They can also hop on your dad’s chest while he is sleeping so he can wake up thinking he is having a heart attack
I’ve been witness to the great cat distribution system.
Our current cat has moved house with us twice. The first house at lived at, we were on the ground floor of the place and this furball just waltzed in and took over. Much to the dismay of the cat we already had.
The preexisting cat was similar. She would hang out at a bus stop that my SO would frequent to get to work, didn’t take long before she followed my SO home. She was a shit, but she was cute enough to get away with it. Rest in peace Zora.
Anyways, I would submit that the only reason we haven’t had more cats distributed to us is that we lived on the fifth floor of an apartment for a long while. We recently moved into a house so that might change.
Cat meowing is the main reason why I redeveloped my echolalia. Yes, I meow back at cats.
You can have deep conversations with siameses. Those dudes are super smart
I hated cats. Then a cat decided he lived in my house. He changed my life. Now I have another trash cat living with me and I love them both so much.
Same thing happened to me …Luci is the worst, he climbs on my chest and greets me as soon as I’m up …then he hunts me all day.
I also love them so much 😻
Doesn’t work on me, I just shoo them away. Gotta evolve harder if they wanna try manipulating me.
😻mrow?
Shoo, shoo
😾 hissss
For some reason I have the sudden urge to built a carpeted tower…
😻 purr purr
actually what they say is “I live here meow”
Toxoplasmosis gang.
Further proof that if you’re cute enough you can get anything you want.
Step 1:
Step 2:
I have one cat and a doggy door so it can go in and out as it pleases. A stray cat figured out it could use the doggy door.
I have two cats.
Outdoor cats are responsible for the extinction of numerous bird species.
https://enviroliteracy.org/how-many-birds-killed-by-cats/
https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/
Outdoor cats are also at increased risk of contracting avian flu.
I can’t tell if I hate cats or love cats but they are never neutral. In fact there is a wild one in my house right now
I don’t even know why is he in my house or how it happened but at this point I think we tolerate each other pretty good. He gets the hose sometimes, I get his piss hose on the floor sometimes. He gets the snacks, I get the purr and fluffiness. I guess I can live with this chaotic balance.
I guess for someone who likes to control things cats could be a nightmare as they will never be some obedient pets but that may tell more about the owner than the cat.
Kinda sucks that my floor and sofa is ruined tho, it’s like a mini tiger, wildlife in your house. I guess this is the pleasures of completely feral cats. It’s possible that with this experience I could take on some caracal or serval. Of course I am not crazy nor I approve to do this but I have a glimpse of what mindset and work it would take
The Cat is also a menace that cannot stand sight of any other cat and goes straight for the throat. Little fluffy psycho, quite lovely
Might be obvious, but have you ruled out infection? Sometimes cats pee in places they shouldn’t if they have a UTI.
Just went through that…I thought it was megacolon because he kept dragging his ass Then I realized he was trying to pee literally everywhere…and I keep a piss free house. As soon as I figured it out he was at the vet 3 times to get it right…but very much money later he’s on the mend.
It’s scary when your stupid fluffy baby is hurting
will never be some obedient pet
I find it odd that people think that. Mine are all incredibly well-behaved. I mean, I invested time in training them but it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. I think the secret is being consistent and correcting the behavior as it’s happening. They’re smart enough to know when they’re doing something wrong. Oh, they know! Lol
I love cats, but I also love my plants, and despise the odor of a used litter box. Therefore, I cannot have cats. It sucks.
So we got that expensive robot litter box and you can’t smell it unless you’re emptying it. It has made cat care so much easier.
DO NOT feed strangers cats. Water is fine. If you feed it, at best you’re fucking up its diet, at worst you’re basically abducting the cat.
Back when my cat was alive I got occasional reports that he would enter various other houses nearby and meow by the fridge until he was given a cold cut.
Does a cat in me who has a Facebook group and pictures of him sat on everyone’s beds. In the summer he came into my house and ate my cat’s food. Cheeky bugger.
Pet cats should live inside, with plenty of toys and people that care for them, not out killing bird populations and risking getting run over, etc. Outdoor cats have much shorter life spans…
My cat figured out the dog door by watching the dogs. She’s inside 80% of the time but prefers to do her business outside if the weather’s clear and goes out for an hour or so about twice a day besides that.
Of all things, my part basset hound mix is a bird killing machine despite the stubby legs, broken hip and arthritis. I don’t know how she manages to do it, but lots of half eaten bird corpses started showing up in our yard right after we got her, but only in the back yard which she could reach via the dog door. Starting before the cat started using the dog door.
I can see the logic but it does feel like the cat’s already out of the bag on this one. There are so many free-ranging and feral cats that I wonder if it makes any difference at this point.
