Cats can be so comforting and so confounding. I was curious about the unusual behaviors my online friends’ cats exhibit. I asked them to share their stories. I said, “Let’s have some fun! Cat lovers, ’fess up, will ya? Admit it: My cat has the weirdest habit! Your cat will never read your comments so there’s little chance of revenge on you for telling your feline’s deepest secrets!” They responded happily.
I’ve selected for the oddest habits and found them to be most entertaining.
Cindy Hval (Washington) This morning I woke up to find Thor had knocked the lid off the butter dish and my butter was covered with tongue marks. Thor loves butter. Walter pilfers bags of chips, crackers, bread, and marshmallows. We now keep our bread in the microwave.
Julie Shepard-Hall (Washington) My cat gets up on the refrigerator and swats at the cupboard door because he wants to lie inside it. He also knocks the butter container off the counter so Paco can eat it!
Olivia McCollum (Washington) My cat, Fletcher, is a certified weirdo. He eats salad, Cheeto puffs, and any fruit you give him. He also lies around like this all day long.
Photo by Olivia McCollum
Nyssa Gatcombe (Maine) I had a foster cat who would lick the powder off of Cheetos.
Jenny Beard Biehunko (Alabama) Mine is obsessed with avocados. He doesn’t eat them. He just likes to play with them, carry them around, and sit on them.
Glenda Lee (Maine) Farrah likes to accidentally fall into a filled bathtub. Does it every chance she gets and then scolds me loudly for having the nerve to fill the tub!
Lonnie Evans Pearson (North Carolina) Rings the bell to go out. We taught our dogs and he picked up on it.
Kathleen Huggins (Washington) Knocks water glass over to watch water go over the edge of the counter. Waits until her brother dog is asleep, then sneaks up, lies down by his back, and puts her “arm” around him and goes to sleep.
Karen Schlosberg (Massachusetts) Roo whacks paper. She’ll sit somewhere and if there’s a piece of paper or the edge of a magazine hanging out, she will just start batting away with it with her paw. She doesn’t try to chew it or pull it out. She just whacks it. And she will keep doing that until I get her to stop by moving the paper.
Nyssa Gatcombe Nugget squeaks at me every morning to do her daily tick check. She gets them all over her face from sniffing around mouse nests. Ernest likes to sit on the back of the toilet and groom whoever is sitting on it. He even does it to guests.
Jewels Eilmes-Daly (Washington) My cat, Eric, will dig through anything and everything in the house in order to find plastic or leather. He then eats his finds and pukes on my bed. Eric also loves green olives! His brother, Andre, falls asleep every night while sucking on my hair and kneading my head.
Trish McMillan (North Carolina) Kindi is scared of thunder but desperately tries to escape into the storm every time. Wouldn’t that be more scary? Strange little cat. Angus suckles on soft blankets. He also cleans dog ears occasionally.
Photo by Trish McMillan
Timothy Page (Oregon) Panther (RIP) and the flirt pole with the catnip mouse on the end of it. I put it together when he was about a year old and he loved playing with it as I swung it around. After about four to six months, he realized I was at the other end of the pole, and he quit playing. Was he embarrassed, or what? I kept trying to get him to play, but the “teenager” in him refused, so I put it away. Maybe a year or so later I found it and tried it again. He looked at me and the mouse and me and the mouse … and he started to play with it again. After that he was always game for the flirt pole.
Tammy Marshall (Washington) My cat likes to put live mice on my back after she catches them. It’s way worse than finding a dead mouse on my bed.
Susan Swinburne Shaw (Washington) Tasha leaves her nighttime mouse/mole victims floating in the toilet for us to find first thing the next morning.
Amy Suggars (Ohio) My dog and a cat have a weird tag-team game they play. I have a dog door to my fenced backyard and both the dog and cat use it. Melli, the cat, will go outside and somehow manage to catch a chipmunk. She will then bring it (alive) into the house through the dog door and let it go. Both she and KD (the dog) will chase the chipmunk until the dog is able to catch it and pick it up. Being a trained retriever (with a soft mouth), KD will then bring the chipmunk (alive) to me. I will take the poor creature from her and then let it loose into my front yard. KD and Melli have done this several times!
Mandy Collins (United Kingdom) Pepper has a rubber fetish. Where other cats bring in small mammals, he brings in burst balloons and elastic bands.
Amy Shojai (Texas) Karma loves to towel surf … drag the towel around the room and he jumps on to ride, around and around!
Marie Hammerling (Florida) Sasha made up her own word for ‘feed me.’ OOOHRAO. We now use it to tell her food’s ready. “Sasha, ooohrao is ready!” She’s also very expressive. Here she is on the counter demanding food now as in “Feed me, human. “
Photo by Marie Hammerling
Amy Suggars My cat, Melli, has the weirdest habit of showing up in places where I don’t expect her. And these are places where she doesn’t normally hang out! For example, I will go to look for a book in my bookcase and she will be lying on the shelf next to the book. Or I will go into the back of my closet to retrieve a particular pair of shoes that I haven’t worn in a while and she’ll be sitting there! Recently I went to get something I stored on the top of my refrigerator and as I was trying to reach the item, I found the cat! It’s like she knows what I’m going to do before I do! It’s weird!
Deb Hunt (Washington) Alice hitched a ride from Texas and was found inside a couple’s RV when they pulled over in Utah for the night. A tiny kitten, but large and in charge of the RV, the couple, and their two adult cats.
When they arrived in Spokane, she was listed on Craigslist, and I had a person interested in a calico cat, so they gifted her to me. Unfortunately, the potential adopter passed from COVID, but I had already had the cat spayed/vaxed and ready to go to a permanent home. She’s very independent and proved to be too much for others, so she resides with me. She’s become the neighborhood “Watch Cat” with dog-like mannerisms. Not at all afraid to investigate visitors, repair workers, you name it. She will come and announce when I am to follow her for back-up. She confidently investigates anything out of order, and she is a bit bossy if you don’t follow her orders to come look for yourself at what she feels is out of place.
Does your cat have a weird habit?
Do you tolerate it or enjoy it a lot?
