was not necessarily an animal photographer, he said he always enjoyed photographing Cameron. He has two adopted cats of his own — littermates, which his daughters named Toby, after “The Office” character, and Peanut, for a marking on his nose.

The article was published this week, and, sadly, the project appears to be in limbo, as this headling from Nebraska Public Media appeared yesterday. Click to read:

An excerpt from that:

Plans to memorialize Cameron the Capitol Cat’s years of service in the Nebraska Legislature are in limbo after the Nebraska Capitol Environs Commission expressed doubts about his ability to withstand the test of time.

Blockheads!  Here’s their unconvincing explanation:

Landis said the statues included both in and around the Capitol building are placed there because of the significance of their lives and accomplishments. While many of the real people the statues commemorate and those who knew them have passed beyond living memory, Landis said they deserve to be remembered. The statues are placed on the environs to instruct the public about their lives.

“This is a well-loved cat,” Landis said. “But when the time runs out and those of you who loved this cat have passed by, what is the historical significance of the cat?”

Commission members one after the other voiced their agreement with Landis, saying that the cat cannot be seen as comparable to statues of important historical figures like Ponca tribal chief Standing Bear, who advocated for his tribe’s right to live on their own land and won against the U.S. Government.

Courtney Wittstruck, a public commenter, said Cameron’s significance was more than the love visiting fourth grade classes had for him. While intense debates were going on within the Capitol, Cameron greeted everyone, regardless of party or political view, the same, Wittstruck said.

“He became a small but meaningful symbol of the best of Nebraska: kindness, friendliness and compassion,” Wittstruck said, adding that a plaque should go with the statue to emphasize the symbolism. “It’s a reminder that we are all Nebraskans and that, at the end of the day, we have more in common than we have differences.”

See? Cameron exemplifies Nebraska’s kindness and friendliness. What more do these legislators need than that?  Well, I hope they put the statue up somewhere near the Capitol building if it isn’t approved. In the meantime, here’s a video:

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Lagniappe:

Komatsu rescued! Fitted with a hard hat and put to work.

Click headline to read (from the UPI’s Odd News:

An excerpt:

A kitten rescued from inside an excavator has become the newest member of an Ohio construction crew, complete with her own vest and hard hat.

Chase Guello, operating supervisor with RiverReach Construction, was examining an excavator at a Leavittsburg job site when he found the tiny orange kitten inside the engine bay.

The crew was unable to locate the kitten’s mother or any siblings in the area.

The construction company named the cat Komatsu in honor of the brand of excavator, or Sue for short.

Sue spent two weeks in foster care before being placed with RiverReach’s shop mechanic, Jared, and his family.

“Once she’s of age, she’ll be traveling to and from work with him, and she’ll eventually become a shop cat under his supervision,” Guello told WJW-TV.

Meanwhile, video of Sue’s rescue went viral online, and came to the attention of officials at Komatsu.

The company sent RiverReach a tiny safety vest and hard hat for Sue.

Click on the screenshot below (and put the sound up) to see the Instagram post of Sue’s rescue:

You can see more photos of Sue and her work clothes at the River Reach Construction Instagram page.

Extra lagniappe: two cat tweets:

There is a food vending machine for cats in Turkey, the seagulls meow pretending to be cats pic.twitter.com/F0mhnqY2Pg

— Science girl (@sciencegirl) August 28, 2026

In Turkey, an elderly man who shines shoes for a living is visited each morning by a cat that comes for its daily brushing

— Wait That's Interesting (@waitinteresting.bsky.social) 2026-08-28T00:04:39.217Z

h/t: Norman, Debra, Matthew

We have a couple of items (plus lagniappe) for Caturday, but I fear interest in this feature is waning. If you’d like it to continue, sing out below and, more important, send me cat-related items from time to time. Thanks!

