The Cat Megathread

[Viking]

[Ed Anger]

Kids found a yellow tiger striped cat in the yard today. A totally fucked up one. Took it to a animal doc and they mercifully put it to sleep.

Sadly, they couldn't put me to sleep after watching part of that godawful Browns-Ravens game. The suck from which is what I think hurt that cat.

I also named it Mewchim Peiper.

[CountDeMoney]

Sadly, they couldn't put me to sleep after watching part of that godawful Browns-Ravens game. The suck from which is what I think hurt that cat.

No shit.  I waited all day to come home to watch that on TiVo?  Thank Christ I could at least FF through the commercials, but it still felt like forever.

[CountDeMoney]

I also named it Mewchim Peiper.

The next cat I get to name at the shelter is going to be Claus von Clawswitz.

[Viking]

I enjoyed this one

[Darth Wagtaros]

The Tawny Tabby, Gusto, got out two weeks ago and hasn't been back.  He has a chip, and we tried to get the word out.  Aside from a midnight sighting by some lady who claims she saw him crossing the interstate a week and a half ago, there's been no sign of him.  Wife is devastated.

[CountDeMoney]

That completely sucks, DW.

If you haven't already, let every shelter and veterinarian office in the area know he's out there with an emailed flyer with a color photo, and that he's chipped.  I'd do it in a 90 mile radius--not that he'd walk that far, but you don't know who'd find him and transport him.  We saw chipped lost cats turned in to the shelter that belonged 3 counties away, all because somebody found them on the way home from work.

If it's any consolation--

Animals shelter officials housing lost pets that had been implanted with a microchip were able to find the owners in almost three out of four cases in a recently published national study.

According to the research, the return-to-owner rate for cats was 20 times higher and for dogs 2 ½ times higher for microchipped pets than were the rates of return for all stray cats and dogs that had entered the shelters.

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/shelterchip.htm

Hang in there.  Chipping him was probably the best thing you ever did for him after giving him a home.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I hope so.  We've let the local shelters know, and the chip place put out an alert. We were out on the side of the road for an hour and a half one night, calling for him (he comes when called) and trying to lure him with tuna.  While something ate the tuna, it could have been a coyote.,

[sbr]

I don't think I have seen this here before.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Gusto remains missing. Lost hope.

[MadBurgerMaker]

  Sorry to hear that

[sbr]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKffm2uI4dk

[Tonitrus]

Study:  Cats think you are just a big, stupid cat.



http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57617101-71/scientist-cats-think-you-are-just-a-big-stupid-cat/

Anthrozoologist John Bradshaw insists that cats really aren't terribly domesticated and think that humans are the same species as them, but oddly "non-hostile."

by Chris Matyszczyk  January 12, 2014 4:20 PM PST

It had quite slipped my notice, but I'm actually a cat.
It's true that I struggle with the running-up-and-down-drainpipes thing. I'm also not very adept at catching mice, without considerable chemical help.
On the other hand, I'm good at eating cheese and I can drink milk very quietly. Perhaps that's why my friend Ed's cat Bob thinks I'm also a cat.
Bob hasn't told me himself, but a British anthrozoologist named John Bradshaw has. In a book called Cat Sense, which the New York Times kindly reviewed last week, Bradshaw insists that despite being happy lying over your warm laptop keyboard and starring in any number of YouTube videos, cats are essentially still wild.
He's been studying cats for 30 years and he insists that because they were never bred to play some specific role in the domestic life of humans, they didn't go through some radical evolutionary change.
Yes, many have been domesticated in their way, but equally, many go out and breed with wild cats out there in the trees and bushes. (Bradshaw estimates that 85 percent of kitten births have a wild element.) Many get neutered, so the wild ones are all the lady cats have on offer.
Bradshaw is worried about the cat population. He writes that "cats now face possibly more hostility than at any time during the last two centuries." He sees them as predators who have had their day. He also doesn't appreciate the damage he sees done to them by pedigree breeders.
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Here's the important part, though: Cats think you're just a a slightly big, dumb non-hostile cat. Quite specifically, he says that they treat humans as if they were their Mama Cat.
All that rubbing up against you with their tails up is apparently no more than a hopeful check that you really are just another big, fat, slovenly cat who doesn't intend to eat them with their Welsh Rarebit.
No, they have absolutely no idea about nuclear war and apparently no clear sense that we might be some other species, despite not quite having the strokably hairy torsos they enjoy.
We also don't have their technical ability to turn our bodies into parachutes when falling from a tall building -- something Bradshaw explains cats are rather good at.
Given that he believes cats are semi-feral and that they think we are cats too, we must surely consider that cats aren't all that stupid -- because they must realize that we are, in fact, quite that stupid.
Perhaps they really do observe that we behave in ways not dissimilar to their own. They watch us wander around, hunt purposelessly and bring home a ton of KFC.
"Oh, I see he caught some of those funny orange mice again today," Bob must think.

[Malthus]

I enjoyed this one

[The Brain]

What does crazy cat Stephen Hawking know anyway?