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Patrick’s away this evening. I was sitting on the sofa with my computer when I heard a soft squeaking noise from the dining room. Hiro’s waking up early, I thought. (Hiro Frumentius is my hamster. He’s gone from being a little ash-spotted dab of a thing to a large and respectable full-grown hamster who, from certain angles, looks like a miniature badger.) Then he started squeaking in earnest, and I ran for the dining room.
Hiro’s predecessor, Porco Bruno, was extraordinarily voluble for a hamster. Hiro’s much more normal: i.e., he doesn’t vocalize unless he’s in real distress. By the time I got to his cage, there were unprecedentedly emphatic squeaks, strange hiccupy sounds, and scrabbling noises coming from his igloo. My god, I thought, he’s dying in there. He’s seriously ill. This is going to be awful.
I took the big rock off the top of his igloo, tipped up the entrance so I could see in, and made the “tsk-tsk-tsk-tsk-tsk-tsk-tsk” noise that variously means hello, want to come out and play?, please come out from behind that bathtub, and I have a snack for you. After a moment a small quivering nose appeared from the bedding, and then Hiro emerged: eyes glued nearly shut with sleep, ears folded down, trembling all over.
Without thinking, I said “You’re all right now. It was just a dream.” Hiro’s eyes snapped open. He sniffed my fingers, looked around, and hesitantly walked out of his cage. Aside from being scared out of his small wits, he looked perfectly healthy.
I’ll never know what nameless hamster horror had been threatening him. I went on talking softly to him for a while, and petted him and gave him some Wasabrod; but he still had to run an inspection tour of his entire cage, nosing up under the edges of the computer mousepads that serve him as floor padding, and climbing the walls to sniff at unaccustomed corners.
The rodent dreamt that he was a man, working in a windowless cubicle and fruitlessly drudging away at endless TPS reports. He was very relieved to wake and find that he was, in fact, still a hamster after all.
I never know how much to comfort my cat after she has a dream. Not all of them seem to be good dreams.
I am not, however, going to wake the dog during his dreams. He once caught the rabbit, or possibly the cat across the street, and spent the next few minutes growling and tearing it to pieces.
Poor Hiro. I've been having powerfully bad dreams lately (and waking up panting in terror) but Jim says I'm not making noises in my sleep. (I think it's related to job stress.)
I sympathize.
Plus, my oldest kitty sometimes squeaks and twitches while asleep as if she's terrorized, but she was brought from being feral and will never get totally over it.
I must have a very well adjusted puppy - she is as brave as at least a pride of lions, in her sleep, and roundly castigates any and all terrors of the night. She also often wags her tail in her sleep.
Of course, by day, when her eyes are open, she's a mild-mannered if slightly loopy spoodle, who comes whinging to me when the cat whallops her en passant.
what nameless hamster horror
Lovecraft's "The Shadow over Insmouse"?
Poor Hiro! It must have a been a very bad dream indeed.
So far, Usagi-bun in his senility just wakes up and thumps at his objects of nightmares. No rabbit screams, thankfully. Although perhaps some of the thumps are demands for food. It's hard to say.
Poor Hiro.
What a beautiful little fellow!
I've never caught my lagomorphic Underfoots dreaming, but they do roll onto their backs and play dead fairly often.
My husky ex-tom came from the Humane Society a few years ago, and used to panic when the room lights were turned off at night, or if an edge of blanket fell over him. I suspect something like a cloth bag played a nasty role in his past, but I'll probably never know.
He's calmer now about these things. Still does the sudden swift Run Away! from nothing at all a couple of times every day, but I think that's exercise, a trace of kitten play. At times he whimpers in his sleep, next to my leg in bed, but quiets after a few gentle reassuring strokes.
There are people who seem to honestly believe that non-human animals don't dream. How they can possibly think so puzzles me. Maybe it's linked to a belief that only human beings have souls, and that dreaming is an activity of the soul. But (as with the cloth bag) I may never really understand.
You make me want a hamster... unfortunately, I've focused all my whining on having a baby, so it's going to be another few years before I can start asking for anything more.
Shiva makes noises and twitches when he dreams. The other two don't seem to. And Shiva also sometimes kind of hums. I've found I do it sometimes, too, so I don't know who's copying whom.
Whenever Shiva gets upset at being used as a pillow, I remind him that he uses me that way.
Pyre @ #9: My two cats were rescued many years ago from a wild pack that lived in an abandoned building near my office. While they are now ridiculously domesticated, the boy cat still has issues about his paws being touched, and will get well-nigh feral when I cut his nails unless I'm very careful. I suspect something to do with the gang that used the basement of the aforementioned abandoned building as a dumping ground for stolen goods and suspicious mattresses. It angers me to think what they might have done to him... he and his sister were only five months old when I took them home. Grr. Grr.
Marilee #11 -- how did you get Shiva to accept the new ones like that? I got my Kitty Kitty a companion, but several years later she still won't let him snuggle up to sleep like he so obviously wants to. I haven't tried pointing out that she does that with me, but I suspect that won't work.