First, a four-minute video from the Number Ten Cat describing the origin of Caturday. (The information is brief, but there are good cat videos and good jazz music.):

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From PetHelpful we hear about a Red British Longhair kitten called Copper, who apparently likes to sleep in a “starfish” position, with all five “arms” extended. First, the backstory for a short video (the post is a bit over the top):

This rare red British longhair kitten named Copper’s nap position makes him look like an unbothered starfish, and one day I aspire to be this level of relaxed. A cozy prince! We love to see it.

In the YouTube Shorts clip shared by Pearl’s Ragdolls, a very floofy Copper is shown lying flat on his back, with every single paw extended outward, just like a tiny and fluffy starfish. I have never seen a more comfortable kitty, to be honest. Eventually, Copper’s sibling Vanilla falls asleep right beside Copper in a moment of pure cuteness overload. My heart can’t take it!

“This is Copper’s favorite way to sleep,” said Pearl in the caption of the sweet and hilarious YouTube Shorts video.

For more context, Copper is a newer member of Pearl’s family of cats, so seeing him sleeping in such a relaxed and vulnerable way shows he already feels so safe in his new home. It really is far too cute for words!

“Copper has obviously adjusted so well and appears to feel so safe and looks so content. I love that for him,” wrote one fan in a comment on the clip.

“He looks so comfortable. Just airing everything out,” exclaimed someone else.

“It’s Copper’s natural camouflage, pretending to be a fuzzy pillow,” joked a third person.

And Copper in his your-heart-can’t-take-it pose:

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Moving on to science, VICE highlights a new Current Biology article investigating how cats identify each other through sniffing the urine left in the environment. It involves long-term fatty acids whose profile is individually specific, and can be identified by sniffing.

First, from VICE, we have a good, informative science report:

If you share a home with a cat, you already know two things: they do whatever they want, and they’re annoyingly good at it. What you probably didn’t know is that every time your cat pees outside the litter box or marks a corner of the yard, they’re leaving behind a chemically encoded message that other cats can read like a name tag. Scientists just figured out how.

A study published August 19 in Current Biology identified the compounds behind this system—a group of chemicals called branched-chain fatty acids, or BFAs, that give each cat a unique scent fingerprint in their urine. The signatures hold up even after the cat is long gone, and for an animal running its entire social life through scent, that’s the point. Cats spray to claim territory, advertise for mates, and flag their presence to rivals. A message that evaporates in an hour is useless. These don’t.

The more interesting question was how. Urine composition changes with diet, health, and age. How does a cat’s chemical ID card stay consistent through all of that? The answer turned out to be hiding in the kidneys—specifically in tiny fat droplets in the renal cortex that researchers have known about for over a century without understanding what they do. The new study found they function as reservoirs, maintaining each cat’s individual BFA profile regardless of what else is going on biologically. Some of the BFAs identified had never been reported in other mammalian excretions or secretions.

To confirm cats were picking up on those signatures, researchers measured the flehmen response — that wide-mouthed, briefly horrified expression that makes cats look like they’re personally offended. The behavior pulls odor compounds into the vomeronasal organ, a scent-processing structure that handles pheromones and other chemical signals. Cats showed the response less when repeatedly exposed to the same urine sample, but dialed it back up when a new cat’s sample appeared. They were reading individual IDs, not just detecting urine generically.

Study co-author Masao Miyazaki, a biomolecular scientist at Iwate University in Japan, told Live Science he didn’t expect an instinctive behavior to be so responsive to familiarity and learning. Cornell neurobiologist Michael Sheehan, who wasn’t involved in the research, compared the BFA system to a human face—the primary signal animals use to tell each other apart, even when subtler cues are available.

Lions and tigers use the same system, with their own kidney droplets and BFA profiles, though the specific compounds differ by species. The research team now wants to understand whether disruptions to the droplet system contribute to chronic kidney disease in cats—which would make this line of inquiry much more medically urgent than they thought.

