Sneaky (cat!)

ChipMcD said:
Chris,

Congratulations on joining cat world. From this thread, it's obvious that RFF has lots of cat fanciers. My wife and I have 6 now, after losing one last year. I still haven't figured out how animals with brains the size of Brazil nuts can run our lives.

Chip
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6! I was thinking today about another cat ( we have 2 ) but the black cat in the pic above won't allow it. "She" rules the upstairs of our house and goes downstairs and eat the other cat's food. I wouldn't mind another cat but I fear it should be banished to the downstairs like the other one.
 
A couple nights ago, my son and I had spaghetti for dinner. My son didn't eat all of his, and left some on the plate on the dining room table when we left to buy groceries after we ate.

When we got home from the store, Sneaky slithered in with us without our seeing him. We were in the kitchen putting away the food we bought when I looked in the dining room and saw him in there EATING THE SPAGHETTI!

I grabbed my video camera, which was laying on one of the kitchen counters and shot this short clip of him gulping down huge mouthfuls of pasta. Be sure you have the sound on when you watch it!

https://youtu.be/SdgkcvyP1iA


He wasn't starving; I gave him a bowl of cat food right before we left to go shopping about 45 minutes before he came in and ate the leftover spaghetti!
 
We adopted a cat from the humane society a bunch of years ago. She was about 6 months old at the time and had been picked up as a stray, literally in an alley.


It was quite a while (years) before she would walk away from food of any kind. It's like the time of not having enough of it affected her for a very long time.


She's almost 18 now, and has finally learned to walk away from a not-empty food bowl.
 
mike rosenlof said:
We adopted a cat from the humane society a bunch of years ago. She was about 6 months old at the time and had been picked up as a stray, literally in an alley.

It was quite a while (years) before she would walk away from food of any kind. It's like the time of not having enough of it affected her for a very long time.

She's almost 18 now, and has finally learned to walk away from a not-empty food bowl.
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Sneaky may be like that. I've known cats who had been starved who would eat until they puked, then would eat some more. Being neglected like that damaged them psychologically.
 
We found a kitten wandering the streets of Detroit many years ago. He was right on the edge of being feral. We cleaned him up, took him to the Vet, and eventually gave him to my parents who loved cats. He eventually warmed up to humans, but he kept one feral-trait he learned on the streets, which was to bury his uneaten food. Of course being that he was indoors, there was no dirt to bury his food with, but he’d spend a few minutes pawing at the floor attempting to cover whatever food he didn’t finish eating. He did that until the day he died.

Jim B.
 
Mackinaw said:
We found a kitten wandering the streets of Detroit many years ago. He was right on the edge of being feral. We cleaned him up, took him to the Vet, and eventually gave him to my parents who loved cats. He eventually warmed up to humans, but he kept one feral-trait he learned on the streets, which was to bury his uneaten food. Of course being that he was indoors, there was no dirt to bury his food with, but he’d spend a few minutes pawing at the floor attempting to cover whatever food he didn’t finish eating. He did that until the day he died.

Jim B.
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That's funny. My big orange cat who died years ago used to make those burying motions over food, but it wasn't to save leftovers. It was his way of REJECTING food.


If you put food he did not like in his bowl, he would 'bury' it while loudly complaining, and he would NOT return and eat it later. Good food was left unburied if he did not eat it all.


A funny story about Simba. He lived at my parents house because he was born there when I was in college. When he was about 10 (he lived to 16), they got a gigantic Great Pyrenees dog. Simba HATED that dog, even though the dog was always friendly to him. He bullied her relentlessly, and was always looking for ways to be a jerk.


In 2007, my parents decided to have steaks for Thanksgiving instead of the traditional turkey. Simba HATED beef, and refused to ever eat it. He loved turkey, though. This was only a few weeks after I moved back to Indiana after living in New Mexico for a couple of years.


The whole time we ate, Simba loudly demanded food, which I didn't give because I knew he would reject it. I planned to give it to the dog, who was out in the yard while we ate. When everyone finished, I gathered up a BIG plate of leftover steak for the dog. Simba followed me to the dog's food bowl, loudly demanding the meat.


I thought that maybe he had changed his mind about beef during my time in New Mexico, so I put some in his bowl. Nope, he loudly rejected it, 'buried' it, and walked away loudly complaining the whole time.


