Gyroscopic Investing

What a cutie!



I've completely missed that whole IP debate hehe.

CT-Scott wrote: ↑Wed Apr 22, 2020 5:06 pm As things have felt a bit more contentious today (see IP thread), I'll bump the cat thread. Here's my other girl (Poppy):


IMG_0680.JPG


My older iPhone SE doesn't have a great camera, but this will have to do.

Other than that tiny bit of white I would have thought you'd taken a picture of my Mink!

Vinny

yankees60 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 22, 2020 6:02 pmOther than that tiny bit of white I would have thought you'd taken a picture of my Mink!

Oh, I thought your black cat had a white bib, too?

CT-Scott wrote: ↑Wed Apr 22, 2020 6:34 pm

yankees60 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 22, 2020 6:02 pmOther than that tiny bit of white I would have thought you'd taken a picture of my Mink!

Oh, I thought your black cat had a white bib, too?

Yes, Tortellini does...but not Mink. Plus, your cat's face and eyes are near identical to Mink's.

Vinny

You know those times when your cat puts itself in an unflattering position?

^ Early Madonna video

Lily’s friend named Eva.

Sweet photos! Cats have such angelic faces when they're sleepy and content. You almost forget that they are equally capable of knocking stuff over, biting my ankles when they want something, and are little pee, poop, and vomit machines. My morning wake up call from Chai this morning was the sound of him vomiting cat grass on a rug. I keep a couple of cat grass planters to try to prevent them from chewing on my other plants. I replanted one last week and he apparently just discovered it.

Anyone have any idea why cats are so fanatic about eating grass? They can't digest the stuff. My theory is that their digestive systems need a bit of soil with its probiotics and the roughage from the grass. It's part of why I keep the cat grass around. Normally they nibble on it before meals and it's pretty rare for them to throw it up.

Well, last night another mouse made the mistake of roaming around our house. My wife and I were watching some TV and I got up to go to the kitchen and saw Zuzu playing with a mouse, which I assumed at first was one of the toy mice. On second look, nope, it was a live one. My wife started filming the spectacle with her iPhone, and I'll review the video later to see if there's something worth shortening up and providing a link to. We weren't surprised that we had another mouse in the house, as Zuzu had been spending several minutes every day squatted down in front of our refrigerator, peering underneath it, so we figured there was probably another mouse in the house.

When Zuzu got a hold of it last night, I didn't want to get too close at first, as I didn't want to spook either the cats or the mouse, and risk having the mouse escape to some other part of the house. Much of the time the mouse was either in shock or playing dead, with Zuzu circling it, huffing / heavily breathing (a rather strange thing I've never seen/heard before), and when the mouse would perk up to think about making a move, she'd give it another swat and it would go still again.

Our other cat Poppy came over to see what was going on and she seemed to have no idea as to what she wanted to do. At one point she very, very gently patted at the mouse, and I swear that we truly believe that she seemed sincerely worried about the little rodent, and wasn't looking to hurt it. Zuzu on the other hand...

I quietly headed to the garage to get a snow shovel and a cardboard box, hoping I could scoop it up while it was in shock and then toss it outside. But I think that Zuzu got worried that I was going to steal away her prize, and before I could get back, she grabbed it in her mouth, and ran behind the couch. After another minute, she returned with the mouse and dropped it, and I was able to scoop it up and toss it outside over our back 2nd-story deck, but we saw some blood on our wood floor, and I suspected it was beyond shocked and now dead. Sure enough, this morning my wife texted me from her downstairs home office to tell me that she could see the dead mouse, upside down in our lawn, right outside her office window.

Cats love to play with their live food, don't they?

I don't currently have a cat, but back when I did, I'd sometimes find a big spider in the house and use our cat to exterminate it. I'd set her down in front of the spider, she'd playfully swat at it a couple of times, then gobble it up.

She also loved to eat small rodents in our yard and leave the stomach in a little smear of blood in front of our door. She'd sit there and yowl really loudly until we came and opened the door, at which point she'd proudly purr and rub against our legs as we cleaned up her "offering."

Tortoise wrote: ↑Tue Apr 28, 2020 5:35 pm Cats love to play with their live food, don't they?
...
I'd set her down in front of the spider, she'd playfully swat at it a couple of times, then gobble it up.

