Unfathomable
Why do cats love the crap around your house and not the cat toys you pay $7.99 for?
My cats, Jinx and Max Powers, aren’t so good for snuggling. Jinx is grumpy and bitey. Petting her is just a bloodletting. Max is a coward. You can’t get close enough to pet him 90% of the time.
But that doesn’t mean they leave me in peace.
If Max was a child, he would have Paranoid Hyperactive Attention Deficit Disorder. He runs around like a fucking maniac, and will tear himself in half trying to catch the lazer pointer. He can leap like 4 feet in the air and flip over in the process. But if you even LOOK at him, he runs like all the demons of the Core were after him.
If Jinx was a child, she would be a 13 year old goth chick who hates her parents because they are such an embarrassment to her, even as she craves their attention. Heaven forbid I try to sit and write instead of paying attention to her highness. She sits in the doorway of the library, howling for me to throw her a toy. If I ignore her, so comes over and swats at me, and when I turn, she runs and goes long for the pass.
So I keep a bunch of cat toys in a drawer by my desk to occupy the monkeys while I try to work. Dani loves to spend time at the pet store buying them toys. She gets catnip mice and little puffs and balls with bells in them and fruit and vegetables stuffed with catnip. Everything has catnip, and the toys cost a fortune.
But if I try and throw these ridiculously expensive toys to Jinx, she couldn’t care less. Same with Max.
On the other hand, Jinx has learned to work the foot-pedal on the bathroom garbage can, and will go rooting around in there for Q-tips, which she will run around the house with, flinging them into the air and chasing them until they are gnawed to shreds and there is cotton everywhere.
And tiny pieces of crumpled paper? Oh my goodness, how those are loved.
And you can’t put a bag (paper or plastic) or a cardboard box on the floor for a moment without a cat crawling into them. Sometimes they fight over who gets to sit in the damn box. What the heck is THAT about?
They say a cardboard box is the favorite toy of the creative child, but I think cats love them for the exact opposite reason, the same reason why they don’t give a shit about expensive cat toys. They utterly LACK creativity, and are creatures of instinct.
Cats can’t differentiate between colors and objects the way we can. They have no clue that the piece of cloth wrapped around the catnip is in the shape of a carrot, or a duck. It is meaningless to them. All they care about is if it’s light enough to bat around, small enough to carry in their mouth, soft enough to tear apart, or cozy enough to snuggle into.
Pet store toys are for humans, not cats. Save yourself the money and trouble and just put a marble on the hardwood floor. Your neighbors downstairs will hate you, but your cat will be occupied for as long as it takes to knock it under a piece of furniture that it can’t reach under.
Jeez, dad, why did you have to write about me? OMG, I’m, like, sooooo totally embarrassed!
I can’t remember where I saw it, but I read a newspaper article that showed pet-food manufacturers design their advertising to target the pet owners. In other words, they figure if the owner thinks it’s tasty, they’ll buy it for their pet. Meanwhile most dogs would prefer a nice cat turd to a bowl of Purina dog chow.
I used to only buy one particular brand of cat food because it had Garfield on the package.
Have you ever noticed that the characters on cereal boxes seem to stare at you as you walk by? Try it, it’s creepy. AND, they put all the sugary crap cereals on the lower shelves where little hands are sure to reach them.