Kitty Kitty was a starving ~6 week old when she appeared in my parents' driveway; after my sister gave her a can of tuna she apparently decided to stick around. I'm still not clear how she ended up living in my apartment, but 13 years and 5 moves later, she's still here. She still likes tuna.
Still does the sudden swift Run Away! from nothing at all a couple of times every day, but I think that's exercise, a trace of kitten play.
From nothing? Cats can see things we don't, you know. :)
All of my felines very clearly dream - sometimes enjoyably, sometimes not so much. I'll pet them gently if they're clearly upset -- it usually either helps them settle down, or wake up enough to get a proper cuddle.
Here are my blondsters, although they weren't dreaming at the time.
Ah, poor Hiro. I'd never considered hamster dreams. Of course, we have a larger mammal who dreams a good deal, often running, grunting, and whining in her sleep. In our house it is said at such moments that "Emily is chasing rabbits." I don't think she dreams of being the predatee except when she's been playing with rough dogs at the park.
I HAVE COMPLETED the construction of my burrow and it seems to be successful. All that can be seen from out side is a big hole; that, however, really leads nowhere; if you take a few steps you strike against natural firm rock. I can make no boast of having contrived this ruse intentionally; it is simply the remains of one of my many abortive building attempts, but finally it seemed to me advisable to leave this one hole without filling it in. . . . ("The Burrow")
The only time I've heard my dog howl is in her sleep. A short little yodel.
Given the nature of her waking obsession, she's probably chasing cats.
Teresa, can I call you if I have a bad dream?
Tigger has dreams which I can usually calm by loudly saying "Rabbits," which is silly since, as the picture shows, she's a bird dog.
The terrier mutt that I grew up with, he was a vocal and active sleeper. He could chase rabbits, dig for marmots, and toss voles all while asleep. It was impressive, and every once in awhile he'd wake himself up look confused.
I still miss that dog.
When I first welcomed Lofty into my household in December 2004, four complete strangers accompanied her unbeknownst to me.
The Underfoots remain hale and hearty, but Lofty herself succumbed to a retrobulbar abcess back in October. I miss my growly rabbit.
Serge: There are things that lurk beneath cedar shavings which man was not meant to know?
That is a delightful little vignette. You made me think fondly of small rodents, not that I need much encouragement.
Zip used to suckle in her sleep when she was a kitten. She must have felt keenly the loss of her mommy, she is still a clingy cat to this day but during the first weeks she was really a postercat for separation anxienty. She was way too young to be adopted.
Still, she never has bad dreams, as Terry used to. She doesn't snore either, another thing Terry used to do. This is good because she can slither under the cover without waking me up and end up playing the furry warm cushion. I'm not complaining, mind you.
That's such a sweet story. I do wonder what features in hamster nightmares.
I've seen my cat dream quite often but I think she's hunting birds mostly in her dreams. Her back feet will twitch a bit then her front legs and she'll often do a bit of a growl and her whiskers and teeth twitch some more.
I've not seen her have a nightmare yet, it would probably feature loud, ringing mobile phones teaming up with the vacuum cleaner since those two are her 'tormentors' in her waking life.
Here's Nikita dreaming her cat dreams
One of our three cats -- DJ, the one with the most complicated brain -- sometimes has nightmares and makes scared murfles in his sleep. We pick him up and pet him happier. He also has nursing dreams, which have to be worth some kind of award for sheer cute.
Our cats also have hunting dreams.
A cat my partners once had (long-lived, but no longer present) was a rescue, a former street cat. She'd have nightmares of which the subject was clear, because when she woke up, she'd check the food bowl, stare very hard at it, and devour the contents.
Liath runs and yips in her sleep, but she always seems to be the hunter, not the hunted.
You know, I had been wondering if a certain thing had been on here before and I searched and couldn't find it. Lo, now is the perfect time to share the link to the video of the bizarre majesty Metazoa Ludens.
Teresa: what nameless hamster horror
Serge @ 5: Lovecraft's "The Shadow over Insmouse"?
They must know it was the hamsters; the slithering scurrying hamsters whose scampering will never let me sleep; the daemon hamsters that race behind the padding in this room and beckon me down to greater horrors than I have ever known; the hamsters they can never hear; the hamsters, the hamsters in the walls.
It had been no Earthly hamster of which I had dreamed. Of that I could be sure. The fur, brightly coloured and patterned with hearts and flowers, was no natural fur. The movements of the limbs were a grotesque parody of all that was normal; not even human. And the scent: it was sharp, spikey, an approximation of a true scent that might, for an instant, seem real before the gaps became apparent.
And yet, dream though it was, there was some residue. Not tangible, but a sense of some ghastly presence, lurking at the edge of ones senses. It was as if there was something, always in that place behind you where your eyes cannot see, and the wind blows away from you.