From Grok, evidence that cats can tell individuals apart from the odor of their pee (I’ve omitted the references):

Behavioral experiments confirmed that cats discriminate individual urine odors (also apparently from the new study):

• In habituation-dishabituation tests, cats spend less time sniffing repeatedly presented urine from the same donor but increase investigation when switched to urine from a different cat. Familiarity effects can last months, indicating long-term olfactory memory of specific scents.
• Cats show the flehmen response (the open-mouthed “stinky face” expression that helps funnel chemicals to the vomeronasal organ) more often toward unfamiliar urine than their own; the response decreases with repeated exposure to the same sample and rises again with a new individual’s urine.
• Critically, when other urinary lipid components were controlled and only the donor-specific BFA fraction was varied, cats still detected the difference and increased sniffing after habituation to the original.

Urine spraying (backing up to a vertical surface, raising the tail, and squirting) is a deliberate scent-marking behavior used by both males and females. It deposits these chemical signals in prominent locations to communicate territory ownership, individual identity, sex, reproductive/hormonal status, and other information, helping cats avoid direct conflict in overlapping ranges. Other volatile organic compounds (including sulfur-containing ones derived from felinine, more prominent in intact males) contribute to the overall pungent “catty” odor and additional messages, while urinary proteins (such as cauxin) can enhance adhesion of sprayed urine to surfaces and thus prolonged odor release.

In short, the BFA profiles provide a durable, metabolically encoded individual signature buffered by the kidneys, which cats read olfactorily to recognize specific conspecifics from urine marks. This complements other scent sources (e.g., anal gland secretions, which also vary individually and support recognition) but specifically addresses how urine marks retain identifiable information despite environmental changes over time.

If you have a cat, you’ll probably have noticed the “flehmen response”, which is the “grimace face” a cat makes when it smells certain substances (especially cat pee). PetMD describes how it works and gives a handy diagram:

The flehmen response is a behavioral response to certain stimuli (usually odors) that allows an animal to better access the information carried through smell. It’s a voluntary response, meaning the animal deliberately exhibits the behavior (as opposed to involuntary responses, such as salivating in response to food or pupils dilating when anxious or stressed).

When a cat is enacting the flehmen response, they will typically hold their mouth open. This allows air to pass through their vomeronasal organ (also called the VNO or Jacobson’s organ).

Here’s a diagram:

Here’s a video of two cats making the flehmen response (aka “stinkface”):

And you can read the Current Biology article by clicking on the screenshot below:

Here’s something new in science papers: a graphical abstract of the results. You can see the structure of the fatty acids (click to enlarge):

This is a good study though the work must have been odiferous! The authors showed not only how individual identification works using a combination of habituation and flehmen-response studies, but also identified the lipids that activated identification by modifying them chemically. Here’s the first paragraph of the discussion:

This study identifies a physiological architecture for durable chemical individuality in felids. Combining behavior, bioassay-guided chemistry, and tissue-level lipid analysis, we show that cats retain donor-specific urinary information across time and that this information resides in stable, behaviorally discriminable BFA compositions supported by a triacylglycerol-rich lipid-droplet reservoir in the renal cortex. Across Felidae, BFA-associated urinary and renal lipid signatures are broadly distributed but diversified in repertoire complexity, renal storage, and apparent urinary release. The central advance is therefore not simply the discovery of unusual urinary lipids but the identification of an organ-level buffering mechanism that stabilizes small-molecule identity cues.

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Lagniappe: Joni and her kitty Bootsy!:

And some lovely minimalist sketches of cats, also via Facebook

h/t: Reese, Ginger K.

Here a woman on Facebook, “CircuitCindy” designs and manufactures a treat-dispensing slot machine for her cat, who catches on quickly. My only question is whether the machine dispenses treats on every pull, regardless of whether the three designs match.  If it does, then the cat will become addicted to gambling.

This is one talented woman, and you can see her website here. Her self ID is this:

Cindy explains in this video that there was a huge demand for these machines (of course), and if you want one you can put your name on a waitlist/information list by clicking on the screenshot below and then clicking on “notify me”.  I’ve signed up, though I don’t have a cat; I will let readers know any updates.

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This article comes from The Washington Post, and reports on a poor kitten stuck in a car’s grille. It was disovered. . . well, I’ll put an excerpt below. Click on screenshot to read:

An excerpt:

On a sweltering day, an unusual call came into Central Iowa Towing and Recovery: A tiny kitten was trapped inside the grille of a car that was in line at a drive-through, and the cat seemed to be suffering.