It does. Travel to a 3rd world country and look at the difference. Dogs and cats everywhere due to no cultural expectation to keep them indoors or neuter them.
Here is an article better clarifying the effect of our cute little killing machines:
Maiq has heard its dangerous to be your friend.
No lies detected.
That article seems very new-world-centric
Europe, Mainland Asia & Africa all have native small cats and so the birds and small mammals have evolved to deal with them, the issue is that in Australia & the Americas they haven’t and so that’s where all the risk of species actually being wiped out is - in the old world the cats largely just replace the larger predators that humans have killed off in the ecosystem
Even in the Americas we have wild cats though. Bobcats are slightly larger but not completely dissimilar. We even used to have ocelots across much of the US, and neotropical migrants will still encounter those for part of the year. So I find the claim that mainland birds are not able to handle cat predation to be a bit questionable. However I am not fully educated on this topic.
I’ve seen a lot of stats about cats and it seems very likely they have important conservation implications in island ecosystems where birds did not evolve with similar predators.
But I’ve not seen evidence of conservation impacts on the mainland where we do and did have similar predators in the past. Just stating that cats eat a lot of birds doesn’t mean they’re a threat to overall populations.
True, but that article says that over 350 of their prey species are at risk species, and that several of those are suspected to already be extinct.
I love cats—I think most people should have them—just be responsible with your furry murderers.
Again it would depend on where those are—threatened species are disproportionately located on those islands I mentioned. Furthermore it doesn’t assign any causation to cat predation.
Maybe cats are a serious conservation threat on continental areas but I’m just saying I haven’t seen evidence of this.
Here’s a study from Oklahoma State University specifically talking about the effects of mainland cats in contrast to island cats:
“Our review shows overwhelming evidence that, beyond causing island extinctions, where there were no native predators, and massive numbers of mainland wildlife deaths, cats can exert multiple types of harmful impacts on mainland wildlife species that are reflected at the population level,”
People buy cats from shelters, then let them be outdoor cats. It does matter.
On the flip side, I’ve homed three outdoor/feral cats in my house. They adjust to being indoor cats fine.
Cats are an invasive species in most places and are super damaging to the local fauna.
Most places is a stretch… They’re invasive in around ⅓ of Earth’s land area and where less than ¼ of people live
I don’t think it’s true that they’re native to 2/3rds of the earth, is it?
⅔ may be overestimating, but yes, they’re native to all of the Middle East and Africa, and most of Europe (outside of Scandinavia) and mainland Asia (outside of deserts, Siberia etc.)
No they are domestic animals
I guess you are going off of the genus Felis which is probably valid since I expect their hunting behavior is similar enough. However the map I saw showed they were absent from most of Russia and China, so there are exceptions.
Where I live there is practically no risk of them getting ran over. But yes they do catch 2-3 birds per yer.
Cats that have had to live on their own for any period of time catch a few more than 2-3 birds per year. Our guy caught enough prey that he was actually getting on the chubby side.
(Where we lived the windows were the air conditioning, so no way to keep him inside, and he was already a stray. So he wasn’t conditioned to it. In fact he’d destroy a screen to get out if he had to.)
Well, we were talking about pet cats, not cats that had to live on their own
We have many strays we are trying to rescue amd until then they get fed and if some rando is letting their cat out to eat whatever the heck then find (and steal my food) on my property that’s the cat’s owner being the asshole. I’m trying to help needy cats and I can’t even oht traps down to get them medical attention because I could end up catching some irresponsible person’s cat.
We have an asshole stray in our neighborhood, but she’s smart enough she’s figured out traps. One of these days we’ll get her.
The cat is abducting itself. They’re not dogs. They’re rarely loyal.
They’re rarely loyal.
I condemn this anti-feline propaganda
As someone who is stauncly pro dog … and weary of cats… I feel like I need to take a side in this debate
Then say something. I have a cat and a dog. They’re both amazing. They are both loving and loyal. They play together so well. My dog needs to chase my cat to get hyped to eat, my cat knows and plays along. My cat lets me know when the dog is on the porch and wants back in. My dog cobs my cat.
Cats and dogs are both fucking amazing. Insisting one is better than the other is foolish. We are blessed to have such amazing creatures in our lives.
i stick to the adage that dogs are extroverts and cats are introverts, dogs just inherently love you but they can also get kind of exhausting, while cats require you to earn their trust and will in turn show their affection by curiously always being in the same room as you…
Nope. My cat loves people and will always come socialize when we have company.
Well I mean i would probably take in an alligator if it came through my window
especially if it rolls onto its back and paddles its legs about adorably to beg for tummy rubs
Sir, this is a Wendy’s, you cannot keep the gator just because it was thrown through the window…
I thought it was Florida’s natural activity.
