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Join our community of cat lovers on the Mumsnet Cat forum for kitten advice and help with cat behaviour.

Original poster

Can we have a competitive cat stupidity thread?

104 replies

Hassled · 28/11/2011 19:48

It has taken one of mine 4.5 years to work out the house has an upstairs. She used to sit at the bottom of the stairs looking upwards sometimes with a curious look on her face, but she lacked the brains to work out how to climb the stairs. She'd watch the other cat stroll past her and just seem bewildered.

Anyway - suddenly she's mastered the skill and it's like she has a whole new playground. She is one happy cat.

Are there stupider cats out there?

OP posts:
whomovedmychocolate · 28/11/2011 22:15

Summerrain - my cat 'killed' a zhu zhu last year - he attacked it, ate all the fur and it started to make really odd noises and go round and round in circles. Then it just finally completely conked out.

purplepidjin · 28/11/2011 22:15

Would it be really really stupidly extravagant to buy a zhu zhu hamster as a present for my cat? Does anyone think I could get away with pretending it's a present for 4yo DNephew for when he comes to stay, even though we always take his presents to DSil's and he keeps them there?

SecretNutellaFix · 28/11/2011 22:17

Oh yes and Girlcat licks plastic bags. No that wasn't a mis-spelling of likes, it really was licks. Constantly. Slurp, slurp, slurp, glare, slurp, slurp, slurp...

SecretNutellaFix · 28/11/2011 22:17

No need to justify it.Grin

Jacksmania · 28/11/2011 22:22

Mine fell in the bath once when I was in it. There was not room in the tub for the two of us.

She has jumped up on a table with a candle on it and burnt her whiskers trying to sniff it.
Then she turned around and walked away, lighting her tail on fire in the process.

Another time she was chasing her tail on top of the cat tree. Predictably, she fell off. DH and I were in stitches. :o

MissBeehivingUnderTheMistletoe · 28/11/2011 22:27

Another cat here who can't work out how a cat door works. Even Mog could work out the catflap! ("Mog was nice but not very clever")

purplepidjin · 28/11/2011 22:28

Nutella, I'm the youngest human in the house and I just turned 30. Justification is required DP thinks I'm nuts anyhow so probably wouldn't notice

whomovedmychocolate · 28/11/2011 22:30

The kids keep setting my Big Trak on the cat. He leaps vertically every time it moves.

SecretNutellaFix · 28/11/2011 22:33

Same here. Mine have wind up mice, that they bat once, look at me disgustedly and stalk away leaving me playing with it on my own.Blush

I even have a tub of Lego for me to play with. I don't justify it. It's my lego and I might let you play with it.Wink

Oeufman · 28/11/2011 22:35

We live in a detached farmhouse, the cats have free range all round.

Our moggie does not realise the front and back world can be easily travelled between by walking down either side of our house! She insist on wailing outside back door until I let her in, she then walks across kitchen to be let out window to front. All the wailing, whining and padding when she could stroll there in a couple of seconds!

Debs75 · 28/11/2011 22:37

My first kitten jumped onto a high table with so much power he slid across the top and straight off the other side
He also used to hide behind table legs, about 1" square and think you couldn't see him.

If he was hungry he would attack my mums leg as she walked past.
We lived across from the bus stop and everytime we got on a bus he would cry for us and watch us drive off. And yes he was there when we got back

My next cat tried to jump out of our first flat window on every occasion it was open

My current cat on the first day I got her decided to investigate my freshly made cup of tea. She sniffed at it then stuck her nose in and burnt the tip of ther nose. She is 4 now and the tip of her nose is paler then the rest.

My dsis cat would cry at the baby gate to be let in, even though she could a, fit through the gaps and b, jump over the darn thing

Debs75 · 28/11/2011 22:39

Ouefman my cat does that all the time. She can be in and out 10 times an hour if we let her

purplepidjin · 28/11/2011 22:41

Nutella, the lego in the house dates from my childhood and is only here for when DN visits, honest

He does come for several days at a time, I'm not a completely bonkers cat lady yet

SecretNutellaFix · 28/11/2011 22:43

you're only 2 years younger than I ma. There's plenty of timeGrin

sprinkles77 · 28/11/2011 22:44

for a moment i thought a "zhu zhu hamster" was some exotic breed of small furry. Blush.