“I’ve never gotten a call like that in my life,” said Jordan McKnight, 38, an employee at the tow company in Ames.

McKnight and his co-worker Cole Denning rushed to Scooter’s Coffee on July 27 and found people crowded around a car. A woman was in the drive-through line, they said, and after placing her coffee order, said she heard an animal crying from inside her car. She looked around and realized a tiny cat somehow was stuck behind the front grille of her Honda.

“You could hear the cat crying out,” said Kathy Pike, an animal services officer with Ames Animal Shelter, who arrived at the scene after a Scooter’s employee called and reported the situation. “We didn’t know how to get it out. I tried to crawl under and figure out where this little thing got into the small spot.”

A group of people waiting at the drive-through gathered around the car, trying to figure out how to free the cat. The driver of the car, who did not reply to an interview request from The Washington Post, told Pike the cat was not hers, and she did not know how the animal could have gotten into the body of her car.

. . .But they were running out of time to save the cat, who was panting and holding out her bright-red tongue.

“I was almost certain it was not going to make it,” Pike said, noting the 96-degree temperature that day that felt like 118 degrees with the humidity.

Pike was able to get only a few fingers through the grille before deciding she needed help. She called Central Iowa Towing and Recovery, figuring the front of the car would need to be taken apart.

“We rushed over,” Denning said.

Denning and McKnight raised the front of the car off the ground to get a better look underneath.

“We both came to the conclusion that the only possible way to get her out was to disassemble the whole front clip of the car,” McKnight said.

They worked quickly, removing panels around the hood and headlights, until there was enough of an opening for Denning to reach in and scoop the cat out. It took about 15 minutes to free the kitten.

Pike drenched the cat in water to cool her down and brought her directly to the vet.

“I wanted to get her as quickly as possible to the medical experts,” she said.

. . .The kitten, believed to be about 2 months old, is a domestic shorthair. She had a fever and a blister on one paw but was otherwise well after the rescue. She weighs just under two pounds.

Pike named her “Fika,” a Swedish word that describes a coffee break. She thought it was a fitting name.

“We all took a break from our lives to help this animal in need, and it was related to coffee,” she said.

Fika is being cared for at the Ames Animal Shelter and has become a favorite among staff.

Fika is okay, and there was a rush to adopt her. Here’s a news report showing the kitten.

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here

From nicenews.com, we have another area besides Turkey where the residents are cat lovers. This time it’s Dubrovnik, a lovely town in Croatia that I visited in 1972.  Here’s an article and some videos below.

An excerpt:

Coastal Dubrovnik in southeastern Croatia was originally founded over 1,400 years ago, but one demographic that’s been there for centuries had nothing to do with its incorporation. The city is home to a thriving stray cat community, and likely has been since the Middle Ages.

Today, photos of Dubrovnik’s felines are all over social media, and there’s an entire souvenir store dedicated to them in the ancient seaport. Locals and visitors can even take part in the SOS Dubrovnik Cat Safari 2026 this summer, a campaign encouraging people to snap pics of the kitties and share them online. Five winning shots will be selected for a charity postcard collection, with proceeds supporting an animal rescue that helps care for the cats.

But even before they were tourist attractions, the city’s cats played a very important role in its prosperity: pest control. While hard facts about their history are hard to find online, locals refer to the four-legged mainstays as Dubrovnik’s “oldest citizens,” suggesting they were brought there around the 13th century to hunt rats, which were believed to carry the bubonic plague and other diseases.

Indeed, a medieval manuscript from Dubrovnik marked with inky, feline paw prints made headlines over a decade ago. Photographed in 2011 by then-graduate student Emir O. Filipović, the manuscript dates back to the 1400s — capturing a cat quite literally “walk[ing] through history,” as National Geographic put it.