So, I took the meat and put all of it in the dog's bowl. I went to the kitchen to put the plate in the sink, and was going to go out and get the dog after that so she could eat. I looked back in the room where the dog's food bowl was located and saw that cat at the dog bowl gulping down that meat as fast as he could swallow it! He may not have wanted it, but damn it there was no way he was going to let that dog enjoy it!


I got the dog, and by the time I finally got her back in the house, Simba had eaten every scrap of meat. The dog saw him sitting by the bowl, licking his lips with a smug look on his face. She looked in the empty bowl, then looked up at me with the SADDEST face I have ever seen on a dog. She looked like she was going to start crying. I've never seen the cat looking so pleased with himself. Mean little *******.
 
More Sneaky pics!





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After breakfast yesterday morning, Sneaky was licking/washing his back legs when he suddenly stopped to stare at a bird nearby. A few minutes later, he jumped up in the air and tried to catch a hummingbird!
 
wjlapier said:
6! I was thinking today about another cat ( we have 2 ) but the black cat in the pic above won't allow it. "She" rules the upstairs of our house and goes downstairs and eat the other cat's food. I wouldn't mind another cat but I fear it should be banished to the downstairs like the other one.
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At one point we had 7 cats. I told my wife no more, or else we would be obligated to stop clipping our fingernails and bathing, because we would, at 7 cats, be bats**t crazy.
 
ChipMcD said:
At one point we had 7 cats. I told my wife no more, or else we would be obligated to stop clipping our fingernails and bathing, because we would, at 7 cats, be bats**t crazy.
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When I was a kid, my grandparents had more than 20 cats. They lived out in the country and the cats lived on his land, keeping the mice and snakes at bay.
 
Chris, I'm becoming very attached to Sneaky!


I'm really enjoying the running story and the flow of Sneaky-shots.


- Murray
 
Chris glad to see that Sneaky is looking fit, well, fat and happy. And glad to get these updates on him. I think you are going to have to start a Vlog and post these :)
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
I started a new YouTube channel! ChrisAndSneaky
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Cool. I will watch with interest.

My little cat's latest "thing" is interesting and reflects both her affectionate nature, her love of comfort and when it comes to me her determination to treat me as her personal attendant, if not slave. Since all cats do the last thing (if they give you a thought at all) I can forgive this foible, especially when it is counter balanced by her affection and playfulness.

It is mid winter in Australia and so uncomfortably cold for a little pussy cat. I had also been spending a bit of extra time in bed due to a spinal injury and a consequential surgery. (All good now - at least getting there). As a further consequence I have found that laying flat on my back with my knees elevated into a "tent" when covered by blankets is a suitably comfortable position for me though a little unnatural as I mostly sleep on my side which is my preferred posture for sleeping when I can get away with it.

But my cat has decided that I should sleep on my back with my knees raised. Not I assume because it is good for me but rather because she finds it warm and comfortable but does not have to bear the weight of the blankets. Thus MY sleeping position is an issue of sudden importance to HER. Previously she had been happy to climb under the blankets as I lay on my side and stretch her body out with her entire length snuggled against mine. Cute, but now apparently second preference.

So while I lay in bed on my back reading my cat will climb over me to place herself next to my right shoulder, and begin staring intently at my shoulder while also pawing intently at my arm and occasionally meowing softly to attract my attention. This is her way of saying "let me in, I am cold" But if I then just raise the blankets and invite her to join me in the bed, instead of climbing in as she used to do, she just looks at me as if I am a dummy and resumes her pawing and meowing. She has a different idea.

What she wants of course is for me to raise my knees as well. If I continue to ignore her pleas, the signals intensify, the meows become louder and the pawing becomes more insistent - forcible even. If I still ignore her (as I sometimes do just to see how she will react and as part of my game play with her) she will eventually give me a series of increasingly insistent "love bites" on my arm or shoulder. She knows better than to bite hard and in any event she seems not to be intending to hurt me - she just wants to warn me who is boss. As if we don't already know that.

