Sorry! Got carried away with the headline. It wound up sounding like a lot of the hundreds of emails I get every day.
I expect the kitten and the hedgehog will eventually become friends–but not while the kitten’s still unsure whether the hedgehog is real or not. Who can blame him? There are a lot of fake hedgehogs around, these days.
Most people don’t know that the treadmill was invented in the 19th century as a means of punishment, and was used in prisons until a judge ruled it cruel and unusual.
But here are cats finding all sorts of inventive ways to use a treadmill, all of them much more fun than anything a human might do with it.
That is probably why they don’t sentence cats to prison.
Do you talk to your cat? Does he talk back?
I’m convinced cats understand a lot of what you say to them. I think of our cat, Henry, arguing with me back and forth over possession of the pieces in my Strat-O-Matic Baseball game. He objected vigorously to my not letting him have the little plastic baserunners.
And I once said to Buster, while he was perched on a cabinet and looking out the window, “Y’know, your sister’s put on too much weight. Why don’t you chase her up the stairs?” And that’s exactly what he did.
I rest my case.
The only time our Christmas tree fell over, the cats had nothing to do with it. It just fell. And landed on me.
We have a real tree, and it takes me a good two hours to decorate it. I am happy to say none of our cats ever brought down a Christmas tree. Eating pine needles, batting low-hanging ornaments around, rumpling the blanket–that’s about all the mischief we have to cope with.
Yeah, we can laugh at these videos. You sort of have to.
I’ve heard of cats learning to use the toilet; but this is the first time I’ve ever seen one flush it. And he flushed it when the human asked him to! Otherwise he would’ve let it slide.
Now I wonder if cats ever wonder if human beings can learn to use a litter box.
Poor Missy! She got herself stuck in the handle of a plastic bag one night and rocketed all over the place before I could rescue her. But that’s a thing cats do: get stuck.
But what I really want to know is how that one cat got inside the dollhouse and then couldn’t get out. At first glance the whole scenario looks impossible. But that’s another thing that cats are good at.
What’s with these cats? Haven’t they seen rain before? They do look genuinely puzzled.
If it were raining or snowing when he wanted to go out, as soon as he got his feet wet, our cat Henry would shake them off, move back indoors backward, and then blame me for the weather. I got a lot of annoyed meows for that.
We’ve all seen squirrels playing with each other; but the squirrels in this video play with cats. And they don’t get eaten! Not even the suicidal chipmunk whose idea of a good time is to jump into the cat’s face. Even the interactions that look like they could turn out badly–well, the squirrel could run up a tree and get away anytime he pleased. But no–stay and get crazy with the cat.
And you thought the Peaceable Kingdom wouldn’t be fun!
I’ve had lots of turtles, and none of them could be described as playful. My painted turtle kept expecting Henry the cat to feed him. My box turtles annoyed the family dog by eating his food. What was he going to do about it?
Cats play. Turtles don’t. Very hard to have a meeting of the minds. Turtles do respond to affection, but they don’t care to be pounced on. Cats may be surprised at how assertive a tortoise can be.
I admit it’s a confusing headline, but that’s what this video looks like to me. The cockatoo has learned how to meow, and he’s got these three cats hanging on his every word. It looks just like he’s teaching them. And for all we know, maybe he is.