The cats now stick primarily to Dubrovnik’s Old Town, a seafront neighborhood largely encircled by medieval walls that once fortified it against attacks. Visitors list the Church of the Holy Annunciation, a Serbian Orthodox church at the center of the neighborhood, as a prime spot to see them, though they can also be found near restaurant doorways and lounging around the harbor.

, . .“They are very patient and rarely beg; they know that a small fish is usually coming their way as a ‘tax’ for their presence,” reads a post by local company Cava Tours.

Residents care for the kitties, and SOS Dubrovnik Cats, which is based outside of Croatia, assists from afar. The organization collects donations and arranges for medical care and foster homes where injured cats can recuperate.

Here are a few videos about Dubrovnik’s cats from social media. Sound up on all of them

@sightsofsara

come visit the cats of Dubrovnik! #croatia #cats #travel

♬ Love You So – The King Khan & BBQ Show

Click on the screenshot to go to the Instagram page, and put the sound up:

@beautiful.croatiaa

It’s part of Croatian culture /‘fee-yah-kuh’/ 💆🏻‍♀️ Credit @l.zux #nijelako #dubrovnik #summerindubrovnik #croatia #fjaka #uvalalapad #dubrovniklapad #lapadarea #hrvatska #hrvatskadubrovnik #catsofinstagram #catsofdubrovnik #catsdubrovnik #fyp

♬ original sound – beautiful.croatiaa

Finally, lots of lagnaippe today—four items, to be exact. Click on screenshots to go to the originals, but these aren’t videos.

An ancient standoff:

And a ham-guarding moggy:

From Facebook with the caption:

A classic milk bar in Krakow, one of the old canteen-style spots, has a cat named Pierog who patrols the room like a floor manager and sits at the end of the counter watching the pierogi go out. He does not beg. He inspects.

The staff hung a small hand-written Polish sign by the register that reads: “The cat is on duty.” Regulars say he has a route – counter, then the window table, then back – and that he does it in the same order every day. He has never been fed at the counter, on principle, and disapproves of everyone who tries.

Below: from Fat Cat Art with the following caption:

The famous Belle Époque ad poster of a black cat sipping absinthe was created in 1902 by the renowned industrial designers Mourgue Frères (brothers) for the Bourgeois distillery in the French town of Pontarlier. They say there was no absinthe in the glass, but milk, to make the cat pose for the poster. The artwork was so popular that it is used as decoration in many bars and homes till nowadays. The story behind the poster is a hilarious cat art story. The cat’s surroundings are heavily based on a painting by Charles Maine, a local artist of the Pontarlier region. Maine’s painting depicted a table with an absinthe bottle, a decanter of water, glasses, and a folded copy of a Pontarlier newspaper. The painting was very popular and used for Émile Pernot distillery advertising. Evidently, Mourgue Frères, ironically remade the painting, including the cat, to beat the Bourgeois distillery’s competitors! And they succeeded with their art, which became much more popular than the original painting. Cats make everything better!

Interesting that you can still find the cat in advertising, but now on their former competitor’s heirs, Les Fils d’Émile Pernot’s absinthe bottle label

h/t: Ginger K., Loretta

Okay we’ll have a Caturday this week, but we’ll see about forthcoming weeks. If you have a cat-related item for me to consider, by all means send it along.

First, we have an eight-minute video of a real “cat lady”, who has over a thousand moggies. She’s turned her house into a sanctuary/rescue center/adoption center, so that’s not so “crazy.” They’ve saved 28,000 cats.

You can read more about “The Cat House on the Kings” by clicking on the link below:

Here’s a seven-minute video of a day in the life of the Cat House on the Kings:

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As you must know by now, Larry the Cat, the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, turned nineteen, and has been at 10 Downing Street for 15 years, serving under seven Prime Ministers. Still he abides. Here’s a video of Larry “causing mischief,” though not everything it shows is “mischief”.

And here’s a short video of Larry chasing a rather emaciated fox from Downing Street. He may be a poor mouser and bad at catching birds, but he’s good at chasing off d*gs and other canids.

