They’re really useful when we’re spear-hunting mastodon.
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It didn’t with me.
*lolz
Besides, it isn’t worth the risk; the only cases of people being infected with Toxoplasmosis that I’ve ever heard of all had to do with exposure during pregnancy.
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Aside from the threat to bird populations, Toxoplasmosis is another good reason to keep cats in the house, all the time.
Cats who hunt or who are fed raw meat are most likely to harbor T. gondii.
“How can I prevent toxoplasmosis?” … Keep indoor cats indoors.
http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/HealthEducators/ucm082328.htm
Cat owners should also:
Ensure the cat litter box is changed daily. The Toxoplasma parasite does not become infectious until 1 to 5 days after it is shed in a cat’s feces.
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You mean cats don’t love you. And frankly, I can see why. 
*Whistles to cat, cat jumps in lap*
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My dad had this border collie, it could be this playful, cheerful, tail-wagging dog, and ten minutes later it was sneering at you, growling, showing it’s teeth, for no obvious reason. I grew up in a very rural area in N. Michigan, and it would run off into the woods and not come back for days on end. It was a wild, bipolar crazy dog.
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@mark_sniadcki
If you’ve ever had a mouse problem, you would understand. Perhaps a terrier could do the same job, but cats do it a lot more quietly. And they don’t need to poop outside.
I’ve got no beef with dogs, I like dogs, they are fun, they have value, but to borrow a phrase from Wu-Tang, C.R.E.A.M.-- Cats Rule Everything Around Me.
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I’m not completely convinced what the GIF shows is even an adverse reaction necessarily. Despite the teeth showing, the cat is neither clawing at or actively fleeing the human contact (my normal experience when a cat suddenly decides it doesn’t like the interaction).
Also the cat’s head movement almost seems intended to maximize cheek contact. As Wikipedia suggests:
Some cats rub their faces on humans, apparently as a friendly greeting or indicating affection. This tactile action is combined with olfactory communication as the contact leaves scent from glands located around the mouth and cheeks. Cats also sometimes “head-bump” humans or other cats with the front part of the head, this action is referred to as “bunting”.[23] Again this communication might have an olfactory component as there are scent glands in this area of the body, and is possibly for seeking attention when the cat turns their head down or to the side while doing so.[24]
Head-bumping and cheek rubbing may be displays of social dominance as they are often exhibited by a dominant cat towards a subordinate.[4]
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Thank you! I came to make the same observation and happy you made it first (*). Our 16-year-old cat has two reactions to contact near the face. Opening up the cheek and throat, as this cat does, says “please please please”. But when she doesn’t want the contact, the approach typically results in no movement, followed by a snap with the jaws or with the claws, often resulting in minor bloodshed. (I’ve learned to read these signals well.)
(*) Another good way to experience bloodshed is to enter a BB comment thread and try to blow into the prevailing wind. Oh, how I have learned those lessons.
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I think you got mixed up going down the thread–I’m a cat person. 
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Nastasja Kinski? Is that you?
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My late kitty was the queen of earlobe-nursing, bunting and coming-when-called. She would even fetch paper wads.
If I was to be her lackey, then I gleefully bow down to our feline overlords.
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Somewhere I have a very similar photo.
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Mine will fetch one of these (usually separately–just the ring or just the coupler):
My wife was into cake decorating when he was a kitten, and we had a bunch of these laying round. He’d fetch it 20, 30 times in a row before he got tired out. Then periodically we’d move furniture and find a dozen of them he’d swatted out of reach.
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Little plush mice and elastic hair ties. I’ll frequently look down at my feet in my home office and see one, with the cat patiently waiting nearby.
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Ha, you should have seen the way our old orange cat would sit by the door and whine when my partner left the house, and headbutt the crap out of him when he got home. His food bowl was full, there was another cat and another human in the house to play with but no, he wanted his favorite human.
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To some degree, since cats are by not by nature very gregarious, domesticating them relies on their instincts to get along with their litter mates and their mother. A sort of extended adolescence. This happens to some extant with dogs, but since they are pack animals, we can also leverage the behaviors that allow them to work together in a pack as adults.
One can say that our animals don’t experience love in the human sense, and that is true. They are different, and have different instinctual urges and inborn behaviors. But in a deeper sense, the behavior of animals, or at least mammals that raise their young, gives us a fuzzy mirror with which we can see our own non-rational emotions. The question isn’t so much “Do animals love?” as it is “How is our love different because we are rational and capable of a degree of reflection that non-speaking animals are not?”
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I’m no expert, but feral cats left to their own devices are gregarious enough to form hierarchical colonies that share territory. So it’s not clear whether humans are seen as motherly or as dominant colonists. The argument has been made that cats that make “gifts” of dead animals are attempting to demonstrate hunting to inept humans who never seen to catch anything. I’m not sure whether to find that more amusing than compelling but it’s interesting to consider.
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I think the avoidance to kissing by some cats is understandable, my cat doesn’t always appreciate it but if i nuzzle him by rubbing part of my face on him he seems to enjoy it. I’d say kissing a cat makes them anxious because it’s an action that cats would not do. I still give my cat kisses though :B
And i’ve skimmed through the comments on here and regarding cats being assholes, they can be but a cat with personal space boundaries is preferable to an ill behaved dog. Mind you i say this as someone who prefers dogs more but owns a cat. Also my cat is extremely affectionate, follows me around and when he’s around my parent’s cats when i visit he does play with them but prefers to spend most of his time with me.
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My cat loves to play with orange suction cup darts from toy guns. Not the foam kind, the old school ones. He tends to misplace them fairly often and every few months i have to buy a 3 pack of toy guns on ebay so he can play fetch.
Whenever i move out of my current apartment i’m sure i’ll find a treasure trove of them, but i can never find them damn things in my tiny apartment.
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