She also loved to eat small rodents in our yard and leave the stomach in a little smear of blood in front of our door.
...she'd proudly purr and rub against our legs as we cleaned up her "offering."

Pertinent infographic from The Oatmeal.

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_actually_kill

That’s awesome!

Come to think of it, we did notice that most of the lizards in our yard had tails with colors and patterns that didn’t quite match the rest of their bodies.

Apparently that color/pattern mismatch often happens when a lizard’s tail is, uh... removed and then grows back. So we concluded that our cat had apparently made a hobby out of eating lizards’ tails.

MangoMan wrote: ↑Tue May 05, 2020 11:22 am 2de0b7072fd6.jpg

LOVE it!!! So Cat!!!!!

Vinny

A new twist on the "cat in bag" series:
No warm places for me, nope sirree! I like to hang out in sinks and tubs. And the top of the chest freezer. By the way, your job right now is to pet me under the chin, as per my instructions. Forget brushing your teeth. - Chai.

Incredibly unsanitary.

BTW, my bro got me a Super Soaker for my birthday. So that I could reach out and touch the ferals from my back deck or front porch. I saw one today that looked like it had a rough time surviving the winter.

Oh Kriegspiel you cat hater you!

My immune system needs the practice, is all.

WiseOne wrote: ↑Thu May 07, 2020 5:32 pm My immune system needs the practice, is all.

This coming from a doctor? Should I be licking the soles of my shoes and eating garbage, since I'm not exposed to cats or hospitals all day?

Research dating from the 1980s popularised the view that pet ownership could have positive benefits on human health. Benefits ranged from higher survival rates from myocardial infarction1; a significantly lower use of general practitioner services (prompting some researchers to speculate on considerable potential savings to health expenditure)2; a reduced risk of asthma and allergic rhinitis in children exposed to pet allergens during the first year of life3,4; a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease5; and better physical and psychological wellbeing in community dwelling older people.6 No studies have found significant social or economic differences between people who do or do not have pets that would adequately explain differences in health outcome, leading to the belief that pet ownership itself is the primary cause of the reported benefits.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1289326/

WiseOne wrote: ↑Thu May 07, 2020 5:41 pm

Research dating from the 1980s popularised the view that pet ownership could have positive benefits on human health. Benefits ranged from higher survival rates from myocardial infarction1; a significantly lower use of general practitioner services (prompting some researchers to speculate on considerable potential savings to health expenditure)2; a reduced risk of asthma and allergic rhinitis in children exposed to pet allergens during the first year of life3,4; a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease5; and better physical and psychological wellbeing in community dwelling older people.6 No studies have found significant social or economic differences between people who do or do not have pets that would adequately explain differences in health outcome, leading to the belief that pet ownership itself is the primary cause of the reported benefits.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1289326/

As a fellow Iaonnidis fan, this should have given you pause, "Although the research did much to raise awareness of the importance that people attach to their pets, recent studies have failed to replicate the benefits."

As an aside, that paper had egregious child boarn in it.

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Thu May 07, 2020 5:30 pm Incredibly unsanitary.

BTW, my bro got me a Super Soaker for my birthday. So that I could reach out and touch the ferals from my back deck or front porch. I saw one today that looked like it had a rough time surviving the winter.

I used to use a machine gun water squirter on my cats.

I'd learned that if you yelled at them when they doing something they weren't supposed to be doing they'd just think that they should not be around you. But if they got hit with this water out of nowhere they'd better associate getting the water with their present behavior.

Vinny

Great shot, WiseOne. My cat doesn’t hang out *in* the sink as often as when she was a kitten, but she takes drinks from the faucet. Licking the faucet- probably not good for human health.

Well this is a new position...

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Thu May 07, 2020 5:45 pm As a fellow Iaonnidis fan, this should have given you pause, "Although the research did much to raise awareness of the importance that people attach to their pets, recent studies have failed to replicate the benefits."

Touche! There is a paper somewhere out there though, that showed a strong association of pets and FEWER allergies in kids. Association not causality of course, but when the association is strong and not some stupid 1.2 odds ratio, you have to think there's something to it. (I just couldn't find that exact paper).

Especially touche because I just got a paper rejected with the silliest reviews I've ever seen, which was camouflage for a religious belief which the paper directly confronted. People seriously into the religion don't like that. Just wish they realized what that implies for what terrible scientists they are.