At this point I usually give up, raise my knees, lift the blankets and she immediately climbs under. Her look says it all...."At last! I love you Peter but God you are dumb". When she lays in her blanket "tent" she always has the same posture - her body is immediately below my bottom in a "sphinx" posture with the blanket tent over her head and her head pointed to my right. My problem with this is it means I have to lay still so as not to disturb her majesty and also I must lift the blanket every few minutes to allow air in. Moreover I cannot leave her there if I am likely to fall asleep as apart from the above, my knees are likely to slide down and perhaps suffocate or crush her. So after 15 minutes or so of this I have to ask her to leave. I lift the blanket say "C'mon - time to go" and oddly enough she always then does exactly that without complaint or struggle. She knows that time is up. It as if honour has been satisfied and that's all she really wants. Usually she then curls up on the top of the bed for the rest of the night - or if she gets cold as the night goes on, she climbs under the blankets as I sleep (she really does not need the blankets lifted for her, she just likes to be waited upon by an attendant) and stretches out alongside me to complete the night's sleep in that "spooning" position - her back pressed hard up against my tummy, her head under my armpit. I guess spooning is as pleasant for cats as it is for most humans. Their little habits and rituals are full of mystery and joy to me. My wife works away so usually its just me and the cat most nights. So it's a good thing we get on. But when the wife is back she gets relatively little of the above - she certainly gets some affection but it's never really as intense. It's almost as if the cat seems to being thinking "Well I had better hedge my bets and share the love around, after all if the old boy drops off the twig one day I will need someone to look after me and it may as well be her". But at the end of the day, I belong to the cat, the cat belongs to me and although I encourage the wife and cat to enjoy each other's company I can see it's just really not quite the same.

Cute, no?
 
Chris, that is a very touching story, yes I am a Cat lover too.

The photos make the story even better.

And to the others in this thread thanks for sharing and

especially sharing the Cat photos!
 
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Yesterday evening, lying on the hood of my car watching meat cook. When the chicken was done, he followed me into the house, ran straight to the dining room, and jumped up on MY chair with his front paws on the table while looking at me with eyes that said: "You can put the meat on my plate now, slave."

He was evicted from my chair, but got a HUGE bowl of chicken to eat.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
P62100231.jpg


Yesterday evening, lying on the hood of my car watching meat cook. When the chicken was done, he followed me into the house, ran straight to the dining room, and jumped up on MY chair with his front paws on the table while looking at me with eyes that said: "You can put the meat on my plate now, slave."

He was evicted from my chair, but got a HUGE bowl of chicken to eat.
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I read somewhere about the way cats evolved and why we like them and they like us (or expressed another way why they are so good at manipulating us). The dominant theory seems to be that when humans survived by being hunters and gatherers, they had no relationships with the precursors of domestic cats. Cats are essentially territorial but humans back then were peripatetic (i.e. wanderers) so our paths did not cross that much except perhaps in circumstances where we were the predator and they were the prey.

But when humans settled down into farms, hamlets and villages and began undertaking agriculture as a way of life there was something in it for everyone. Cats adopted human territory as their own and probably still lived largely separately but on the same turf. What attracted cats to that turf were prey - cats ate pests and vermin - mice, rats, birds (even insects) etc that ate the food being grown or stored by humans and were happy. Humans were obviously happy because cats were helping them survive, albeit incidentally by eating the prey that ate human food and competed with them. Cats and humans began a mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship.

Over time, just by chance, some cats would have been more bold and ultimately more friendly towards humans. We see this among feral cats even today. And friendly cats get extra advantages. They might have been given extra food off human tables and been invited into human homes where they would better survive cold, hard winters all the while eating mice and the like inside homes. Again, everyone was happy and better off by this symbiotic relationship.

And, incidentally, cats which were naturally inclined to be friendly would have survived longer, been healthier while they were alive and so, bred more offspring - offspring which would have been more likely to survive and breed because those offspring most likely would be themselves more likely to have the characteristics that gave their parents better survival advantage - willingness to interact on friendly terms with humans and behaviour which humans found attractive which made them, in turn, open to that interaction. So over time cats got more friendly towards humans and we all benefited. (Ok some native birds and small animals did not, but that's another story).

And now of course we have those little furry overlords who manipulate us day and night. All using psychology. And none of us really know its happening. Or think about it most of the time, we just go with it and enjoy it.

There is another factor. Cats sometimes carry toxoplasmosis a parasite. There have been studies which show that when a mouse becomes infected with toxoplasmosis it loses its fear of cats - permanently and becomes instead attracted to them. (Giving the cat an advantage of course as the mouse then becomes easy prey for the cat.)

Could something like this be working on humans too in some way? Are we being manipulated by cats through a 3rd party parasite???? Now THERE'S and whole interesting, if wacky and "out there" field of study!!!!!

https://www.nature.com/news/parasite-makes-mice-lose-fear-of-cats-permanently-1.13777
 
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