“You handed it to me with my food??”
Alligator can have the whole house, actually. It’s okay, I’ll move 👍
But then the alligator will be lonely :(
Did they model their meows, or did they have a trait that happened to work in a new environment and then pass it on?
From my understanding, wild cats only meow when little and domesticated cats keep this juvenile trait into adulthood
Yes, but the question is if they model their meows to sound like human infants. We know they changed their behavior to meow when wanting attention from us. But I’d be willing to bet they didn’t model their meows to sound like that. They just happen to sound like that because they’re small animals with high pitch voices.
“They modelled their meows to sound like human infants” implies active intent, but (I’m sure you know) that’s not how evolution actually works. If the theory is correct, their meows would naturally evolve to sound more like babies because those are the cats that we would be more likely to take care of, whereas cats with meows that sounded less like our babies would be less likely to be taken care of, and thus less likely to reproduce.
Or: people who didn’t respond to these meows didn’t keep their cats and rats ate all their grain so people more responsive to the meows reproduced more…
There’s a good chance that it’s just a mammalian trait that predates modern humans or house cats. Pretty much all mammals require some extra protection and care when they are young and vulnerable, so it being common among other mammals isn’t exactly surprising.
To my knowledge that’s a lot of how domestication winds up being.
What I found interesting was a study when they tried to domesticate silver foxes for the fur industry (because basically they didn’t take to being raised in fur farms well). So basically they were selectively bread for not being aggressive to humans.
Which worked, but the drawbacks were effectively… all of their childlike traits remained. IE their ears stayed floppy, and they stopped growing the silver coat that was the whole reason the fur industry wanted them.
Basically I think it could be said that effectively… most domestication traits are more or less, keeping childlike mentality for life in animals.
I don’t know about that human baby thing.
it’s literally just that cats figure out that making noise draws our attention, and even better if they make a cute noise.
Babies are real dude
Source?
How is babby formed?
Storks take the baby to you.
Well, from HS bio, I remember urine is stored in the balls. So, maybe some other way to make babby?
You know, American sexual education is so bad, I’m sure there is a couple out there who thought you make a babby by peeing in the vag.
How girl get pregnant??
Can u get pregante?
am i gregnant?
And they domesticated themselves
IIRC, it’s more that they over time figure out what sounds and actions get their owner’s attention. We respond better, unconsiously or otherwise when they meow at us.
My old cat figured out, before I did, that if she knocks shit off the coffee table I get up and check if her bowl is empty.
Generally wild/feral adult cats are more or less mute outside of anger/mating/territory calls, but domesticated cats keep their kitten vocalizations if we respond to them.
My current cat is very vocal and we responded playfully to his meowing as he grew up.
Edit: Here’s a scientific american blog/article about it. I don’t think it’s something we have confirmation on, just a good hunch.
Both of my cats came from my in-laws farm and it’s been funny with the older of the two as she needed to learn from another cat how being friendly gets you pets and scritches, meanwhile the younger one who basically came inside as soon as she was on hard food hasn’t had that difficulty
Yeah that seems really far fetched. Humans are generally bad at communicating with mostly body posture and scent. We have no tail to wiggle, no easily movable ears and no chance to use cat pheromones.
So naturally the cat has the best chance to get a response by using vocalication/sounds. It is just coincidence that their kittens do also mostly respond to sounds in their first weeks.
The resemblance to baby vocalizations can be rather unsettling with some cats. I suppose it’s somewhat natural since they’re about the same size as a newborn human, but specifically adopting somewhat human-like (and thus baby-like, because that’s the one they can imitate the best) vocalization doesn’t seem that far-fetched.
I mean, I’m not sure cats are out there observing human babies and intentionally imitating them. They have pattern recognition machines in their heads just like we do. “Make noise = human pay attention” is about as complex as this gets. The fact that we’re susceptible to the specific timbre of their voices seems likely to be evolutionary coincidence.
It’s likely not a coincidence but something they learnt a looong time ago living among humans.
Here’s a study that goes into the frequency thing:
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(09)01168-3
Yes and, you missed the last crucial step
“Make noise = human pay attention” “Human feeds and protects me = more kittens that probably know to pay attention” … “Profit”
Right, but adult cats keep making those vocalizations well past that age.
It’s not that far fetched that their neoteny is an adaptation to humans.
Adult cats will meow at kittens.
My dog yawning would make me yawn.
Evolution is stupid.
If meows sounded anything like human baby cries they would give me an instant headache and the desire to get rid of the cat
Just what an AI would say!
I got a cat that definitely lives with a baby at one point
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