Something that might almost be chanting.
vian @ 14:
Then I deduce from a recent Crazed Wombat performance that after he'd hunted his own tailtip with great determination for a while, in a single instant it shockingly sprouted enormous fangs and leapt toward his throat, a lethal attack he narrowly escaped by running into the living room, his tailtip as close behind him as if it were attached. Presumably its fangs got lost along the way, because he survived without injury.Still does the sudden swift Run Away! from nothing at all a couple of times every day, but I think that's exercise, a trace of kitten play.From nothing? Cats can see things we don't, you know. :)
The littlest of our kittens, also the smartest and the most imaginative, will oft wake herself from a scary dream with a series of pathetic cries and launch herself at the nearest lap for a session of therapeutic paw sucking.
(Picture.)
She does that paw sucking a lot, and it's odd to hear the sound coming from under the bed in the middle of the night, especially as it sounds like something else entirely.
Tlönista... Roy G. Ovrebo... Maybe Hiro dreamt of being sent to Arkhamster.
Serge #5: That was a truly magnificent pun.
My cat Montano was a year or so old when I got him from the pound, and for a long time he would have obviously unsettling dreams. That settled down, and now when I notice him dreaming it seems to be happy dreaming of pursuit - I know he'd love to be an outdoor cat and I'm sure he'd be a very successful hunter if he had to be. He developed increasingly sophisticated play techniques which seem to scratch most of the itch, including a lot of choosing to be surprised by everything for a while. (My favorite is when he turns his back on a stuffed toy and then sits down on it. His rump slides, and he leaps up looking startled, and whirls around to pounce on the toy all over again.)
Bruce #36
My cat does the exact same thing! (the surprise ambush via sitting on the toy) I hadn't heard of other cats doing it as well.
I managed to catch a version of it on camera once It's at around 0:38
An almost relevant story in the news today:
France faces huge fine for failing to save great hamster of Alsace
My Sarah has a very active dream life. Her front paws twitch and she whuffs and whimpers. Since her default state upon seeing anything that moves is to want to play with it, I assume that's what she's doing in her sleep.
Roy @30: Because when the hamsters come out of the walls, it's all over.
Glad to hear that Hiro is OK. Makes me wonder what he would have nightmares about if he was domesticated from birth. Are we programmed to fear predators from birth?
As for all the references to Cthulhu, I now realize that before finding Making Light years ago, the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" was a nice, simple tale about the Christmas spirit and what kind of a difference one man can make.
Now, however, they keep playing an advertisement for "IaWL" on TV that shows a clip from near the end of the movie where George comes back to his house, grateful for his life, and he sees his children and they rush to him yelling "Daddy!" "Daddy!". And George hugs them and says something like "Mary! Violet! Oh, I could eat you up!"
Right after that, a Cthulhu inpired voice in my head says:
"Num, Num, Num."
I know that didn't happen before I started hanging out on Making Light.
Serge, I'm sure you're aware that cedar chips follow non-Euclidean geometry.
I don't know, maybe he had a dream that a certain presidential candidate won the election? Ask not for whom the hamster squeals, you know.
39: the British equivalent, the Ferocious Chicken of Bristol, is of course long gone.
42: yes, actually - or at least goslings are. There's an elegant experiment by (I think) Niko Tinbergen, who raised goslings indoors out of sight of the sky, and then tested their response to a shape flying overhead. The shape looked like a cross with one arm much shorter than the others. So when it flew short arm first, it looked like a bird with a short neck and long tail (ie a hawk) and when it flew short arm last, it looked like a bird with a long neck and short tail (ie a goose). The goslings had never before seen either hawks or geese, but they cowered and froze when the "hawk" silhouette moved overhead, but remained calm when presented with the "goose" silhouette.
TNH: obviously you haven't watched enough bad horror films. If the household pet starts behaving oddly and acting terrified when there's nothing to be seen, you can either
a) say "What's the matter? Little guy seems terrified. Ah, well, probably nothing" shortly before getting horribly killed or
b) run like hell.
I'm now wondering what the hamster equivalent of the Innsmouth Look is.
"The street was deserted save for one old man. His appearance was unusual, and almost to me repellent: his cheeks bulged unnaturally large and were covered by a light down, his front teeth large and protruding from his mouth, his eyes unusually large and dark, his body round and his arms and legs short and thin; and he blinked against the light as though recently awakened, while munching on handfuls of some sort of seed which he drew from his coat pocket.
"Where was the rest of the populace, I found myself wondering? Were they still in bed? Or - I barely could form the thought - in their nests?"
The story grows darker as the narrator stumbles on a network of tunnels underlying Innsmouth, through which the residents scurry incessantly at night; and hears, through the fog, the groaning of the axle of the endlessly turning Innsmouth Wheel...
This thread strongly implies that dogs have good dreams, while cats and hamsters have nightmares.
Several people have posted about nursing dreams and hunting dreams, which are certainly not nightmares; if I were a cat, I'd certainly enjoy going after birds and/or returning to my kittenhood.
Still does the sudden swift Run Away! from nothing at all a couple of times every day, but I think that's exercise, a trace of kitten play
Personally I think it's how cats cast the wards, since (in my experience at least) it tends to happen in the evening at about the same time every day.
Marc Moskowitz @ 45... This thread strongly implies that dogs have good dreams, while cats and hamsters have nightmares.
