My old girl seemed to teach herself that if she dropped the thing in my lap she got to chase it again right away – if she dropped it away from me then it might take some time. It seemed inductive – she would drop it a few feet away and I would ignore it, so she would just start playing (tossing in air, etc) until it eventually landed by me… Over time, she learned to just drop it by me. Her passion was the chase, so she seemed motivated to increase the amount of “chase”.
The motivation of the “play dead” guy is arm-pit scratches – don’t know what more I can do with that one.
Smart kitty! Mine doesn’t do tricks (I’ve never tried to train her) but she does know several words-- if I say “bug” she looks in the air, “dot” she looks on the ground (for the laser pointer), “mouse” she looks outside (or at the nearest corner where the latest live mouse she has brought in ran to hide).
The definition of the word species often hinges on the idea that two different species can’t mate to produce fertile offspring. For instance, a horse and a donkey can mate to produce a mule, but since mules are always infertile, the horse and donkey would be considered two distinct species.
The idea of “kinds” is an entirely arbitrary term used by creationists to hack and contort their irrationally held biblical beliefs into something pseudoscientific. There’s no reason to support Barahminology any more than scientology or any religion. So there’s no point in even arguing about it.
If these creationists actually gave a damn about the age of the earth, or zoology or science, then they’d drop all the bullshit and get on with doing actual science. But instead they make shit up constantly and when proven wrong they say their god magiced everything into place, so really all the evidence doesn’t count.
It just pisses me off the garbage thinking creationists foist on their children. It’s dangerous, and harmful to both themselves and the people who are humble enough to do the scientific work to find the answers instead of making up silly crap.
I compromised between encouraging him (in a really specific, higher-pitched, encouraging warm tone with lots of patting the couch next to me) to “bring me the BALL! Where is your BALL! Get the BALL! I can’t get the BALL, you bring it HERE!” when he dropped it far away some of the time, until he make a second effort, and going to get it myself some of the time so the game would continue. He still sometimes gets distracted on his return trip, but about 60% of the time he eventually circles back to it and brings it closer.
The problem, I realized, is that cats can be mono-maniacs. Like, they will stare at the crack where they saw the mouse run in for HOURS afterwards. So the demands for fetch can be… overwhelming. And come at 4am. “Monkey here is the BALL!” [plop]
Wait do what now? I read a lot on cat genetics and coat/eye color pairing a bunch of years ago when the World Wide Web was still largely a bunch of archives of text files (and kids stayed off my LAWN) but this is news to me.
My former cat Holly taught me to play Throw. She’d bring me a toy, give me a verbal command (a meow), and I’d throw the toy. Then she’d bring it back, give me some positive reinforcement (she’d purr), and then give me the command to throw again.
I adopted her when she was a year old, and she played this game with me from almost the first day I brought her home. After a couple years, she changed the rules – she’d bring me the toy, tell me to throw it, but then instead of bringing it back she’d pick it up, drop it, then run back to me, purr, and meow at me to “throw” again. She kept playing this modified version of the game with me for the rest of her life; I never figured out what made her change, and I never managed to get her to go back to the original version.
I managed to get my daughter’s cat (almost a year old) to fetch… she goes and gets her toy (it’s one of those craft pom-poms that she likes to play with), brings it to me, I throw it, and she brings it back and generally drops it in my hand. She generally will only play this game with me. The spouse tried playing with her the other day, and she brought it back to him once, and the second time, she brought it to me. I’m not sure how I did it either… I just kept throwing them, until she started bringing it back to me. And there we have it… a fetching cat.
This cat is also supper attention centric–she comes and puts her paws in your face to get you to pay attention to her, purring madly and she won’t take no for an answer. She is also fond of laying on her back, though she bites you if you try to pet her usually… She’s an odd cat, at least compared to my old guy, who is far more cat like, I think. He will sleep for long stretches by himself, and then come and sit in your lap for a little bit, then go away again. He’s 16, but he’s always been like this, though he was more active as a youngster than he is now…
Yep. Websearch “siamese cat temperature gene” or “Himalayan gene”.
Most specific description I’ve seen so far is http://www.cat-world.com.au/siamese-cat-genetics , which goes into which alleles create which variants and discusses the relationship with burmese (different gene with similar effect) and tonkinese (siamese/burmese cross). And mentions the optic-nerve side effect – I was VERY glad when the breed snobs dropped crossed eyes and kinked tail from the siamese’s judging criteria at cat shows.
(Mine didn’t have crossed eyes, but she did have the other compensation some Siamese develop – a tendency for her gaze to rapidly move side-to-side just a bit, apparently time-integrating the image. There’s probably an official term for that; I just called it “woggling”.)
Sometimes when the breeding doesn’t come out perfect, those kittens end up at the shelter, too. That’s how we got our Siamese. His eyes aren’t blue enough for pedigree, he’s cross-eyed, his tail is straight as a rail, and I suspect he was the runt. He’s a huge, derptastic, but nearly silent kitteh. My only complaint is that he doesn’t purr loud enough. The day we first saw him, they had a sister of his (she was already spoken for) and a pair of Himalayan kittens. Probably all from the same “breeder.”
Looking for breeders with similar ethics? Or lack thereof.
If you are buying your pet from a pet store, you are part of the problem.
If you are buying your pet from a breeder trying to offload its failed experiments, I can’t even imagine.
Cheers to you, Dr. Moreau. And don’t forget to thank the media for your publicity.
I am looking at one of those right now. It’s pretty much blind, likes to eat poo, and urinates on things it doesn’t understand. But hey, sometimes he gets a biscuit just for being the dog…
God, a silent Siamese? You hit the jackpot. My first Auxilliary Emergency Backup Cat was apparently half Siamese, and boy did he ever tell the world about it. I literally had people in the vet’s office ask me, while he was still in his carrier, “oh is he a Siamese?” Gahh.
.[quote=“technogeekagain, post:33, topic:22420”]
Siamese, for example, DO have not just appearance but personality traits which make them particularly appealing to some of us (and particularly annoying to others).
[/quote]
Siamese are a great example of how some persons distorted ideas of what a cat should look like becomes reality. They look absolutely nothing like what they were historically, they’ve even changed hugely since I was a kid in the 60’s. Look at this page http://catnipsfelineadvicepage.wordpress.com/2013/10/11/the-changing-form-of-historic-breeds/ they originally had the bodies of ordinary cats, but someone decided to play Dr Frankenstein on them for chuckles. Then it became a contest who could make the freakiest looking siamese.
My chatty black kitteh died last year, and we brought the derpasaurus home almost a year before that because we knew the chatty cat wouldn’t be with us much longer. I’m a bit disappoint that he’s so dang quiet.
Ah, so the throw-back siamese-looking kitten that our old neighborhood feral ma-cat would pump out with every litter was probably pretty close to the original breed standard (if you ignored the sprinkling of white toes).
Of course I’m going to rag on them too. Dog breeders are at least as bad as cat breeders for deliberately selecting for gruesome deformities because the fuckers think they’re cute.
Just to name one, look at the laundry list of disorders common to pugs, with their “adorable” bulging eyes, flat faces, and barrel bodies: obstructed breathing, heat stroke, hip dysplasia, weakened immune system, something called “necrotizing meningoencephalitis”, paralyzing spinal deformities, eye prolapse. Fucking eye prolapse. Those adorable pop-eyes will literally pop out of their heads at the slightest impact. Humans did this to them, and they’re still doing it.
