I don’t know why, but when cats are entertained by something on a computer, or in this case an iPad, it is just so funny.

(via TDW)

I laughed at this.

(Taken from Ben’s facebook! Website it’s from is here)

If the world of Terminator ever comes to pass, forget John Connor, I’m sticking with the cats:

(via Gizmodo)

This video makes a compelling case that the Internet is made, in fact, of cats, though it you read between the lines, it could easily also be saying that the Internet is made of 4chan.

I challenge you to imagine the horror of an Internet that was made, instead, of dogs.

(thanks, Colin!)

When I was a child, my parents had a large honeysuckle bush growing next to the house. Its springy branches were perfect for a young boy to climb and scarmble on. But alas, it was too close to the verandah, and when it got too large, it had to be cut down.

My dad brought some of the wood into the house to burn in the fireplace, where we noticed that the cat went crazy for it. This, mind you, was a cat that had previously shown absolutely no interest in catnip, yet he was wildly clawing and scrabbling and pawing and biting these foot-long scraps of wood.

My mom took some branch cuttings to other peoples’ houses, to test it on their cats — universally, they loved it.

Suddenly, we had dreams of making the family fortune at craft shows, selling bundles of wood as a treat for your cat. We’d corner the market! My mom even had a clever name all thought up (wish I could remember it).

Well, a couple of decades later, and we’ve been beated to the punch. I saw this in a pet store yesterday:

And just in case you want some cute of your own, and you live in the Brandon area, there are a whole bunch of kitties and cats at the Brandon Humane Society that need a home.

This reminds me of my cat, but in certain ways, I think that’s because it reminds me of all cats. Simon draws based on life experience, I’m sure, but he’s managed to tap into a bit of the Platonic Ideal of catness.

I posted another one of his videos here.

Hands down, one of the odder things I’ve seen created on the Internet. Yet strangely compelling.

Oh Maru, how you put a smile on my face.

Further to Amy’s post about giving cats a taste of their own medicine, I happened across a story in the Guardian about new cat research. Researchers at the University of Sussex have decoded some feline purrs, noting that what they call “solicitation” purrs are specially geared to exploit the human need to nurture. From the story:

Instead of loud miaowing when they want food, behaviour likely to have them ejected from the bedroom, some cats disguise their cries for attention within an otherwise pleasant purr. The result, according to a study published tonight in the journal Current Biology, is a complex “solicitation” purr with a high-frequency element that triggers a sense of urgency in the human brain. Owners find it irritating, but not irritating enough to kick the cat out, and feel driven to respond.

Dr. Karen McCamb noticed the behaviour in her own cat, and decided to investigate:

After testing human responses to different purring types, McComb and her team found that even those with no experience of cats judged the “solicitation” purr to be more urgent and less pleasant.

On examining the frequency of the special purr, she found a peak similar to that of a baby’s cry, which gave it a “noisy, slightly whiny quality”.

However, not all cats have the cry; the researchers, who examined 10 cats, found it only in those living in single-person households. “We found that cats learn to dramatically emphasise the peak when dealing with human owners that have a one-on-one relationship,” McComb said.

There’s some more detail in the story, but the real interesting part is listening to samples of cat purrs on the study’s website, where you can hear — at least, I could definitely hear — the different sound quality. There’s also a video of the solicitation behaviour.

And I recognized it right away, didn’t I, Shadow? Oh yes I did, Miss Shadow-wadow. Oh, yes I did! Ohhhh.

I absolutely got a kick out of this video. Watch your cat beg for attention by simply doing what it does: ignoring your every movement.

I found this posted on an Internet forum somewhere, I and I liked it immediately, so I was going to post it up here, too, just to share, but when I found it, it had no attribution, and that made me sad. So I thought, “Maybe Google can help me!”

And sure enough, Google did. Now I can post not just Party Cat, but also episodes two, three, four, five and six in the six-part series. I’ve posted links to livejournal, but they’re originally from the nedroid comics blog.

By Party Cat Six, I like it less than I do here, because the tone shifts sort of dramatically. But it’s still worth the read!

I first saw this story on the BBC site, here, but their video doesn’t allow for embedding on my blog. I think most of their video was taken from an original American TV report, which I found on YouTube (someone videotaped it from their TV):

There’s another video report here, with different images, but you have to watch an ad first, and I can’t embed that one either.

I’m not sure why an eight-year-old cat is suddenly getting all this attraction, except that news media are as susceptible to trends as the rest of the world.

And I don’t think the cat is all that ugly. Different-looking, sure, but I think the fur around his neck is vaguely lion’s-mane like, and it looks like he’s got a great temperament. I’d take him home.

He’s sure saddled with an awful name, though!

It is — and isn’t — what you think.