That's because the dog chases the cat chases the hamster.
Our boy cat, Rupert has bad dreams on occasion and makes decidedly childlike whimpering noises. Rather distressing the first time I heard it. He also snores like an exhausted trucker and is quite talkative in the evenings, when we get home form work. I swear he's telling me about his day. One of the most human-like animals I've ever met.
Lila, #40: is that cat an ocecat or am I seeing things?
I've never had a pet of any kind, not counting boyfriends.
When the dog dreams, she often makes noises that we find distressing, but I don't know how to tell if those are actually nightmares. We wake her from them easily and she never seems upset.
Martin @ #50, that dog is a mutt. (Best guess is Australian shepherd/Australian cattle dog.) So either you're seeing things or you meant to ask someone else that about some other picture.
Maybe Martin meant Sica's cat? Because Nikita appears to be marvellously spotted.
(We had a cat that would walk past, or up to, a toy, acting like it wasn't there, and then pounce on it or bat at it. And my current furry fiend does the suddenly-start-racing-around thing, too.)
Keith @ #49:
My aunt's dog Dixie (black Lab) used to tell you about her day, in exhausting detail. I housesat for my aunt once and every time I came back to the house from an errand or whatever Dixie would follow me around for at least five minutes, "talking" enthusiastically.
It wasn't barking, either; it was this series of "Hown yowr mow yahn yahn!" noises that really sounded like she was trying to imitate the rhythm of human speech.
It was hilarious.
All the dogs I have ever known dream. I always used to wonder if their dreams had smells. Mine never do.
@41: They are lean and athirst. The hamsters of Tindalos!
(and thus it is explained why hamsters must be contained in spherical, angle-less, objects)
Sica, #38: I like your choice of music, too.
TexAnne, #41: The gnurrs come from the voodvork out?
Martin, #50: If you meant Nikita, the side text mentions that she's a Bengal, which is indeed one of the spotted breeds.
My late beloved Mina would not only play fetch with a fuzzy ball, but would bring the ball to you and ask for it to be thrown.
My late beloved Mina would not only play fetch with a fuzzy ball, but would bring the ball to you and ask for it to be thrown.
Viola does that--she'll pick up whichever ball of aluminum foil she and her brother haven't yet managed to knock under the stove, bring it upstairs, and drop it on the bed (generally within reach, even) and then stare intently at me and it in turns until I pick it up and throw it for her.
She's only the second cat I've ever had who would play fetch, and Lily didn't initiate the game.
If Martin was asking about Nikita, she's not an Ocicat.
She's a Bengal cat so she has some of the wild ALC blood in her (not much though) which makes her a bit of a handful at times but she is a marvelous spotted beastie and I've gratefully accepted her as my Feline Overlord.
I'm also dealing with a mouse infestation atm. and she has been most helpful.
..and yes I have way too many photos of her online (845 and counting) but taking cat photos makes me happy so I indulge. She is a very good model though which doesn't hurt.
'Are we programmed to fear predators from birth?'
Somebody did the experiment, using inbred lab mice ('Swiss mice' are generic lab mice, rather than ones specially imported from Zurich) whose ancestors back for several generations had lived in cages in laboratories, and introducing them to an anaesthetised rat.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T0P-3V8KBBF-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=3f882c9153a867599e03f760399d9a00
The mice fled upon contact with the rat, but not upon its distant approach.
http://www.pinktentacle.com/2007/11/scientists-create-fearless-mouse/
is a second-order (blog writing about a Japanese blog writing about the research) account of the fact that disabling some bits of the olfactory bulb causes mice no longer to flee at the smell of predators.
Xopher @ 51... I've never had a pet
Nor an MRI?
My cats dream, with little twitchy paws and noses. I think they're chasing something small and fast.
My big fuzzy Stix (Welsh springer spaniel/husky mix) whuffs and runs and is utterly charming in his sleep.
I was cruel, though, once; I couldn't help myself - as he was obviously chasing something in his sleep I leaned over him and said, "Get that squirrel!"
It took about twenty minutes before he stopped running around the house and barking...
greg,
Are we programmed to fear predators from birth?
the pet advice i've heard says yes (we have eight parrots of varying sizes, from african grey to negligible).
they say to never go "shhh" to a bird (which is often difficult, believe me), because it sounds like a snake, even though all my birds & all my birds parents were born in captivity. they also say that if you don't know a bird very well, you should look at it sidelong to be nonthreatening (because predators have eyes on the front of their heads, while prey mostly look with each eye separately).
apparently some parrots get "night terrors" & can fall off their perches & injure themselves while sleeping. mine don't really move much in sleep, except to refold their wings.
nevertheless, here's mike with the three biggest parrots, & katsuhiro being trusting.
TNH--Hiro = adorable; ditto the photos of all the other befurred and befeathered companions. :D
Most of my cats' dreams appear to be of the giving-chase-to-small-fast-things variety--paws, ears, and whiskers a-twitch, with the occasional snuffle.
