As I am eating my dinner, I wonder… If a cat’s natural food source is mice and other small rodents, why can’t I buy cat food made of rats and mice in the way I can buy cat food made of chicken and fish?

Because we humans are not comfortable buying anything made of small rodents?

Sometimes I wonder if cats know more about Pavlov and Skinner than they let you to believe. Or, why else would a cat, when you are about to feed it, keep pushing its head against your thighs, as if cuddling you, if not to give you positive reinforcement for your actions? “Yes, feeding me makes you feel good, human, so you should do it more often” goes the cat’s brain. It is a very cunning tactic, indeed.

Well, one of our cats does that. The other one simply observes in silence, probably calculating the calories lost while doing what the first cat does, and the rate of impact of the reinforcement that it has on human beings, and deciding against joining its brother.

They are weird creatures, cats.

Since there is a relevant Eddie Izzard clip to every topic, here’s the one that fits this one: Pavlov’s Cats.

BBC reports about a cat who is said to be able to tell who is about to die. The cat, a resident in an American hospital, allegedly gets upset when removed from rooms with patients who are about to die soon.

On a completely different note, but staying with the feline subject, I would highly recommend I Can Has Cheezburger if you like cats and enjoy some good laughs. Updated daily with new images.

This is something that I dearly hope neither of our cats will ever be able to pull off. While there probably is no fear of Jack ever learning this (he first needs to learn to walk without tumbling and use the litter without making a huge mess of the litter area, among other things), Kitty is meanwhile already too clever for her own good.

Or well, perhaps not quite, but according to a study in Ohio, USA, only just over half (53%) of lost cats are found, as opposed to 71% of lost dogs. Moreover, while two thirds of the recovered cats returned on their own, only 8% of the dogs did so. And, finally, only 7% of the lost cats could be found at the local animal shelter, as opposed to 35% of the lost dogs.

It therefore seems to me that when a cat wants to go, it goes, and when it wants to come back, it comes back. You don’t have control over your cat.

For more information, you can read the full article at EurekAlert!

Well, not directly, but the title sounded outrageous enough to gather attention. What actually seems to be happening is that cat parasites may play a part in affecting certain cultural traits in human populations. They make us more neurotic, less tolerant to uncertainty, and more stuck to masculine sex roles.

Or that, in any case, is what scientists based at the University of California, Santa Barbara have found.