My daft cat often misses when leaping between bits of furniture and lands on anything but her feet.
Once we went away over night and left her with an automated cat feeder. She was on antibiotics at the time so I put them in with the food. As far as I could tell she took the tablets!
she sniffs the lit gas rings and gets her whiskers burnt.
She thinks that we are less likely to notice her taking food off our plates if she does it with her paw rather than just grabbing with her teeth.
She got an abcess from a cat bite. She didn't complain or even go off her food. I only noticed it because she started to smell of rotten meat and she had a wet patch (of pus). Vet said it had probably been there for a couple of weeks.

JeelyPiece · 28/11/2011 22:47

One of mine hasn't realised that if a door is slightly ajar she can easily push her way through it just by nosing it further open. She sits in the hall wailing at us in the living room through the gap, waves a paw in till we open the door fully or contorts herself trying to squeeze through like vertical limbo dancing. The other two will just face-barge their way in without a second thought.

JeelyPiece · 28/11/2011 22:49

One of the others regularly falls off the arm of the sofa in his sleep Smile

Jacksmania · 29/11/2011 00:42

This thread is brilliant :o

How are there so many cats in the world... judging by this thread a lot of them should be too stupid to breed!

piratecat · 29/11/2011 08:34

again. i love this thread.

my grumpy fluffy older cat is sat in a pizza type box which would just about hold a 7 inch pizza. She has cleaned her whole body whilst sat there. I didn't look comfy!

piratecat · 29/11/2011 08:35

'It'

Grumpla · 29/11/2011 08:44

I used to live with a cat who also thought stairs were magic. She used to be perfectly capable of climbing through windows, up trees, and leaping up at the back door to open it, but never once did she go upstairs!

My current cat definitely pretends to be more stupid than she is. She pretended for months that she couldn't use a catflap, wailing for hours until someone opened it for her - until I caught her in the act! Once that happened she realised the game was up and used the flap happily ever after.

tabulahrasa · 29/11/2011 08:57

We had to get rid of our swing top bin because she kept trying to use it to get on the worktop, falling in and getting trapped in it. She'll sit on the front doorstep for hours huddled up miserably waiting for someone to let her in, even though the back door is open and that's how she went out. Hmm

she will at least ask to get through doors though, the other one doesn't seem to have worked out that we open them - she doesn't hassle you or even miaow at them, just sits staring at them till they magically decide to let her through...

SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius · 29/11/2011 10:01

When my mum was a teenager, she and her family used to go to a houseboat near Littlehampton for their holidays - and they used to take their siamese cat with them. He was entirely sensible about being on the boat, and they used to take him ashore occasionally for a run-round, so he was very happy.

But his common sense absolutely failed him one day, when he was sitting on the roof of the houseboat, and the seagulls were flying round being Very Rude Indeed to him, and he decided he would fly after them and give them What For.

Sadly he didn't realise that cats can't fly until after he'd launched himself off the roof, and he then plummeted into the water. Luckily my aunt was in the dinghy, and was able to fish him out as he was swept past.

He then lectured them for ages about how it was All Their Fault.

SummerRain · 29/11/2011 10:55

Same cat who spent yesterday accosting the zhu zhu hamster climbed into a plant pot on the table last week.... it was about 15cm across, 20 cm high and was already housing a pineapple top I was attempting to grow. There are 4 cat beds, 2 couches, 2 armchairs, 4 people beds and a squishy kids chair in the house she would be welcome to curl up and sleep, but no, she had to murder my pineapple and get soil all over the table to squeeze herself into a pot that can't possibly have been comfortable.

She also has an obsession with paper and cardboard. If I leave a box or paper bag down for longer than 20 seconds she'll be curled up on top of it peering at me out of one eye as if to say 'I dare you to move me'

When ds2 moved to a cot we had to start closing the boys bedroom door at night as she'd insist on trying to climb into it with him, which I didn't mind in itself, she's very gentle and shy, but 50% of the time she'd crash into the side of the cot so loudly she woke both ds'!

TheNinjaGooseIsOnAMission · 29/11/2011 11:51

hassled, no she always does it, she thinks hanging off the handle will get her inside quicker Hmm in fact the more time goes on the longer she manages to stay dangling from it, she peddles her back legs like mad on the glass, daft animal. She also has a fetish for white bin liners, it's like catnip to her she starts purring and bites holes in them, found out when I was sorting some of ds2s clothes out, I don't let her in the actual bin Grin