The youngest of the bunch, Scooter, was between six and seven weeks old when I retrieved her from under a parked car a bit over a year ago. Either she was separated from her momcat too soon, or she needed lots of comforting (or both), because she developed the habit of nursing on my neck and chin. And she still does it, although far less frequently than before.
And speaking of cats seeing things we can't, I wonder if I should be worried by the fact she's perched on my subwoofer, staring past me into the hall with eyes the size of quarters...
Serge 61: I actually HAVE had an MRI. I've also had a CAT scan, if having a bunch of cats stare and stare at you qualifies.
But no, no PET scan. The idea of antimatter in my brain is fascinating in a what-if-I-jumped sort of way, but it's never been deemed medically necessary.
Ardala sometimes snuffles and twitches her paws in her sleep. I've always woken her up. I think now I'll let her catch that dream lizard. She's got a pretty strong prey-drive, but has a semi-feral kitty friend who sometimes greets us on our walks. I give the kitty pets and Ardala greets her in the traditional canine manner. When kitty gets tired of dog snout in the butt, he rears back and waves his paw at Ardala. It's one of the funniest things I've seen. Ardala's disappointed when kitty won't chase her, but she gets over it.
IIRC a year or three ago, there was a discussion in here about certain prey responses that seemed to be hardwired into all primates and a lot of mammals in general: fear of large flying creatures and fear of snakes.
One cited example was the cringe/freeze response of Madagascar lemurs to shadows from overhead, even though there haven't been lemurvorously large raptor birds in the region for zillions of years. Anecdotally, the first time my cats saw my tape measure auto-retract, they instantly launched several feet straight up into the air (starting from sedentary catloaves) and landed with their fur and eyes fluffed up to several times normal proportions. (They were born feral, but were rescued with their mom before they were weaned; I suppose they might've observed actual snakes in action during those first few weeks, but I wouldn't bet on it.)
Tom@60: Alternately, you can raise a prey animal in the very near vicinity of a good-natured predator animal and the same thing will happen. Anyone who's witnessed my rabbit chase my cat around the house (bunny wants to play; kitty wants none of it) or my socialized rat climb all over either of them will agree. In each case, it was simply raising the rabbit and rat near the cat, combined with many treats, pets, and cooing happily if they all behaved around one another.
Oh, and my cat is a former stray.
I've never seen any of my animals but the cat dream...if she has a bad dream, she'll wake me up demanding affection. I would be scared if my rat had done what Hiro did, I won't lie. Perhaps that's just fallout from having an epileptic rat in the past, but little animals I love should never be in distress.
Sophie dreams occasionally--less these days. She has been known to twitch all parts simultaneously, but mostly doesn't groan, thank heavens, because it sounds dreadful. She seems quite capable of waking up on her own.
As to looking at things we can't see, it happens all the time, and we call it "chasing demons". What's alarming is when she starts meowing at them. You know she's not doing complaint meowing because she's looking very intently at *something* (not us) and trying to get its attention.
(And she's the only cat I know who licks her catnip mouse.)
joann@70: Really? I've never known a cat who didn't alternately lick and roll all over catnip toys. That is, if they respond to it (and my present cat does not).
julia #71:
All my other cats chased the things all over the house, and chewed, but didn't lick. Sophie never chased, just chewed a little, and then settled for licking as the most efficient drug-delivery mechanism. She will also make a catloaf over a mouse, presumably smothering it to death.
Xopher @ 66... You wouldn't like having a positronic brain?
In fall 2002 I went to the UCSF Neuroscience retreat and heard a fascinating story. As you know, Bob, it is possible to implant very fine wires (in a sort of "comb") into the brain of an animal, and thus detect electrical changes made by neurons firing. When you're lucky, there is a single neuron next to a single wire, which you can track over time.
Some rats with implanted wires ran a simple maze: a straight corridor with a treat pellet at the end. The scientists found three neurons that fired based on what position the rat was in: A, at the start of the maze; B, in the middle; C, near the end. Always the same three, A-B-C, as the rat ran down the track.
Then they left the recording computer on while the rat chilled out and take a nap. In its dreams, suddenly: A-B-C... The rat was dreaming about the maze. And the neural activity in that small chunk of its brain devoted to position/location was the same as if it had been awake.
Ooooooo.
(BTW, loving the rodent Lovecraft pastiches very much.)
#74: I've had many a nightmare about the daily rat race, too.
The female protagonist in John D. MacDonald's "Who Killed Janice Gantry?" mentions that she lived in a house with a cat named "Eerie" because he sees things that aren't there.
Our Lady Jane Grey used to do that, but the king was our lilac-point Siamese DC (we named him before the Hayley Mills That Darn Cat movie!). He'd get what we called "the crazies" and chase invisible things all over the house, even up and down 17 steps to the rec room.
My kids love this post. I read it to them and there was some discussion of what hamsters dream about. (David is currently reading them the Humphrey the Hamster books and so they are very engaged withe the idea of the life of hamsters.)
Just got back to the computer from socializing with two new new rabbits.Cute critters,new members of the family,and yes they are part of the family. O.K. not voting members It's a benevolent dictatorship.Or so I believe ask anyone.On second thought don't ask,they will lie.