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Now it’s time to learn some cat evolution by reading about Proailurus, the earliest known “true cat” (i.e., an animal placed in the family Felidae). We find its fossils from about 30 million years ago, and you can read about it in this article by Will Newton from Discover Wildlife. It may have been the common ancestor of all cats today, but I consider that unlikely; it was probably related to the ancestor of all living felids, but finding THE “missing cat link” would be nearly impossible. But it does show us what a very early felid was like.

Click the screenshot to read.

A few excerpts (indented):

What was Proailurus?

Proailurus is an extinct cat that lived in Europe and Asia from the Late Oligocene (30 million years ago) to the Early Miocene (25 million years ago). It’s widely considered to be the first ‘true’ cat and the ancestor of the entire cat family, which includes everything from extinct sabre toothed cats to living lions, tigers, and leopards.

Proailurus is known from three different species, two of which – P.lemanensis and P.bourbonnensis – were roughly the size as a house cat, weighing in at 7-10kg. The third species, P.major, is thought to have been more than twice as large, but it’s only known from a single specimen and, as a result, is shrouded in mystery.

What did Proailurus look like?

Looking somewhat like a miniature cougar, Proailurus had a lengthy, low-slung back, relatively short limbs and a long, flexible tail. These features suggest it lived an arboreal lifestyle, hunting, resting, and perhaps even playing high up in the tree canopy. It may have also hunted on the ground, just like the modern Geoffroy’s cat (Leopardus geoffroyi).

This bodyplan and arboreal behaviour bears remarkable similarity to the fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox) – a cat-like predator found only on Madagascar.

. . . Where did Proailurus live?

The first remains of Proailurus were described in 1879 by French naturalist Henri Filhol who found a handful of small, cat-like fossils at a site in Saint-Gérand-le-Puy, Central France.

Since this discovery in the late 19th century, fossils of Proailurus have been unearthed in neighbouring Spain and Germany and, surprisingly, Mongolia. This suggests Proailurus had a very wide range and occupied a niche that had very few, if any major competitors.

Several fossils believed to belong to Proailurus, or at least a Proailurus-like animal, have been found in North America, including the famous Ginn Quarry cat. This specimen is represented by a complete skull, which has dentition very similar to the type species (P.lemanensis) originally described by Filhol.

The jury’s still out on whether the Ginn Quarry cat was truly a Proailurus, but its discovery suggests that cats – or at least cat-like animals – had already dispersed from Eurasia into North America, establishing a lineage that, millions of years later, would give rise to some of the largest cats that ever lived.

What did Proailurus originate from?

Proailurus is widely considered the first ‘true’ cat and the basal member of a family known as Felidae. This furry family is nestled within a larger mammalian order known as Carnivora, which includes everything from cats and dogs, to bears,mustelids, hyenas, and seals.

The origins of Carnivora can be traced back to the Early Eocene, roughly 52 million years ago and just 12 million years after the extinction event that wiped the non-avian dinosaurs from the face of the Earth.

The earliest carnivorans would have resembled small weasels or genets and, like many living carnivorans, would have likely been nocturnal. From these small, stealthy predators, two large sub-groups emerged: the feliforms and the caniforms.

While the caniforms diversified into an astonishing array of shapes and lifestyles (just look at how different skunks are from walruses, for example), the feliforms largely retained a sleek, agile body plan and exhibited far less diversity in terms of their morphology, diet, and behaviour.

And it’s from Feliformia that Proailurus, and its lineage Felidae, eventually emerged 30 million years ago.

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Lagniappe: Several items today, starting with this Facebook entry about a cat image being used to sell gin (see the text below the photo):

I’ve often shown medieval images of cats, asserting that for some reason artists of that era simply couldn’t draw even a decent moggy. Here’s a FB video showing some pathetic attempts to paint or draw cats. You can see more here and even more in the panoply of hilarious images at the Google Search page for “medieval cat paintings.”

This statue of Alice in Wonderland was photographed by Jean Greenberg in Central Park.  It shows two cats: Alice’s cat “Dinah” on her leg and the Cheshire Cat over her shoulder (see below).

h/t: Jean G., Ginger K.