Ardala gets the zoomies - where she'll just race in circles around the house, butt tucked under, ears back, tongue out (for better aerodynamics, I'm sure) until she careens off a wall, bookcase or one of us an arbitrary number of times. Usually she ends by squeaking a toy a bit, or falling over for a belly rub. That usually accounts for most of her energy. She did it once at the dog park when she couldn't get anyone to chase her. The pure silliness of it is enough to compensate for any money we have spent on flea meds, food and nature's miracle.
nerdycellist @ 79... Ah, nature's miracle? It had a hard time coping with all the incidents that were inflicted onto our carpet. The final blow was when our puppy Cagney decided he loved to chew on inkpens.
Julia @ #71, have you tried your cats with peppermint? I've had several cats that didn't care for catnip but got seriously buzzed from peppermint LifeSavers (or just the wrapper) or from a peppermint teabag sealed in a perforated metal tea ball.
lila @ 81... have you tried your cats with peppermint?
Tastes just like chicken.
Julia, #69: Two of my friends rescued a very odd rabbit from the streets the day after Easter. They noticed it on their drive home -- obviously domesticated, following an outdoor cat that wanted to be left alone. After their fliers and calls to the Humane Society didn't turn up any prior owners, they kept it and named it Arthropod.
Its enchantment with cats of all kinds has led us to speculate whether it is really an alien scientist that chose the wrong body for its investigations. I've watched it cuddle up to Tina, a fat orange tabby, and flinch violently as she (absentmindedly, I'm sure) gave it some cursory licks during her regular grooming. It was fascinating to see the war between its affection and its hardwired prey impulses -- jumping back, then sneaking up to cuddle again, even pressing closer demandingly. Now they keep it in a cage much of the day so that Tina can have her space.
All these cat-loving rabbit stories remind me that in Chinese astrology "The Year of the Rabbit" = "The Year of the Cat", never mind the differences in shape of tooth or tail or ear. Maybe the ancient astrologers were onto something....
(The spoken word for "cat" is mao in Mandarin, and maau in Cantonese. Such onomatopoeia!)
nerdycellist #79:
We call the zoomies "cat-racing season". We have been known to place bets, even though there's only one entrant.
Perhaps the wee beestie dreamed that there were no more sunflower seeds in the world...?
Tanya (a Siberian Husky/German Shepherd cross) used to dream with whuffles and leg-twiches (when she was having happy dreams), and whines and leg-twitches (when she was having nightmares). I learned to tell which was which, and would wake her from the scary ones - a couple of times, she seemed really relieved that she'd been woken up.
my two cats would have cat races all over the house (usually at night, often at really stupid hours of the morning - annoying, when the bed was fair game for cat races, and I lived in a loft apartment with no door to the bedroom...). Sometimes it was one wanting to play when the other one didn't, but more often it was just "gofasterrunrunrun", as far as I could tell.
Carrie S. @ 47: Personally I think it's how cats cast the wards, since (in my experience at least) it tends to happen in the evening at about the same time every day.
Okay, I was refraining from retelling the woo-woo cat dream story in my family, but I think I'd better. I wasn't there, so I may get it wrong, but here goes.
Becca's ex -- during the brief period of time she lived with the family unit, prior to my joining the family unit -- once fell asleep and had a dream of small blurry things moving around; she was chasing them and generally catching them. It was a happy, if boring, dream. Then the dream started to get more complicated, introducing a plotline, etc... and then she had an external impression of confusion, what is this? I don't get it! and she and our large orange cat woke up, the cat with a baffled meow.
This large orange cat is nearsighted and if he has dreams they are more or less like that. Minus some fool blundering in and introducing a plotline.
Our cat Alias (fluffy in mind as well as body) will sometimes fall asleep on the old couch down cellar- and a while later we'll hear piteous wails from below. My husband and I think she wakes up and thinks everyone else is gone, or can't remember where she is. She'll wander around downstairs, crying, and if we call her she'll come running upstairs, frantic and desperate for attention.
(She was the runt of the litter from a malnourished mother. We suspect that had something to do with her behavior. She needs structure and a clear-cut schedule, or she panics-and she acts so proud when she does the "right" thing at the "right" time!)
(The spoken word for "cat" is mao in Mandarin, and maau in Cantonese. Such onomatopoeia!)
My rescued kitten here has been referred to as 'xiao mao' (little cat). Today I showed it to a local friend, who corrected me: "xiao mao mi." I take it that 'mao mi' is kitten, which I find delightful: see, cats say mao and kittens say mi! So it's a very consistent mode of naming.
Anna @25: my dog sleep-suckles, too, but only when she's been sleeping curled up on my lap for quite some time. When she wakes up from those dreams, she tends to butt her head softly into me and lick my wrist. I'm her alpha, so maybe she's associating it with momness. I don't know.
She has also had dreams that fairly clearly distressed her -- crying in her dreams followed by confused crying upon waking. Those are far rarer than the happy twitches or the sleep-suckling, and good thing for us monkeys, too -- those distressed little noises cut right through a person.
Also, Wasabrod is a lovely thing to give beings who have had bad dreams.
Sica, very belatedly @ 38: Wow, I'm delighted to know other cats do the same play thing. :)
Teresa might want to keep Hiro away from Turner Classic Movies tonight. Watching The Killer Shrews ("...a maniacal scientist creates a formula that turns your average shrew into a giant man-killing beast...") would be too much for the little guy.
Obviously, Hiro needs to dress up his wardrobe a bit.
Serge @ #93 -
The Killer Shrews? OMG, I've got a DVD of that POS. In the annals of low-budget horror, that one stands out.
Monet, my family's cat, was taken home slightly too young, and she imprinted on my teddy bear rug. It's a fluffy thing, meant to be a bear rug but cuter, and she nursed on it multiple times daily until I moved away, at which point it was for when I came home and my room opened up again. She'll fall asleep still with her head shoved under its head, like she's sucking the brain out the entrance for the spinal cord.
Steve C @ 95... Yeah, the collies dressed up with a fur coat make for rather unconvincing shrews.
Teresa, you've gone green!
. . . the computer mousepads that serve him as floor padding. . .
You have found a way to recycle excess mousepads.
The world is a better place because of you.
Both my kitties dream, but they don't seem to be nightmares. Sometimes Chaucer gets into fights in his dreams, and wakes himself up hissing or growling, but he doesn't seem frightened.
He was, however, traumatized by being locked in a motel bathroom and abandoned, after which he came to me via a friend. It took him a long time to get over going frantic whenever he was on either side of a closed door - inside a room or out, it didn't matter.
Little Perkin just twitches during his dreams (so far), but both of them tear around the house in what I call hyperkitty mode.
We have a cat who, when catnip is placed on the floor, eats it, blisses out, and sits there; guarding the spot. He will, when he comes down enough, then lick, and chew at the carpet, certain that more goodies are there.
A.J. Luxton @ 90:
Well, xiao mao and xiao mao mi *both* mean "kitten", because xiao means "little", while mao and mao mi *both* mean "cat".The spoken word for "cat" is mao in Mandarin, and maau in Cantonese. Such onomatopoeia!)My rescued kitten here has been referred to as 'xiao mao' (little cat). Today I showed it to a local friend, who corrected me: "xiao mao mi." I take it that 'mao mi' is kitten, which I find delightful: see, cats say mao and kittens say mi! So it's a very consistent mode of naming.
Actually, mao is "cat" and mi is (among other things) "the sound of 'meow'", so mao mi is essentially a way of saying "a meow-cat".
In English you might say "a meow-cat" to be less ambiguous, when the word "cat" alone might be mistaken to mean a CAT-scan or a caterpillar-tractor.
Spoken Chinese has the same problem with ambiguity, only worse: mao (even with the right intonation) can mean a lot of things; so mao mi makes it clear that you're speaking of a feline.
The written character isn't ambiguous, so you may see just the one character for "cat" mao (or the two for "kitten" xiao mao) written; but for the sake of clarity when read aloud, even in writing you may see "meow" mi (or other words) added.
*gik*! Sorry about that! I screwed up in post-review editing, and had no idea until I read what has been posted.
Could someone please please erase the first half of that mess, up to the second naming of A.J.? If not, then would kind readers please read it that way? Thanks!
Todd Larason, #13, oh, sorry, that's (New)(Cats Picture). The orientals lived here first, and it was Giorgio (the white one) who didn't want to accept Shiva in the beginning. Now he wants to be him. Spirit will cuddle up to either.
Julie L., #68, my cats all try to catch the disappearing end of the tape measure.
Crow Mothers Kitten from Cute Overload.
To further illustrate the deep wisdom of the Chinese language:
The written and spoken mi that means "a cat's 'meow'" also means (in other contexts) "don't!"
So, you see, cats meowing in complaint are speaking Chinese!
Or the Chinese when saying "Don't!" are speaking Cat.
Surely this is not an anomaly, not a singular event.
So now I am telling my cat as I pet him, Dzh - dzh - dzh (Yes - yes - yes)...
and he is purring back to me, Dzh - dzh - dzh.
James @ 105: Thank you. May your royalties, and professional cents-per-word rate, double!
According to my psychology text book, the only mammal that does not dream is an Australian anteater. It has an unusually large forebrain, which may be why it does not need to dream. The things you learn in school.
Lydy Nickerson @ 107:
According to my psychology text book, the only mammal that does not dream is an Australian anteater.When referring to "an Australian anteater" as a "mammal", the book's author(s) must have been thinking of the monotreme "Echidna" (a.k.a. "Spiny Anteater") -- because the "Numbat" (a.k.a. "Banded Anteater") is a marsupial.
The
A joke I heard from Patrick:
Why don't anteaters get sick?
Because they're full of anty-bodies.
They are jolly and they frolic,
Filled with all that fullsome folic.
Weirdly, this talk about anteaters is giving me extraordinarily powerful deja vu. Have we had this discussion here before? The feeling's not going away.
pyre @108:
But surely both are still mammals, just slightly odd ones?
I don't really recall either of the cats dreaming, but the dog seems to dream every night (slumped either right behind my chair [danger Will Robinson! danger!] or in the easy chair next to me), with a lot of twitching, whining and muffled woofs. It looks to me like he dreams about meeting and playing with other dogs, rather than the stereotypical 'chasing rabbits' dreams. Not that he doesn't like to chase rabbits (as does my tiny but fierce female cat, who can catch and kill a bunny twice her size - oh, and eat it, too).
ethan @ 111: See open threads 29, 69, and 86.
flowery tops @ 112: You're right, and I've just committed the same sort of category error as "humans vs. animals" (treating subset/superset as disjunct sets).
This must be my cue to stop waiting for the pills to kick in, and try going to sleep anyway. G'night.
This thread appears to have inspired one of my cats to be exceptionally whiny in an almost impossible to ignore way today - fortunately I haven't had to explain the almost-baby noise to anybody on the phone, this time.
One of our cats has a tendency to elicit long conversations, and to be very indignant (widening eyes, quivery tail, increased proximity, and rising pitch/volume) if we don't meow back until he is bored with our idiot monkey patois of how our hovercraft is full of eels.
I was getting comics last night and while I was holding one of the store's cats, she caught sight of a couple of paper snowflakes on string that had been put up as decorations. I could see her little brain go Big dangly thing! Wantwantwant!!.
David Goldfarb... Your cat's name wouldn't happen to be Krosp, would it?
Awww. Hiro's adorable.
BTW, just saw this pic in the cheezburger factory (submissions to i can has cheezburger) and thought you'd like it.
Even before Emperor Horton reached 20 pounds, I thought of his gallops as "thundering hoofbeats" (though he used to achieve this on a wood floor, and now it's carpet). He definitely dream-twitches, snores occasionally, and likes to lick his pouch of catnip.
For unlikely animal bedfellows, it would be hard to beat the clip that was all over the news shows a few days ago, showing a full-grown tigress taking care of piglets in tiger-stripe wraps
Our cat Alias (fluffy in mind as well as body) will sometimes fall asleep on the old couch down cellar- and a while later we'll hear piteous wails from below. My husband and I think she wakes up and thinks everyone else is gone, or can't remember where she is.
Viola and Sebastian do that sometimes too, she more than he. We generally meow back, and sometimes that contents them; sometimes they have to come and check to make sure it's really us.
My cat Gremlin will occasionally call out from other parts of the apartment, when I call back she'll sometimes come running up to be petted. Sometimes she just want to catch my eye, sometimes I have no idea what she wants.... I do know that she can hear the neighbors (though the walls) better than I can.
Monica @#83: Back when I had a rabbit, Gremlin would occasionally try to groom (lick) him. Over time, he learned to put up with that for maybe 30 seconds, but the first time it happened, his startle response left him looking like a caricature of "the nerd who just got kissed" -- fur standing out, ears all askew, general demeanor of "WTH?"
Lis Riba @ 121... The NRA's new motto: "I'm a rodent and I vote!"
My thread crossover alert just sounded.
Re: meowing back at cats: a rabbit-owner tells me that nervous rabbits thump their back legs, which is remarkably loud on wood floors. He used to try and soothe them, and now he just thumps back--"yes, I hear you, I'm on the alert."
As I'm about to feed our three dogs, the youngest one will bark furiously hurryuphurryuphurryup until his dish is down on the floor. Then he just looks at the dish and won't touch the food until he's bitten my fingers a few times. I should have known that calling the little guy Cagney would be a bad idea.
I am a hamster. Something horrible happened to me the other night. A giant, furless paw came down from the sky and took the magic stone from my roof.
But then something wonderful happened. A soft, furless paw picked me up. It stroked me and made funny, but comforting sounds. I don't remember my mother--maybe she was like this? The paw fed me delicious food, then tucked me in again.
Was I dreaming or awake? I don't know. It's strange to be a hamster in this world.
Dammit, I miss my queen Melisande Anastasia.
My current set of cats ALL have wee little voices (even honkin' huge Seigfried only has a little voice). Angelina, my oldest, can snarl loudly when the kids bug her but otherwise, no talkers anymore.
When I worked at home I realized Melsiande always was carrying on a conversation with herself. Sometimes she'd come up and converse with me and woe betide me if I tried to ignore her. She'd grab my leg with one paw, claws slightly out...
Our cat Misty is an alarm cat, and you have to pet her and stroke her to activate the snooze button. She loves a good belly rub and will frequently collapse onto her back and expose her abdomen for said rub. Of course, after a while, she takes that as an invitation to demonstrate how good she would be at disemboweling an enemy by wrapping her front paws around the hand, scratching at it with her back paws, and nibbling at my thumb with her teeth.
My rabbit does nose twitches that sometimes spread to his whole face when he's dreaming.
When he lies on the rug to sleep, he'll compulsively lick at his front paws.
He's played chase after my brother's cat and my cousin's big dog. No sense of self preservation at all.
And he does thump occasionally. We've got a vet/kennel across the street and I suspect he's reacting to the dogs.
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